Becoming a parent is a major developmental transition of adulthood. Individuals often have optimistic expectations about parenthood, yet this transition also presents a number of challenges. The authors investigated whether new parents have overly optimistic expectations about parenthood and, if they do, how this influences their adjustment to…

The counseling skill of making effective referrals has always been one of importance. This paper describes two investigations designed to address the following questions: (1) Does research support the importance of an open and positive referral?; and (2) What would be the impact of a neutral or negative referral? Study 1 was initially designed as…

Some reflections are made on the historical context of instructional theory, and comments are presented on some papers from a session of the American Educational Research Association's 1998 annual meeting. A number of current innovations in instructional theory can actually be found among topics that have been discussed at various times in the…

Current theoretical approaches to understanding emotional difficulties are dominated by the medical model of mental illness, which assumes that emotional dysfunction can be viewed the same way as physical dysfunction. To examine the relationship between psychotherapy clients' beliefs about the medical model of psychotherapy and their behavior…

It is the aim of this paper to make a few suggestions concerning the application of the epistemological apparatus as developed by Edmund Husserl and his successors to one section within the area of art - namely, imaginative literature. (Author)

Article provided thoughts on teaching that may challenge your own, practical tips for analyzing your classroom attitudes, and a verbal pat on the back for the good job you're doing. (Editor/RK)

The study concerns whether graduate students could improve the accuracy of their self-evaluations of performance in a statistics class over a semester when feedback was provided and whether such accuracy was related to their Miller Analogies Test scores. (Author/KM)

This study investigated the applicability of Beck's cognitive theory of depression to non-clinical adolescents. Specifically, adolescents' personal and future information processes (i.e., two content areas of the cognitive triad) were examined as a function of their self-reported levels of depression and cognitive vulnerability to depression.…

This paper considers three clinical judgment biases in clinical inference: (1) illusory correlation bias, the report by clinicians of a correlation between psychodiagnostic test signs and patient's symptoms which are not correlated or are correlated to a smaller degree than that reported; (2) labeling bias, the tendency of exposure to diagnositc…

In sorting through predictions about future communications, it should be kept in mind that if one can think of a communication technology in the future, then that communication technology will stand a very good chance of becoming a reality. In other words, the forecasting of invention is not separate from invention itself. Secondly, the inventions…

The Hawthorne and placebo effects in educational experiments were examined over a 20-year period, as reported in the ERIC, Dissertation Abstracts International, and Psych Info data bases. The literature searches identified 325 studies in education employing the relevant control procedures, and each study was coded for the type of placebo…

This study tests the hypothesis that men's and women's psychological commitment to parenting and work exerts an influence on their expectations for and perceptions of their children's behavior. Subjects were 104 fathers and 194 mothers, each with a preschool child, who were employed in a wide range of occupations. Data were collected by means of…

Although research has examined the content of alcohol-outcome expectancies and also the role of alcohol use in aggressive and sexual behaviors, few studies have linked the two lines of inquiry. To examine the efficacy of outcome expectancies for predicting actual behavior, 64 male social drinkers, aged 21 to 25 years, completed questionnaires and,…

In a time when job opportunities are changing, the opinions of those who hire and supervise psychologists are important. To determine employer preferences in psychologist selection, 105 Philadelphia administrators completed a survey (39% response) rating the importance of various functions, areas of knowledge, and personal characteristics for…

The source of employee recruitment has been related to numerous important work outcomes (e.g., turnover, performance), but reasons for this relationship are not known. To test the viability of two possible explanations for recruiting source effects, i.e., employee level of realistic expectation, or individual differences, information was gathered…