Relations between Big Five personality characteristics and perceived support in adolescents' families

The authors investigated the longitudinal relations between family members' Big Five personality factors and perceived support. Members of 285 two-parent families with 2 adolescent children judged their own and other family members' Big Five factors and the support perceived from the other members on 3 occasions at 12-month intervals. The Big Five factor Agreeableness was particularly related to perceived support. Changes in individuals' Big Five factors were linked to changes in the support they perceived themselves but even more to changes in the support that other family members perceived from them. Results are consistent with the parallel continuities hypothesis: Individual characteristics will be stable when there is stability in the supportive environment, but when the environment is changing, personality tends to change in the same direction, and vice versa.     

Defense mechanisms and self-reported violence toward partners and strangers

We examined the relationship between defense mechanisms and self-reported violence toward partners and toward strangers in a sample of college student men. Fifty men completed the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT; Murray, 1943) and the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS; Straus, 1979), a self-report measure of strategies (including violence) for resolving conflicts with partners and strangers. The TAT responses were coded for defense mechanisms with the Defense Mechanisms Manual (Cramer, 1991b). The relative use of identification was negatively correlated (r = -.49, p <.001), and the relative use of projection was positively correlated (r =.49, p <.001) with the most extreme CTS report of violence toward partners. The relative use of identification was negatively correlated with the most extreme CTS report of violence toward strangers (r = -.34, p <.05). The relative use of denial was positively correlated with the most extreme CTS report of violence toward strangers (r =.32, p <.05).     

The effects of behavioral history on response acquisition with immediate and delayed reinforcement

Effects of prior exposure to the experimental chamber with levers present or absent and variable-time (VT) 60-s water deliveries arranged during one, five, or no 1-hr sessions were examined in rats during a 6-hr response-acquisition session in which presses on one lever produced water delivery immediately or after a 15-s resetting delay, and presses on the other lever canceled scheduled water deliveries. Response acquisition was (a) slower to occur when water deliveries were delayed, (b) most consistent in groups that had received five VT sessions, and (c) impaired by the presence of levers only when there had been five VT sessions and water deliveries were delayed during the acquisition session.     

Crime, Social Capital, and Community Participation

Social disorganization at the neighborhood and community levels has been consistently linked to various forms of criminal activity. However, a very much smaller body of literature addresses the effects of crime on community organizations. In some studies, crime appears to energize communities while in others, crime leads to withdrawal from community life. Using department of health crime victimization data and interviews with 2,985 low-income inner city residents living in 487 multi-family dwellings, a multi-level model examined the relationships among crime victimization, social organization, and participation in neighborhood organizations. Social organization at the individual and building levels was measured using recent formulations of social capital theory. Findings regarding crime suggested more signs of a chilling effect on participation than of an energizing effect, especially at the building level. Social capital at the building level was more strongly and consistently related to participation in community organizations than was crime.     

A Tribute to James Gordon Kelly

During the June 2001, eighth biennial meeting of the Society for Community Research and Action in Atlanta, a wide variety of community psychologists across generations attended a tribute in honor of James Gordon Kelly. What follows is an attempt to capture the spirit of the afternoon tribute as expressed through remarks made by colleagues and readings of letters sent by those unable to attend. The wide range of individuals represented here attests to the many additive ways in which Jim has cared about the field of community psychology and has contributed to its essence. Three additional invited contributions are included wherein Dick Reppucci, Rhona Weinstein, and Julian Rappaport reflect on the influence of Jim on their own career and on the development of the field.     

Priming effects for affective vs. neutral faces

Affective and Neutral Tasks (faces with negative or neutral content, with different lighting and orientation) requiring reaction time judgments of poser identity were administered to 32 participants. Speed and accuracy were better for the Affective than Neutral Task, consistent with literature suggesting facilitation of performance by affective content. Priming effects were significant for the Affective but not Neutral Task. An Explicit Post-Test indicated no conscious knowledge of the stimulus frequency that was associated with performance facilitation. Faster performance by female vs. male participants, and differential speeds and susceptibility to priming of different emotions were also found. Anger and shock were responded to most rapidly and accurately in several conditions, showed no gender differences, and showed significant priming for both RT and accuracy. Fear and pain were responded to least accurately, were associated with faster female than male reaction time, and the accuracy data showed a kind of reverse priming.     

The development of interpretations for novel noun-noun conceptual combinations during the early school years

This research investigates issues surrounding early school children's use of the similarity between head and modifier terms in deriving interpretations for novel noun-noun conceptual combinations. In these experiments, 6- and 9-year-olds and adults were asked to formulate interpretations of similar and dissimilar conceptual combinations. Both children and adults were sensitive to the similarity aspect of conceptual combinations, although the children had some difficulty with the property interpretations that high-similarity combinations require. Next, we examined 40 popular children's books for the presence of noun-noun conceptual combinations. Adult participants provided interpretations for these combinations and rated the similarity of the head and modifier nouns. Results indicated that there were few high-similarity combinations and few combinations requiring property interpretations, suggesting that children have limited exposure to highly similar combinations and property interpretations. Further analysis of children's interpretations indicates that they may have difficulty in selecting and integrating properties of the modifier onto the head, a process required by property interpretations.     

Personal disturbance scale: factor structure confirmed in a large nonclinical sample

The two-component structure of anxiety and depression items of the short form Personal Disturbance Scale, reported in an earlier clinical study of 480 adult psychiatric patients, was substantially replicated in a large nonclinical sample of 758 adults.     

The science of public messages for suicide prevention: a workshop summary

There is minimal guidance for efforts to create effective public messages that increase awareness that suicide is preventable. To address this need, several agencies in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Annenberg Foundation convened a workshop consisting of suicide prevention advocates and persons with expertise in public health evaluation, suicide contagion, decision-making, and marketing. "Logic models" were used to define intended messages and audiences, assumed mechanisms of change, and outcomes. This summary describes some of the challenges and opportunities identified by workshop participants in evaluating public awareness campaigns in suicide prevention, technical assistance needs, and a proposed research agenda.     

Superior performance of blind compared with sighted individuals on bimanual estimations of object size

Five preliminary experiments on sighted individuals revealed marked overestimation on an object size-estimation task using a bimanual response. These experiments ruled out the possibility that overestimation was due to the mode of visual presentation (whether two-dimensional or three-dimensional), the input modality (visual or kinesthetic), or the influence of other visual cues. The main experiment then investigated whether these distortions are due to visual experience by using a variant of the same task to test 24 blind and 24 sighted control participants. Remarkably, the sighted control participants overestimated object size, on average, but the blind participants did not. A follow-up experiment demonstrated that visual memory was the primary influence causing the size over-estimations. We conclude that blind individuals are more accurate than sighted individuals in representing the size of familiar objects because they rely on manual representations, which are less influenced by visual experience than are visual memory representations.