Studied the efficacy of induced affect as a pregroup training experience for coping with stress related to participation in an encounter group. Results indicated that group participants who did not receive the induced-affect pregroup training demonstrated significant increases on the Neuroticism scale of the Eysenck Personality Inventory. (Author)

One hundred fifteen depressed inpatients with a history of attempted suicide were matched by age and sex with 115 nonsuicidal depressed patients and 285 normal subjects. The results indicated that the early separation of parent from child does not, in itself, predispose the child to attempted suicide. (Author)

This report presents initial results of the first phase of the Treatment Outcome Prospective Study (TOPS) a longitudinal investigation of the natural history of persons identified as eligible for treatment at selected federally-funded drug treatment programs in 1979-1981. The materials describe the characteristics, behavior, and intreatment…

A prototype is a theoretical standard against which real people can be evaluated. To derive a prototype of a lonely person, 40 students were asked to describe a lonely person whom they knew. All descriptions were studied by judges who formed a final listing and frequency of all identified features. The 18 features which formed the prototype fell…

Reminiscence has long been considered an integral part of the aging process, whether as a form of cultural transmission or as a method of strengthening the ego structure. To examine the form of reminiscence defined as life review and its relationship to adjustment in the final stages of development, older Canadian adults (N=82) completed a…

The concept of social role range (SRR) deals with the magnitude of an individual's repertoire of different interpersonal behavior patterns and exhibits the properties of a personality trait. Over a broad range of interpersonal settings, individuals tend to be consistent in the magnitude of their SRR's. A role play technique was devised for…

Although widowhood is a disruptive and inevitable phenomenon for many older people, few studies have explored either adjustment to widowhood or the impact of widowhood on the lives of elderly people. Recently widowed persons (N=51), ranging in age from 49 to 83 years old, were interviewed to examine their relatively immediate psychosocial…

This packet of materials provides information for those who have obtained Lansing Community College's videotape series on stress and professional burnout and who plan to use these tapes in a professional development seminar. General information for seminar leaders is presented first, including a list of the contents of the packet, an outline of…

Several researchers have explored the role of alcohol in domestic violence and attributions of blame. To compare the amount of blame attributed to an incident of wife abuse, alcoholic (N=52) and nonalcoholic (N=159) subjects read an account of wife abuse and distributed a percentage of the blame to the man, the woman, and the situation.…

Characteristics of the situation in which a fear-arousing communication is received affect the effectiveness of the communication. The influence of situational factors affecting a recipient's interpretation of the arousal induced by communication were investigated with smokers (N=37) who were exposed to a fear-arousing anti-smoking movie. Prior to…

An exploration of writing anxiety suggests that it is a normal form of behavior rather than a pathology, but that it varies in degrees of its dysfunctionality. Excerpts from the log books of college students in a writing anxiety workshop illustrate four broad categories of writing anxiety: procrastination, feeling emotionally distressed, thinking…

The exploration of movement as it reveals the subconscious and subjective side of individuals is described to illustrate a method of psychological inquiry known as phenomenology. Spontaneous, improvised dance performed by two different couples was video-taped and analyzed. The couples, a man and woman in a courting relationship and two women in a…

The social and psychological factors which affect one person's acquisition of a second language are described in journal format. The psychological factors discussed are: (1) language shock, (2) culture shock, and (3) culture stress. The two social factors examined are both grouped under the term "social distance" but include (1) types of…

Based on the assumption that the variables used in diffusion of information studies in developing nations are subject to Western bias, theoretically complex, difficult to compare across cultures, and difficult to operationalize, a study was undertaken to test the predictive ability of simpler demographic variables. The data were drawn from a…