Lenney (1977) concluded that achievement gender differences were predicted by females' lower self confidence and expectancies in competitive situations, identifying three variables that mediated female self confidence in achievement situations, (1) task appropriateness. (2) social comparison, and (3) feedback. The present study manipulated all three mediating variables with 240 undergraduate 18-25 year old female subjects with the pursuit rotor task that requires tracking a moving (40 rpm's) white light with a hand-held stylus for 60 seconds. Response measurement was based upon time on target. Subjects were tested over five trials while setting goals for each trial. Females were randomly assigned to a male appropriate, female appropriate, or gender neutral task condition, a competition or alone condition, and to one of four feedback conditions (no feedback, feedback about own performance only, feedback about own performance that provided the perception that subject was performing better than an opponent and/or average on each trial, or feedback about own performance that provided the perception that subject was performing poorer than an opponent and/or average on each of the five trials). Results from the 2 (social comparison) X 3 (task appropriateness) X 4 (feedback) ANOVA were contradictory to previous findings (Corbin, 1981; Petruzzello & Corbin, …

Individuals with a minority sexual identity, such as lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals (LGB) face increased risk for stigmatization surrounding their sexual identities and subsequent psychological distress. Sexual minorities of color (SMOC) face the same difficulties faced by White sexual minorities, often compounded with stigma and discrimination linked to their racial/ethnic identities. However, because SMOC remain underrepresented in research on LGB issues, empirically-driven knowledge about these groups is lacking, even among outcomes where noted disparities exist, such as depression. Emerging adulthood may be a particularly important period for understanding effects of intersectional identities and discrimination among SMOC, who often navigate identity-related milestones and experiences independently for the first time within this developmental period. This study examined the relationships between discrimination based upon racial/ethnic and sexual intersecting identities and depression symptoms among emerging adults, as well as ways that group identity factors (ethnic identity, sexual identity, conflicts in identity allegiances) moderated this relationship. Findings indicated that experience of intersectional discrimination was strongly, positively related to depression symptoms. Ethnic identity negatively related to depression independently, but not in the regression model accounting for other variables. Identity factors were not found to statistically significantly moderate the relationship between discrimination and depression symptoms. Discussion …

The Interpersonal Communication Inventory, a self-report instrument for assessing social skills, was given to undergraduate college students to determine its reliability. Following this administration, other small groups of undergraduates were asked to complete an attraction scale, the Interpersonal Communication Inventory, an assertiveness scale, and a sociometric questionnaire. Results confirmed the Inventory as a reliable instrument, but a stepwise multiple linear regression did not support the hypothesis that the Inventory was a useful predictor of sociometric choice. In addition, Pearson product moment correlations between the Inventory and an assertiveness scale did not confirm the prediction that the two instruments would measure behaviors from different response classes. Definite conclusions could not be stated due to lack of validity data for the Inventory and possible confounding variables.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the neuropsychological outcomes of pediatric subjects undergoing temporal lobe surgery, and then compare the outcomes between subjects in the iMRI and the standard operating suites. This study involved 77 children ages one to 21 years (M = 11.98) at time of surgery for intractable epilepsy. Forty-seven returned for repeat neuropsychological assessment. At baseline, subjects with early onset of epilepsy (≤ 7 years) scored worse on a measure of attention (p = .02), FSIQ (p < .01), perceptual reasoning (p < .01), and processing speed (p = .06). At one-year follow-up, interactions were observed for the response style domain of the attention measure (p = .03), FSIQ (p = .06) and working memory (p = .08). Follow-up at one year, for the group as a whole, revealed decline in verbal memory (p = .04) and reading comprehension (p = .02); and improvement for word reading (p = .05). No significant differences were observed between the iMRI and standard operating suite. Though, hemisphere, duration of epilepsy, preoperative seizure frequency, lesional disease, seizure type, presence of epileptogenic focus, and number of lobes involved accounted for variance in neuropsychological outcomes. These results provide further support for …

The relationship between life stress and working memory capacity (WMC) has been documented in college students and older adults. It has been proposed that intrusive thoughts about life stress are the mechanism responsible for the impairments seen in WMC. To examine the mechanism responsible for these impairments the current study attempted to induce intrusive thoughts about personal events. The current study allowed for a test of predictions made by two theories of mind wandering regarding the impact of these intrusive thoughts on WMC task performance. One hundred fifty undergraduates were assigned to a control group, positive event group, or negative event group. Participants in the positive and negative event groups completed a short emotional disclosure about an imagined future positive or negative event, respectively, to induce positive or negative intrusive thoughts. WMC measures were completed prior to and following the emotional writing. Results indicated a significant relationship between WMC and mind wandering, however the writing manipulation did not result in any consistent changes in intrusive thoughts or WMC. The results suggest a causal relationship between WMC and mind wandering. The emotional valence of the intrusive thought altered the impact on WMC. No relationship was seen between the measures of stress …

This research demonstrates that experience with uncontrollable reinforcement, here defined as continuous non-contingent positive feedback to solution attempts of insoluble problems, fails to produce the proactive interference phenomenon, learned helplessness, while uncontrollable aversive events, here defined as negative feedback to solution attempts of insoluble problems, produces that phenomenon. These results partially support the "learned helplessness" hypothesis of Seligman (1975) which predicts that experience with uncontrollable reinforcement, the offset of negative events or the onset of positive ones, results in learning that responding is independent of reinforcement and that learning transfers to subsequent situations. This research further demonstrates that experience with controllability, here defined as solubility, results in enhanced competence.

After an intelligence test battery, the sixty right-handed subjects (30 males, 30 females) performed two visual field (VF) reaction time (RT) tasks requiring odd-even judgments concerning the whole numbers 1 through 8. Numbers were presented as words, a right VF left-hemisphere (LH) advantage task, or as bargraphs, a left, VF right-hemisphere (RH) advantage task, the height of the bargraphs indicating the number.

Research has demonstrated that the general public accepts many rape myths and that rape attitudes are strongly connected to other deeply held and pervasive attitudes. However, it has not been clear whether police officers reflected similar attitudes. This research attempted to ascertain if police share the same antecedents of rape myth acceptance as the general public. Using officers from two police departments, it was demonstrated that attidudes regarding sex role stereotyping, sexual conservatism, acceptance of interpersonal violence, and adversarial sexual beliefs were significantly correlated with acceptance of rape myths. However, police were more pro-victim (p < .01) in their attitudes as compared to the general public. Officers who received specialized rape-related training were not significantly different in rape attitudes from those officers who had not received training.

The proposed study examined whether negative urgency and positive urgency are dynamic traits that hold bi-directional relationships with binge and prolonged alcohol use across time. Individuals between the ages of 18-30 were recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk; n = 179) and university student (n = 66) pools. Participants completed three batteries of self-report assessments approximately 30 days apart, each containing measures assessing negative and positive urgency, as well as drinking frequency and binge behavior during the prior month. Latent variable cross-lagged panel models examined the effects of alcohol use from the previous month on negative and positive urgency while controlling for concurrent and autoregressive effects. Results of the current study indicated that for the full sample, there was not an effect for the influence of binge/prolonged drinking on either negative or positive urgency during the subsequent month. However, when examined separately by sample (Turkers vs. university) and gender (male vs. female), significant effects were found more for individuals who were Turkers, male, and/or heavy drinkers, suggesting that increases in positive and negative urgency at Time 2 could be partially explained by variance in drinking patterns at Time 1 for these individuals. However, these relationships were not replicated again between …

The purpose of this study, a quasi experimental design, was to investigate the relationship between team leader behavior and team performance and satisfaction. This field research tested leader behavior dimensions from two theoretical models of team effectiveness: Hackman's (1992) "expert available coaching," and Cohen's (1994) "encouraging supervisory behaviors." The relationship between coaching behaviors and team performance, employee, and customer satisfaction was assessed. Manager behavior was assessed with the SMT Leader Survey (Burress, 1994), an instrument determined appropriate for team environments, that measures Communication, Administration, Leadership, Interpersonal Skills, Thinking, and Flexibility. Employee satisfaction and performance information was archival data provided by the organization. The results demonstrated that leader behavior is a less important component of team effectiveness than initially expected. Even though direct customer interaction was 25% of these manager jobs and considered the organization's most important predictor of corporate profitability, no relationship between leader behavior and customer satisfaction was found. Among the key findings was, that while flexibility differentiated leader behavior more than any other scale, its relationship with both team performance and team satisfaction was negative. Interpersonal skills were positively associated with team performance, while leadership was positively associated with team performance and satisfaction. The SMT data were factor …

The primary interest of this investigation concerned working memory functioning and cue/act discrimination during encoding of intentions. The study included manipulations of working memory and intention load to investigate the encoding processes related to prospective memory (PM). Three experiments are presented that involve working memory distraction tasks at the time of encoding the PM intentions, as well as varying numbers of cues and actions. In the first experiment three cues were paired with one action, in the second, one cue with three actions, and in the third, three cues with three actions. Results suggest that the central executive is involved in binding a cue to an action, and that this operation is key to PM success. Furthermore, the phonological loop seems primarily involved with processing of cues and the visuospatial sketchpad with actions. It is further proposed that the processes of the phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad must be successful before the central executive can bind the cues and acts together, which is possibly the most important part in the encoding of intentions. By directly examining PM at the time of encoding, information was gained that allows for a more complete understanding of the nature of how we form and …

Marijuana is the second most commonly used substance in the US. A growing literature suggests that socially anxious individuals use marijuana to manage their symptoms in social situations, which may explain why they are also more likely to experience problems. Unfortunately, the majority of the literature is based on research conducted with adult samples or the co-occurrence of diagnoses in adolescent samples. The proposed study sought to test the link between social anxiety (SA) and proxies for ‘real-time' marijuana use behaviors (i.e., use willingness) as well as use-related problems among adolescents. Participants were 69 adolescents (15-17; 55% female) recruited from the community reporting any lifetime marijuana use. Participants were randomly assigned to a novel social rejection or neutral laboratory task and completed measures of SA, marijuana use frequency, and related problems. Consistent with adult findings, main effects of SA and experimental condition on marijuana use willingness were expected to be qualified by an interaction in which the greatest marijuana use willingness would occur among high SA youth post-rejection (H1), SA would be positively related to marijuana use problems (H2), and among adolescents in the rejection condition, marijuana use willingness would be positively correlated with use problems (H3). Only H2 was …

The present study compares the performance of volunteers and nonvolunteers in a 10-hour integrated series of management simulation exercises. It was hypothesized that there would be no performance differences in these two groups. Subjects were business students. Dependent measures were global ratings of management level and potential, as well as a behavioral checklist score. The results partially support the hypothesis. Volunteers performed significantly better on the global measures but not on the behavioral checklist. Differences on global measures were attributed to demand characteristics, whereas the behavioral checklist was not susceptible to this artifact. This finding raises doubts as to the usefulness of global measures and the validity of research based on them. Studies designed to upgrade and validate the behavioral checklist are needed.

This investigation was designed to determine relative effects of monetary reward and knowledge of results on complex-choice reaction time tasks. Subjects were twenty-five male and thirty-two female undergraduate students. Apparatus consisted of nine stimulus lights and eight response keys. Subjects were required to add the number of lights presented, subtract the sum from a constant, and press the correctly numbered response key. Reward subjects received twenty-five cents for responses faster than a predetermined criterion, and twenty-five cents was deducted for slower responses. Knowledge of results subjects were told their reaction times after each trial. Results indicated (1) no significant differences between any conditions, (2) a significant overall practice effect (.01 level), and (3) that males were significantly faster than females (.01 level).

The occurrence of custodial grandparents is increasing greatly. These grandparents face added stress and many adversities that arise from caregiving. Findings of current research tends to be mixed on the effects of grandparents raising grandchildren experience. Much research concludes that grandparent caregivers experience negative declines in overall health and well-being, while other research points out that the caregiving role may actually be a positive experience for the grandparent. The current study hypothesizes that mixed research may be a result of varying levels of resilience in the custodial grandparent population. The model proposed in this study looks at resilience as a mediator between several variables that effect custodial grandparenting. The current sample consisted of 239 custodial grandparents. A regression/correlation analysis was conducted on the data, and it was found that resilience levels were significant in mediating the effects of grandparent caregiving.

Descriptions of obesity, cerebral palsy, and scoliosis were rank-ordered (from one to twenty) and rated on a five-point scale by 75 college students. The descriptions were of two types: with the appearance of an individual on five levels of severity of a disorder and with the appearance and level of functioning of an individual on five levels of severity of a disorder. The ranking data indicated males rank-ordered descriptions of obese individuals different from cerebral palsy (p < 0.01) and scoliosis (p < 0.05) . The ratings of the descriptions were analyzed in two studies with 2 x 2 x 2 x 5 ANOVA's. Three-way interactions of the level of severity, complexity of description, and type of disorder rated were discussed in terms of likeability of handicapped individuals .

This study was designed as an attempt to extend Schneider and Shiffrin's (1977) automatic versus controlled processing distinction into the area of visual perception. Hasher and Zacks (1979) proposed a continuum of automatic processes, with processes which encode the fundamental aspects of the flow of information as the anchor of the continuum. They presented evidence that depressed people perform more poorly than nondepressed on effortful (controlled) memory tasks, but not on automatic tasks. Tachistoscopic and free inspection presentation of Piaget's (1961/1969) primary geometric illusions meet two of Hasher and Zack's criteria for automatic and effortful tasks, respectively. Consequently, multiple regression techniques were used to determine the relationship between depression (operationally defined as score on the Beck Depression Inventory) and method of presentation of a Piagetian primary illusion, the Müller-Lyer. Furthermore, correlations were determined between tachistoscopic versus free inspection of the Müller-Lyer illusion and forward versus backward digit span (operationally defined as score on the WAIS Digit Span subtest), since forward and backward digit span have been linked theoretically to automatic and effortful processing, respectively.

To determine if learned helplessness treatment debilitates human working memory and fluid intelligence, 60 university students, classified as high or low self-monitors, were assigned to one of three treatments: intermittent (50%) controllable positive feedback, uncontrollable (yoked) negative feedback, and no treatment. Test tasks included backward digit and backward spatial span (representing working memory), matrices (representing fluid intelligence), vocabulary (representing crystallized intelligence), and forward digit and forward spatial span (representing immediate span of apprehension). Results generally were not significant and were discussed as possibly due to ineffective treatment procedure. Further research on this topic is needed.

Research has not explicitly examined the link between key components of terror management theory (TMT) and body image without the use of mortality salience. This project explored the link between cultural worldview, self-esteem, body image, and death anxiety. Multiple measures were used to create a structural equation model examining relationships between body image and death anxiety as mediated by body image in the context of TMT. The proposed model did not fit the data. Minor modifications were made to the model keeping within the proposed theoretical perspective. In the modified model the relationships between cultural worldview and death anxiety as mediated by body image were either non-existent or weak. Hierarchical regression analyses did suggest that some aspects of body image indeed did predict some, but not all dimension of death anxiety in this sample of young adults.

This study was concerned with the degree to which the practice of transcendental meditation (TM) aids in the long-term reduction of anxiety. The Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale (TMAS), short form, was given to 16 Ss about to learn the technique of TM and to 16 control Ss. Eighteen weeks later, the TMAS was again administered to both groups. A significant difference was found in TMAS score reduction between the two groups, with the meditation group showing the greater reduction. These findings lend support to the hypothesis that TM aids in the long-term reduction of anxiety. It is recommended that further research in this area be undertaken to further validate the results of this study.

The 2010 National HIV/AIDS Strategy outlined three important goals for managing the current HIV pandemic in the U.S.: (1) reduce the number of people who become infected with HIV; (2) improve access to health care and health-related outcomes for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLH/A); and (3) reduce HIV-related health disparities. Each of these goals tacitly depends upon reducing HIV-related stigma, and this study examined how HIV+ individuals evaluate coping efforts to overcome stigma’s impact on quality of life (QOL). a structural regression model was developed to instantiate the reappraisal process described by Lazarus and Folkman’s transactional theory of stress and coping, and this model indicated that maladaptive coping fully mediated the relationship between dispositional forgiveness and perceived stigma, which supports the prediction that coping efficacy is related to stress reduction. Additionally, maladaptive coping fully mediated the relationship between dispositional forgiveness and QOL, supporting the contention that forgiveness is a critical aspect to the evaluative process that influences how PLH/A cope with stigma. Lastly, the model showed that when PLH/A engaged in maladaptive coping to mitigate stress-related stigma, these individuals experienced increased stigmatization and reported significantly lower levels of health-related QOL. in contrast, PLH/A that reported higher levels of dispositional forgiveness …

The behavior role-playing task (BRPT) has become a popular method of assessing assertive behavior. However, current research suggests that situational factors can affect the outcome of such assessments, independently of the subject's level of assertiveness. The present study investigated the effects of one such factor: the type of prompt delivered during the BRPT. It was hypothesized that subjects would respond more assertively to provocatively prompted scenes than to neutral scenes. Twenty nursing students were exposed to BRPTs involving both provocative and neutral role-player prompts. The results revealed that while provocative BRPTs generated significantly greater amounts of self-reported anger and anxiety than did the neutral BRPTs, there were no significant differences in response latency, duration, or assertive content between the two conditions.

The study reviews the structural and psychometric underpinnings of Loevinger's theory of ego development. It is noted that the current literature investigating the validity of Loevinger's model has not adequately addressed the structural assumptions of the theory. "Process" variables are hypothesized to vary depending on the process of structural change. Two such variables, cognitive complexity and the organization of cognitive constructs, were measured in 73 college students, staff, and faculty members in three North Texas institutions. Level of ego development, measured by the Washington University Sentence Completion Test, was assessed in each subject and the pattern of cognitive complexity and construct organization was evaluated across ego levels. Results offer only limited support for the stage model's structural assumptions. Discussion highlights several inadequacies in Loevinger's instrument and offers a direction for possible revision. Implications of the results are examined in terms of current theoretical issues.

The results of the study showed that D-Amphetamine had a significant effect on the acquisition of the active avoidance conditioning (CAR).