Psychology, Personality

Possible contributions of child temperamental styles and maternal parenting behaviors to the prediction of victimization in the peer group were examined. 106 middle-class boys and girls in the 4th through 7th grades and their mothers participated in the study. Children reported on the parenting behavior of their mothers, male and female same grade classmates nominated subjects on victimization and other social behaviors, and mothers of the children reported on their child's temperament. Results indicated no moderator or mediator roles, for child temperament or maternal parenting, in the prediction of victimization. However, for boys, maternal overprotective parenting was associated with peer victimization. Maternal overprotectiveness also predicted boys' internalizing problems among peers. For girls, maternal hostility was associated with peer victimization and internalizing problems. For both sexes, hostile parenting predicted externalizing problems in the peer group. An impulsive temperamental style also predicted externalizing problems for both sexes. A unifying theory explaining gender differences in the relation between maternal behaviors and peer victimization was given. Suggestions for future research were also advanced.

Two experiments are reported, both dealing with syllable affiliation of a consonant. The first experiment extends the work of Tuller and Kelso (1990) and was designed to capture the signatures of loss of stability in a dynamical system (enhanced fluctuations and critical slowing). An Articulograph device (Carstens Medizinelektronik GmbH.) was used to track the movements of the tongue tip, the lower lip, and the jaw in the midsagittal plane while the subjects spoke a VCC word in time to an auditory metronome at a slowly increasing rate. A clear transition occurred in the phonetics (VCC -> CVC) as judged by a phonetically trained listener, and the transition in phonetics corresponded to a change in the relative phase between the tongue tip and the lower lip and between the tongue tip and jaw. The transition was accompanied by both enhanced fluctuations and critical slowing for subjects who complied with the metronome. The second experiment examined syllable affiliation in natural English phrases with contrasting metrical structures. The phonemes /s/, /t/ and /k/, were used, and the tongue tip, tongue blade, and jaw were recorded by the Articulograph device. Consistent relative timing of the consonant movement in relation to vowel movement was observed, thus supporting the position that syllable affiliation is expressed as distinct phase values in natural speech as well as reiterated speech. In addition, the evidence supports the view that the syllable is an organizational unit of speech in English.

Dynamic social impact theory (DSIT; Latane, 1996a; 1996b), a macro-level theory of social influence, predicts that discussion will lead to a self-organization of public opinion through decreasing minority sizes, increasing spatial similarity, and emerging correlations. The catastrophe theory of attitudes (CTA; Latane & Nowak, 1994), a micro-level theory, suggests that attitudes are a joint function of issue involvement and information favorability. This paper describes the predictions leading from these theories separately and as integrated and meta-analytically combines analyses of almost 500 students discussing social and political issues over a computer network with twenty previous studies testing aspects of CTA. The results of an original computer simulation are also described. Involving attitudes are extreme and change nonlinearly, and involvement mediates thought-, information-, and discussion-induced attitude polarization. Involvement also relates to persuasion and the self-organization of opinion. These studies show converging support for CTA and DSIT and suggest that combining these theories may increase our ability to track the evolution of attitudes from individual beliefs to cultural norms.

In Study 1, fourth--through seventh-grade children (mean age = 11.5 years) were asked to estimate the likelihood that various outcomes would occur following hypothetical acts of aggression by themselves toward victimized and nonvictimized peers. Subjects were also asked to indicate how much they valued the occurrence of the outcomes. When the targets of the aggression were victimized peers, children were more likely to anticipate tangible rewards, more likely to expect signs of victim suffering, and less likely to anticipate retaliation than when aggressing against nonvictimized peers. Also, children placed greater value on securing tangible rewards but were less concerned by the thought of hurting or by the thought of their target retaliating when attacking a victimized peer than attacking a nonvictimized peer. This pattern was stronger for boys than for girls. Study 2 was designed to see what evaluative reactions fourth--through seventh-grade children (mean age = 11.3 years) would expect from themselves, from peers, and from teachers for aggression against victimized and nonvictimized peers. When contemplating aggressing against a victimized peer, children expected less disapproval from self and peers. A second purpose of Study 2 was to determine whether children were more likely to display hostile attributional bias toward victimized peers than toward nonvictimized peers. As predicted, hostile attributional bias was greater toward victimized peers than toward nonvictimized peers. Implications for theories of aggression, future areas of research, and for intervention with victimized children are discussed.

Research in the psychological sciences has long focused on the impact families have on later development. One feature of families is the birth order in which children from one family develop. Birth order serves as a proxy for developmentally relevant criteria including differences in age, size, and status between siblings. Following from theories derived from evolutionary psychology, differences in perceived favoritism, personality dimensions, and sexual strategy are examined. As an initial examination of the influences siblings can have beyond childhood, responses to the upset over the infidelities of in-laws are examined. Results from this series of studies suggests (1) birth order does not covary with personality but that distinctions among the relatedness between siblings can provide fruitful avenues of future research, (2) features of sexual strategy do covary with birth order, particularly variables related to projected sexual strategy, (3) perceptions of parental favoritism covary with the birth order of the participant, and (4) men and women do not differ in their upset over the infidelities of brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law but that the mechanisms generating upset over a sibling-in-law's infidelity may be sensitive to the age of the sibling and thus, the birth orders of the participant and sibling.

Archival data collected from a private-practice career counseling center was analyzed to evaluate the extent to which situational constraint measures can be applied as moderators of person-occupation congruence. Demographic, personality, and career interest inventory responses, particularly those for the Strong Interest Inventory (SII), the 16PF, and the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory, served as the primary units of analyses. Data was collected by career counselors over a ten-year period for 202 clients (125 men and 77 women; M age = 36.9). Difference score measures were calculated for clients by comparing SH scores to normative means for the general reference sample of the SH and appropriate occupational samples. Situational constraints such as age, income, marital status, having children, time spent in one's career field, and time spent in one's job were hypothesized to be positively associated with seeking career counseling for less voluntary reasons (i.e., terminations or lay-offs) than those who sought counseling for other reasons (i.e., career change, relocations, reentry, or resignation). Although situational constraint hypotheses were not supported, career counseled clients were highly incongruent with the occupational interests of their occupations. The magnitude of this finding exceeds that of those typical of the career-interest congruence literature. Despite clients' incongruence with the interests most commonly associated with their occupations, clients were more congruent on those interest dimensions when scores were compared to general reference sample means. That is, through selection practices or socialization, clients have achieved a minimal degree of congruence yet do not completely match the characteristics of the majority of others in their occupations. The results of this study suggest there is a maximum level of incongruence expected of interest congruence studies. Career-counseled clients in this sample spent considerable sums of money to find work situations that would improve their level of work satisfaction. Further research is necessary to verify whether the inclusion of career counseled clients provides a ceiling for the measurement of congruence-satisfaction relationships. Although situational constraint measures were not identified as effective moderators, their inclusion in future nonarchival studies may yield more sensitive tests of situational constraint hypotheses.