Based on the premise that personality psychology is aimed ultimately at providing a scientific basis for understanding individuals, it is argued on several grounds that the assessment and study of individual differences is essentially useless to the discipline. The basis for an alternative approach, termed "idiothetic," is described, in…

At the Syracuse University Conference held at Sagamore, New York, and attended by leading adult educators, four papers focused on the latest research in the field of psychology, relevant to adult education. James E. Birren stated that while changes in physiological drive, speed, and perceptual acuity may limit the older individual's learning…

Children who have learning disabilities which prevent achievement in skill subjects or behavioral difficulties which interfere with learning can be helped to learn to substitute more adaptive patterns for madadaptive ones. Because learning disabilities are only part of a disordered developmental process in a child, both clinical and competence…

This report presents a preliminary series of investigations dealing with the detection of populations at psychological risk. The investigation relies primarily on the variable of vulnerability, as defined empirically by self-esteem, psychological discomfort, and social skills. Two vulnerability groups, high (HV) and low(LV) are compared on their…

The research question for this dissertation study was: Do behavioral outcomes identified in people who commit suicide exist in people who publicly exhibit productive behavioral outcomes and have not attempted suicide? More specifically, do selective affective and physiological behavioral outcomes identified in people who kill themselves exist is…

Though the adjustment of domiciliary residents has been studied with personality inventories derived from personality theory and from psychiatric classification systems, there is a need to study the adjustment of residents with instruments derived from organizational theory. Gordon reported that domiciliary residents had high scores on the Work…

This study examines how 273 adolescents view the help provided to them by their mothers, their fathers and their peers. The assumption was that the parent-child relationship, in particular, would contain many of the ingredients (proximity, affection, responsibility, shared experiences) which should foster the development of helping relationships…

The study's purpose was to determine the degree to which homogeneous rural youths living in an economically impoverished region might be vulnerable to anomia, powerlessness, and deviance given varying levels of perceived limitations in opportunity and self-ability. Comparative data relative to earlier studies in rural areas was also provided.…

The stated purpose of this compilation is to gather together some of the more commonly obtainable works from books, journals, and dissertations, as well as newspaper reports. In addition, where possible, abstracts are stated to be used to describe the material cited. This compilation includes a subject and author index. It is noted that the…

Peer pressure was shown to have a powerful influence on the verbally expressed drug attitudes of the undergraduate male sample. Subjects exposed to a group which consistently espoused either conservative (anti-drug) or liberal (pro-drug) attitudes toward the personal use of drugs were highly likely to conform to the groups attitudinal norms.…

This resource paper on political geography is part of a series designed to supplement undergraduate geography courses. Starting with a broad outline of the relationship between human spatial and societal organization, it examines cross-cultural perspectives on the political organization of space and the emergence of the nation-state as a…

This study sought to assess the effects of psychological warm-up on the verbal creative thinking abilities of first-grade children. The subjects were 96 black first-grade children enrolled in two schools in Athens and Atlanta, Georgia. Both schools are located in poor neighborhoods. Children were randomly assigned to control, physical warm-up, and…

This book deals with methods that individuals use to feed information and opinions back to mass communication systems. Typical examples of mass media and "information centers" were used to study feedback and environmental adjustment. Specifically, the feedback channels investigated are letters to the editor in newspapers, the urban newspaper…

An informal non-credit course in anxiety management offered by the author is described. The primary emphasis of this course is on self-hypnosis. Participating students are encouraged to increase their skills in relaxing and concentrating by three methods: (1) eye fixation; (2) muscular relaxation; and (3) focusing of awareness. Other techniques…

Following up on an earlier study which found that blacks and whites differed significantly on a 54-item development scale designed to measure effective individual functioning, or "maturity," this report considers whether the content of the Psychosocial Maturity Scale (PSM) is biased in favor of white children and if this bias invalidates…