In the 1960s suicide was the fifth leading cause of death among adolescents. In the 1980s suicide is second only to accidents as a cause of adolescent death. In their 1966 study of 50 adolescents who had attempted suicide, Teicher and Jacobs conceptualized suicide as the end product of progressive isolation from meaningful relationships. From…

The mothers of 135 hospitalized infants were interviewed regarding several social, familial, personal, and psychological conditions considered to be pertinent to the etiology of protein energy malnutrition in impoverished African urban areas. The information gathered was contrasted with similar data collected from the mothers of 296 adequately…

The social and emotional development of learning disabled students needs to be addressed in education programming effort. Social skills, which are essential to academic as well as social success, can be taught through such methods as role playing, games, grouping, puppetry, behavior modification, and problem-solving exercises. In addition,…

The human qualities which are valued in American society are different from, and sometimes construed as opposite to, the qualities deemed desirable in women. This values conflict provided the impetus for a study of women doctoral students. Twenty women who were pursuing doctoral degrees in educational leadership or counseling psychology at one…

Psychological well-being has been shown to be significantly influenced both by daily and major life events. The impact of two types of daily events on reports of physical and mental well-being was investigated in a multiple-time measurement design. Demand events which occur independently of one's volition, and desire events which arise from one's…

While the relationship between stressful life events, social support, and health outcomes has received much attention, efforts to quantify social support and directly examine specific ameliorative effects have resulted in mixed findings. Direct and mediational effects of two psychometrically validated measures of perceived and received social…

In order for ethnic identity to develop as a methodologically sound area of psychological research, it is essential to agree on definitions and to develop and validate measures that can be used in common by researchers working with different groups. This report analyzes 62 empirical studies of ethnic identity published in 36 journals since 1972.…

This report reviews studies on social interactions in desegregated schools and synthesizes reports on differences in the experience of schooling of black females as compared to schooling of white females. The literature on the subject, though sparse, indicates that in the early grades both white and black females have a lot in common, despite some…

Unrealistic personal optimism is the perception that undesirable events are less likely and desirable events are more likely to happen to oneself than they are to happen to other similar people. Three experiments were performed to study the relationships among personal optimism, perceived control, and selective activation of the cerebral…

Rating scales are increasingly popular in research and clinical studies of children. The Stress Response Scale was developed to test whether a child's behavior rating scale could be constructed based on a theoretical model of personality and if it could be validated by empirical means in order to obtain clinically useful factor scores. The scale…

The assumptions individuals make about their personal behaviors have received extensive attention, particularly the concepts of locus of control and self-efficacy. An additional concept, change orientation, refers to assumptions about how to change personal behavior. Approximately 180 subjects ranging from college freshmen to graduate students…

It has been argued that traditional psychiatric labels, hospitalization, anti-psychotic medication, and associated assistance programs tend to reinforce and perpetuate a sense of helplessness and dependency among mental patients. To investigate feelings of power and dependency of 15 neuropsychiatric patients in a sheltered workshop,…

This study examined the greatest stressors in teaching situations that affect teachers, and how these events vary for groups of elementary, middle, and secondary school teachers. The list of possibly stressful situations was taken from the Teaching Events Stress Inventory (TESI), developed by Cichon and Koff in 1978. Data were collected from…

The psychology of emotion has been studied primarily from an intrapsychic perspective. A social psychological perspective of emotion can supplement this intrapsychic approach by examining three areas: (1) controlling the emotions of others; (2) controlling the thoughts of others through emotional expression; and (3) emotional congruence, or the…

Recent controversy in the treatment of communication apprehension and avoidance has centered around whether an individual's communicative difficulties are caused by communicative (skills) deficiency or psychological problems (anxiety). Such debates are not new; arguments about whether to treat communicative difficulties from a communicative or…