A cognitive appraisal of threat is believed to intervene between the appearance of a stressful stimulus and a stress reaction to the stimulus. The effect of a "rational" treatment on the appraisal of threat is investigated. Five groups of 13 college students each heard one of five treatment orientations before viewing slides showing the victims of…

Constantly being turned down in their job search may lead liberal arts graduates to feel personally rejected and to ignore the real barriers to being hired. (Author)

Child care workers may derogate youth in order to restore their own sense of justice and may do so only when they feel organizationally and personally unable to help the youth. The relationship between child care workers' sense of power (both in their agencies and to help youth) and their perceptions of the youth was examined for a sample of 171…

Topics related to characteristics of mother/daughter relationships in contemporary patriarchal societies are discussed in this seminar paper. The first section describes cases intended to illustrate ways patriarchal social structures limit contemporary mother/daughter relationships, provides a brief historical contrast, and suggests possible…

Many correlates of vocational choice have been suggested by career development theorists. A career decision-making model developed by O'Neil, Meeker, and Borgers suggests six factors (individual, societal, familial, socioeconomic, situational, psychosocial-emotional) that affect both sex role socialization and career decision-making. The validity…

Research has revealed linkages among sex, sex-role self-concept, self-esteem, and attributional style, suggesting that sex-role self-concept may mediate the relationship between biological sex and attributional style. Female undergraduates (N=140) completed several questionnaires, including the Bem Sex Role Inventory to determine sex-role…

The influence of marital status on the well-being of older persons has been of interest to social gerontologists. To investigate the well-being of married, widowed, and divorced older persons, 397 older men and women completed eight measures of well-being, including daily living activities, overall financial status, and psychological health.…

The major components of playfulness in kindergarten children are physical, social, and cognitive spontaneity, manifest joy, and sense of humor. Children who are highly playful also show high scores in divergent and creative thinking. Piaget postulated that after the age of 7 or 8 this quality is replaced by assimilating the objective facts of the…

The study determined the correlation among education students' perceptions of their own childhood discipline and their adult attitudes toward teaching and toward children. Data analysis indicated that those students who perceived their own childhood discipline as rigid and punitive tended to hold highly negative attitudes toward children, but did…

Underrepresentation of women in higher status, traditionally male occupations has been attributed to sex-role socialization and to discrimination. Female students entering traditionally male professions may suffer many of the same pressures that have prevented other women from entering these fields. Undergraduate women (N=64) and men (N=21) in…

Research indicates that stability and level of self-esteem can provide information about other aspects of behavior. The relationship of stability of self-esteem to academic variables among elementary school students was examined in an effort to replicate and extend findings from a previous study. The hypotheses were concerned with the relationship…

Major specializations in the discipline of physical education are often identified by the terms: history of physical education; exercise physiology, biomechanics, motor development, motor learning, sport psychology, and sport sociology. In this text, two chapters are provided on each of these specialized areas. One chapter describes the emergence…

This paper, presented at the 1979 meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), focuses on curricular interventions which have been used by the University of Minnesota to reduce mathematics anxiety among adults. It summarizes four approaches for dealing with the problem and describes the model used by the Math Anxiety Program of…

The paper defines the term "culture shock" and discusses the changes that this state can make in a person's behavior. Culture shock refers to the emotional and physiological reaction of high activation that is brought about by sudden immersion in a new culture. Because one's own culture shields one from the unknown and reduces the need to make…

Retirement is a major issue facing the older American man. Not only must he give up his work, a source of identity and self-esteem, the retiree must also face new relationships with his spouse, children, and peers; and he must learn to use leisure time appropriately. Widowerhood is a second major issue. Aside from deep emotional loss, the widower…