Finds that verbal behaviors were more important to the closeness of women's relationships than men's, but that shared activities were not more important to men than to women. Finds that verbal behaviors were also more important to the closeness of friendships than they were to sibling relationships. (SR)

The authors assessed factors that motivate individuals to report negative human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) antibody test results, although they had never been tested. In particular, they investigated sexual intimacy motives associated with the needs for affiliation, sex, and dominance as contributing factors for faulty disclosures. Participants…

We describe Marriage 101: Building Loving and Lasting Partnerships, an innovative, for-credit undergraduate course at a large, religiously unaffiliated research university. Marriage 101 engages students in the scientific literature and discourse in the psychology and sociology of marriage and marital success. The course has the additional…

Although research has examined marital satisfaction in later life, little is known about the specific relationship challenges that older couples experience. Thus, the objective of the study was to explore the challenges older couples face. Data came from the USC Longitudinal Study of Generations. Qualitative analysis was conducted on 105 older…

Inspired by the work of Tolman and others, this longitudinal qualitative study was designed to explore how women feel about sexual intimacy in the first year of college and how these feelings change over time. In-depth interviews with 14 young women were conducted over a period of 2 years. Findings suggest that the valence of sexual intimacy…

Examined grade and gender differences in the association between perceived intimacy and power boundary violations and conflict goal reports among 177 adolescents. Found that adolescents' perceptions of intimacy boundary violations were associated with reports of relational and avoidance goals. Grade and gender moderated the association between…

This essay stages a theoretically driven critique of Lawrence Kasdan's film "The Big Chill" as a productive example of a constitutive contradiction animating the liberal political imaginary. In particular, it argues that liberalism relies irreducibly on an under-examined conception of friendship to supply its model of citizenship as a distinctive,…

The way in which satisfaction with a romantic relationship may be affected by how supportive a partner is and how constructively they deal with conflict in that relationship was examined in young adults. Both greater support and less conflict were found to be independently associated with relationship satisfaction, implying that both are necessary…

This paper focuses on the wildly successful blockbuster "American Pie" teenpics, especially "American Pie 3--The Wedding". I argue that these films are specifically designed to appeal to teenage male audiences, and to provide lessons in sex and romance. Movies like this are especially important as they are experienced by far more teenagers than,…

This study examined the effect of anonymity on adolescents' sexual self-disclosure on the Internet and the impact of topic intimacy on their reply intent for sexual disclosure by conducting a survey with 1,347 adolescents. It was found that male participants were more likely than females to engage in sexual self-disclosure and to correspondingly…

When Morris Dees was a young man in Alabama, the law said that black people couldn't drink from the same water fountain as white people, or sit at the same lunch counter. Back then, the government created and sanctioned divisions between human beings. The Civil Rights Movement changed all of that, of course, and ended state-mandated apartheid in…

Findings from previous studies examining the relation between women's employment and the risk of intimate partner violence have been mixed. Some studies find greater violence toward women who are employed, whereas others find the opposite relation or no relation at all. I propose a new framework in which a woman's employment status and her risk of…

Introducing students to sensitive social issues like intimate violence in lower level courses can spark their sociological imaginations motivating them to do further research in order to gain reflective knowledge about such topics. In order to promote two course objectives: (1) recognizing and applying sociological concepts and theories, and (2)…

Background: Appropriate assessment is an essential part of treating sexual offenders. Few assessments exist that can be used with offenders who have lower levels of intellectual functioning and/or literacy deficits. Method: This study describes the adaptation of four self-report assessments for sexual offenders with special needs: (i) the "Social…

Comments on the article by Robert Bornstein, "The Complex Relationship Between Dependency and Domestic Violence,". Bornstein's attention to both types of dependency and women's experiences of domestic violence. I believe that his discussion of these complex relationships and social policy recommendations may be enhanced with a more integrated and…