Although fear of death is recorded in the writings of the oldest major religions, the study of death and the fear of death have only occurred for the last few decades. Death education courses have grown in number since the early 1970's. College students participated in an investigation of the effects of death education on death anxiety by…

Empathy as a personality variable and as related to social behavior in young children has not been examined for its specificity with regard to various affect classes but has generally been treated as a global response to all affect classes. Three kinds of evidence relative to the specificity of empathic responses are analyzed: (1) correlations…

The determinants of interpersonal attraction were examined in 10 dyadic situations involving an actor's behavior toward a perceiver. For each situation, the intentionality of the actor's behavior was varied at three levels (intentional, nonintentional, no information), and the affective implications of the behavior for the actor were also varied…

Individuals interacting with an unfamiliar target person behave according to prior impressions of the target. A perceiver's pre-interaction expectancy can mediate both his and the target person's behavior, resulting in behavioral confirmation or compensation. Male subjects (N=96) participated in dyadic interactions in which one subject (perceiver)…

This study focuses on the motivational aspects of children's humor and describes the naturally occurring verbal humor of children without stimulus from adults. Kindergarten and elementary school children were observed during their lunch period at school while engaged in social interaction over 16 weeks. The study was designed to (1) record the…

This paper concerning the development of simulation materials for training correctional counselors in family counseling is oriented toward developing sequential counseling materials which will have positive consequences for the trainees' use. An offender family counseling training module is presented utilizing a series of transparencies depicting…

Although stressful life change events are thought to influence the development of alcoholism and to enhance the probability of relapse after treatment, the actual coping responses to specific events among alcoholics remain largely unexplored. Efforts were made to operationalize and classify coping responses and to explore their relationship to…

The relationship between women's perceptions of rape controllability and their fear, worry, concern, and perceived risk associated with rape is examined from in-person interviews with women (N=58) in Chicago, San Francisco, and Philadelphia. Women's response to descriptions of the "typical rape" were used to divide them into those with high rape…

An affective method is identified for increasing the sensitivity of paraprofessional psychiatric helpers to vocal (paralinguistic) expressions of the affect "sadness." Fifty-two male and female psychiatric hospital employees served as subjects and were divided into four groups, each of which was given identical pre- and post-testing. Group 2…

This volume contains the transcripts from the 1978 Congressional hearings from the subcommittee on child and human development. Major topics focus on domestic violence and relevant legislation. Witnesses represented such organizaitons as State Departments of Health, Education and Welfare, the U.S. Senate, Comission on the Status of Women and the…

Subject groups were classified on the basis of behavioral ratings for degree of anxiety exhibited and level of social skill displayed during a simulated dating interaction. Subjects were then asked to view and evaluate their own skill performance and the performance of bogus subjects during the same interaction when presented on videotape. All…

In this study, the task was to analyze the separate effects of contingent reinforcement (money) and monitoring (counting) on the frequency of responses indicative of anxiety. Observed (physiological) and introspective (covert statements about experiencing anxiety) were used to determine the effects of reinforcement and monitoring on anxiety prone…

The contribution of cognitive and affective experiences on empathy in children was assessed. It was expected that children receiving experience with both components would show more empathy than those receiving experience with only one or neither of these components. Six- to eight-year-olds participated in two phases, Training and Assessment. In…

This paper presents a theoretical model of empathy in which empathy is defined as a largely involuntary vicarious response to affective cues from another person or from his situation. The model has three components: affective, cognitive, and motivational. In the presentation of the affective component, five distinct models of empathic affect…

This paper describes a study designed to provide information regarding children's perceptions of their own physiological responses associated with feelings of apprehension. A second goal was to compare children's self reports with their reports on parent emotional responses and also with parents' reports on their own stress-related physiological…