Correlates of Marijuana Use Among College Students1

Students who have smoked marijuana are compared with non-users on a variety of attitudinal and demographic characteristics. Approximately 36% of the sample of over 5,000 college students from a national survey report usage of the drug. The major demographic characteristics that separate users from non-users are religious affiliation, region of the country, and sex. With respect to collegiate institutions, the selectivity of the institution, the students' academic aspirations, and grade-point average all prove to play a significant role. Anti-war activities and sentiments also prove highly significant. A Multiple Classification Analysis (MCA), which compares the relative contribution of each variable to drug usage, shows that anti-war protest, religious affiliation, and sex are the most significant predictors of marijuana usage. A variety of mechanisms playing a possible role in fostering drug use are discussed.     

Subject differences in cross-modality matching

Forty-eight Ss performed four tasks each: (1) magnitude estimation of area, (2) magnitude estimation of numerousness, (3) cross-modality matching of force of handgrip to area, and (4) cross-modality matching of force of handgrip to numerousness. An additional 48 Ss performed Tasks 2 and 4. Psychophysical power functions were fitted to the data of each S for each condition. Higher correlations between individual exponents were found for conditions employing a common response (i.e., estimating or squeezing) than were found for conditions with the same set of stimuli. Individual differences among exponents stem more from the idiosyncratic use of the dependent variable than from different sensory characteristics.     

Educating Disadvantaged Urban Children in Suburban Schools: An Evaluation1

A 1-year experimental program that transported a total of 38 “volunteer” disadvantaged city children to schools in a nearby suburban community was evaluated in grades 1 and 2. Twenty-six of the 38 children were in a total of 12 different classes at these two grade levels. At the conclusion of the program, transported first graders displayed significantly higher average gains in reading, mathematics, and listening skills than did counterparts who remained in the city school. Among second graders, achievement mean gains for the transported group did not differ significantly from those of the counterpart group. Suburban children in classes containing city youngsters displayed no measured detrimental effects on achievement, when compared to similar classes without city children. In general, year-end affective measures indicated that most groups of students preferred integrated classes that were mostly white, and they also felt these classes were among the smartest.     

Brain-stimulation intensity, rate of self-stimulation, and reinforcement strength: an analysis through chaining

Reinforcement strengths of different intensities of brain stimulation were assessed by means of a two-member behavioral chain. A variable interval schedule of 30 sec was the first-member, and five lever presses, each rewarded with stimulation, was the second. It was found that response rate on the VI schedule continued to increase beyond the intensity value which produced peak rate on the second-member, self-stimulation lever. It was concluded (1) that brain-stimulation reinforcement strength cannot be assessed adequately by means of self-stimulation rate, and (2) the chaining technique employed in the present experiment appears promising as an analytical tool in brain-stimulation research. Finally, some aspects of the data suggested a fatigue or stimulation-adaptation phenomenon.     

Effect of CER on DRL responding

The effect of CER on DRL 16 was studied in four rats. All Ss showed complete CER suppression after five CER trials, together with some unconditioned post-shock suppression. This post-shock suppression showed complete recovery in all Ss after 10 days of five CER trials per day, but complete CER suppression continued throughout.     

Profiles of commitment in standard and fixed-term employment arrangements: Implications for work outcomes

This paper develops and tests a framework for understanding the relative importance and predictive efficacy of commitment to one’s profession, organization, supervisor and job in both standard and fixed-term employment arrangements. Drawing from the commitment and employment arrangement literatures, we test a set of hypotheses identifying distinct patterns of commitments (i.e., commitment profiles) to these four targets that should yield desired work-related outcomes in standard and fixed-term employment arrangements. We test our hypotheses using latent profile analysis on data collected from two Finnish universities (N1 = 235, N2 = 233). A high macro profile, characterized by high commitment to profession, organization and job, and moderate commitment to supervisor, emerged for employees in standard employment relationships, and this profile was associated with significantly higher positive work behaviours and work effort and lower turnover intentions than the other profiles. For employees with fixed-term employment contracts, a high cosmopolitan profile emerged, characterized by high commitment to the profession and job and low commitment to the organization and supervisor. For these employees, this profile was associated with positive work behaviours and work effort comparable to the high macro profile. Implications for theory, research and practice are discussed.     

Realistic affective forecasting: The role of personality

Affective forecasting often drives decision-making. Although affective forecasting research has often focused on identifying sources of error at the event level, the present investigation draws upon the “realistic paradigm” in seeking to identify factors that similarly influence predicted and actual emotions, explaining their concordance across individuals. We hypothesised that the personality traits neuroticism and extraversion would account for variation in both predicted and actual emotional reactions to a wide array of stimuli and events (football games, an election, Valentine's Day, birthdays, happy/sad film clips, and an intrusive interview). As hypothesised, individuals who were more introverted and neurotic anticipated, correctly, that they would experience relatively more unpleasant emotional reactions, and those who were more extraverted and less neurotic anticipated, correctly, that they would experience relatively more pleasant emotional reactions. Personality explained 30% of the concordance between predicted and actual emotional reactions. Findings suggest three purported personality processes implicated in affective forecasting, highlight the importance of individual-differences research in this domain, and call for more research on realistic affective forecasts.