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…

The romance as a form of literary narrative retains its popularity because romance translates into conscious forms and unconscious struggles everyone goes through. (JH)

This study explores the validity of a construct of cognitive spirituality as measured by a recent measure, the "Spirituality Index of Well-Being," in a sample of Catholic high school students. Spirituality on this scale is conceptualized as a composite of life scheme (having meaning in one's life) and generalized self-efficacy. Construct-based…

This paper describes a three-phase developmental process which often occurs following the termination of an ongoing and intimate relationship. The phases are separation, individuation and reconnection. Each phase has a unique but interrelated matrix of psychosocial reactions, needs and potential for personal and interpersonal development. The…

Ninety-two subjects solved a series of problems without enough time to finish and worked at a pace and in an order determined by the experimenter (Experimenter- Paced) or at their own pace and order under self-administered time deadlines (Self-Paced). Self-pacing resulted in superior performance on rote and poorer performance on cognitive problems…

This document examines the differences of cognitive styles and how they pertain to student performance and effective teaching. Persons identified as "field-dependent" people are particularly attuned and differentially attend to the social dimensions of their environment. Due to this orientation, these persons appear to be more skillful at learning…

Research directed toward examining clinical depression among college students requires valid criterion measures for identifying depressed individuals. The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), the most widely-used self-report screening instrument for identifying depressed college students, has been criticized for its heavy emphasis on cognitive items…

This model of an eight-week childhood obesity program for intermediate elementary through junior high school students addresses the social, psychological, and physical penalties often incurred by obese children. The materials detail the program format in terms of: (1) a daily food log; (2) a discussion of proper nutrition; (3) a contract for…