GENDER AS A MODERATOR OF THE RELATION BETWEEN RACE-RELATED STRESS AND MENTAL HEALTH SYMPTOMS FOR AFRICAN AMERICANS

The present study tested gender as a moderator of the relationship between race-related stress and mental health symptoms among African American adults. Because African American women are exposed to stressors associated with race and gender, we hypothesized that African American women would have higher levels of race-related stress and more severe mental health outcomes related to experiences of race-related stress compared to African American men. Multivariate analyses revealed that African American men had higher stress appraisals for institutional racism than did women. No significant gender differences were found for cultural and individual racism. Moderated regression analyses revealed that increases in stress appraisals for individual racism were associated with increases in anxiety and obsessive-compulsive symptoms for African American women. Race-related stress had no significant effects on mental health symptoms for African American men. The findings suggest that gender is an important factor in determining the impact of race-related stress on mental health.     

The Protestant Work Ethic and Just World Beliefs in Great Britain and India

This study examined Protestant Work Ethic (PWE) and Just World Beliefs (JWB) in Great Britain and India. Secondary school children, university students and adults completed seven PWE questionnaires and the JWB questionnaire. A three-way (sex × occupational status × nationality) ANOVA showed highly significant main effects, particularly for nationality, but few significant interactions. Generally females more than males, Indians more than Britons, and schoolchildren more than adults endorse the PWE and JWB. Possible experimental artifacts and moderator variables are considered along with the possibility that genuine cultural differences were found. These results are discussed in terms of the relevant literature on cross-cultural studies of the PWE and BJW.     

Communicating across cultures: A social skills perspective

This paper considers some of the difficulties that people experience when communicating with people from another culture. The concept of culture shock is discussed in some detail. The best predictors of the successful business sojourn are then described. Five methods of training in interpersonal skills are discussed followed by typical examples of cultural differences in social behaviour.     

THE FRIENDSHIP NETWORKS OF FOREIGN STUDENTS: A REPLICATION AND EXTENSION OF THE FUNCTIONAL MODEL*

The aim of this study was to replicate and extend the study of Bochner et al. (1977) which presented a functional model for the development of overseas student friendship patterns. Whereas Bochner et al. (1977) used only 30 Far Eastern foreign students and 6 host nationals in his Hawaian study, this study used 140 foreign students from each continent. Subjects were asked to specify various aspects (including nationality) of their three best friends, and also their preferred companion for each of a range of everyday situations. The friendship network data revealed a strong preference for co-national friends first, other nationals second and host nationals third, while the preferred companion data showed co-nationals first, then host nationals and finally ‘other’ nationals. The results closely match the results of Bochner et al. (1977) and provide further evidence for the functional model.     

Just world beliefs in an unjust society: A cross cultural comparison

Groups of matched British students(N = 53) and school-children (N = 70) and South African students(N = 86) and school-children(N = 69) completed the Rubin-Peplau Just World scale which yields three scores: beliefs in a just world (JW), beliefs in an unjust world (UJW), difference between just and unjust scores. A three-way (2 sex, 2 nationality, 2 education status) ANOVA was computed which showed that although there were no sex, and only one educational status difference, nationality yielded a highly significant difference on both just world, and total scores. The results were interpreted in terms of previous studies of just world beliefs and authoritarianism in South Africa. It was argued that beliefs in a just world help people justify the status quo in unjust societies.     

Strategic hand use preferences and hemispheric specialization in tactual reading: impact of the demands of perceptual encoding

Four reading-related, information-processing tasks were administered to right-handed blind readers of braille who differed in level of reading skill and in preference for using the right hand or the left hand when required to read text with just one hand. The tasks were letter identification, same-different matching of letters that differed in tactual similarity, short-term memory for lists of words that varied in tactual and phonological similarity, and paragraph reading with and without a concurrent memory load of digits. The results showed interactions between hand preference and the hand that was actually used to read the stimulus materials, such that left preferrers were significantly faster and more accurate with their left hands than with their right hands whereas right preferrers were slightly but usually not significantly faster with their right hands than with their left hands. In all cases, the absolute magnitude of the left-hand advantage among left preferrers was substantially larger than the right-hand advantage among right preferrers. The results suggest that encoding strategies for dealing with braille are reflected in hand preference and that such strategies operate to modify an underlying but somewhat plastic superiority of the right hemisphere for dealing with the perceptual requirements of tactual reading. These requirements are not the same as those of visual reading, leading to some differences in patterns of hemispheric specialization between readers of braille and readers of print.     

Attention,autonomic arousal,and personality in behaviorally disordered children

This study assessed the construct validity of the Revised Behavior Problem Checklist (RBPC) by measuring attention, autonomie arousal, and personality in 40 behaviorally disordered children aged 7 to 15 years. Conduct Disorder and Socialized Aggression subscales were characterized by high Psychoticism, Impulsivity, and Lie personality scores, by lower heart rate levels, and by more errors on a continuous performance reaction-time task. Conversely, Attention Problems, Anxiety Withdrawal, and Motor Excess were characterized by greater variability in reaction times. Conduct Disorder alone was related to an external locus of control, while only Attention Problems was characterized by low scores on the WISC Freedom from Distraction factor. These differential relationships suggest (a) support for the construct validity of the RBPC, (b) that antisocial behavior and hyperactivity/attention deficits are dissociated disorders, and (c) that hyperactivity/attention deficits may be characterized by fluctuations in the allocation of attentional resources rather than a core structural deficit in attention.     

Effects of time of day and medium of presentation on immediate recall of violent and non-violent news

A sample of 103 subjects from a technical training college were randomly assigned to nine groups and presented with a sequence of violent and non-violent news stories either audiovisually (via television), in audio-only, or in print at three different times of day (morning—9.30 am, early afternoon—1.30 pm, and later afternoon—5.30 pm). Subjects were tested for immediate cued recall of story content immediately after presentation. There were significant main effects of presentation modality, time of day and news content. Memory for news was best from print and worst from the audiovisual presentation. Memory performance was best in the morning and worst in the evening. Violent news was recalled better than non-violent news in all media and at all times of day. There were also some interactions. Recall of violent news presented in audiovisual and audio-only modalities deteriorated more from morning to afternoon than did non-violent news recall. Non-violent news recall from these two media declined more rapidly in the second half of the day. With print, recall of both violent and non-violent news dropped off more in the late afternoon than in the morning. Practical implications of the findings for news presentation are discussed.     

The type a behavior pattern and the need to prove oneself: A correlational study

This study set out to investigate the relationship between the Type A behavior pattern, the need for approval, and the need to prove oneself. One hundred and two subjects completed four questionnaires: two measuring A-type behavior, one social desirability, and one—especially devised for this study—the belief in the need to prove oneself consistently. Results showed that Type A’s have significantly lower needs for approval than Type B’s, yet appear to show considerably greater interest in comparing their achievements with others. It seems that Type A’s do not have any special need to prove their worth to others, but that they must constantly prove themselves to themselves. Limitations of this preliminary study are discussed.