Past research has suggested that temporary perturbations characterize parent-adolescent relations after the onset of pubertal change. The purpose of this study was to further delineate the characteristics of these disruptions in families with seventh-grade girls. Current operational definitions of family conflict in an observational context are inadequate and a potentially more useful definition was offered: conflict is believed to exist when there is the simultaneous occurrence of opposing interpersonal forces. Two studies were conducted. A validation study was done to determine the psychosocial correlates of the following conflict variables: frequencies and reciprocal dyadic sequences of interruptions and disagreements. The affective nature of these variables was also assessed. The sample consisted of 17 families with seventh-grade girls and 20 families with seventh-grade boys who filled out questionnaires and participated in the Structured Family Interaction Task (SFIT). 2-scores were computed to represent the sequential variables. Results revealed that interruptions and disagreements tap disruption and conflict in the family in certain contexts. Frequencies of interruptions tap power in the family, whereas frequencies and sequences of disagreements tap both conflict and power. When interruptions and positive affect co-occurred more frequently, there was less disruption and conflict within the family system. The second study (Study 2) was conducted on 111 families with seventh-grade girls who participated in the SFIT. Relations between the observational measures and menarcheal status were assessed. The results supported the notion that familial adaptation to menarche involves a temporary period of conflict and withdrawl of positive affect in family relationships, especially in the mother-daughter dyad. Although a number of researchers in this area have found similar results, explanations of the role of conflict in the process have not been forthcoming. It is argued here that conflict plays a role in the adaptation to pubertal change in the sense that it promotes adjustment to developmental change. There appear to be two processes--one intrapsychic and the other extrapsychic--that allow conflict to play this role and make moderate levels of conflict inevitable in healthy families.

Of special interest in the field of social psychology are the differences among groups in their functioning that distinguishes them from one another. Cartwright and Zander (1960) speak of this in pointing out that some groups work together with a great deal more success, satisfaction, and with a greater sense of togetherness than others. Some groups are racked with dissent, insouciance, and such a failure to meet goals and standards as to result in a slow death of inactivity. These differences persist even under basically identical circumstances. Concerning this point, Pepitone and Kleiner (1957, p. 192) state: Everyday observations of how "threat" and "frustration" operate are highly inconsistent. It is often apparent, for example, that groups under stress "pull together" and "close ranks" more than under normal circumstances. Investigation in this area has been relatively recent in coming, and theory is yet greatly lacking. A few studies were done prior to and around 1940, but the majority have been conducted after 1950. One indication of the growth occurring in the last twenty-five years is the proliferation of tenns and the different meanings attached to them. Generally falling under the heading "cohesiveness," researchers have spoken of "sticking togetherness," productivity, power, task involvement, feeling of belongingness, shared understanding of roles, and good teamwork (Schachter, Ellerton, McBride, and Gregory, 1951). Despite the variability, definitions of "cohesiveness" can be roughly categorized into two classes. The first deals with the particular aspects of group behavior, or process, referring to such things as the morale, efficiency, or "spirit" of the group. The second centers around the attractiveness of the group for its members (Schachter, Ellerton, McBride, and Gregory, 1951). Festinger, Schachter, and Back (1950), in defining "cohesiveness" as the average resulting force acting on members with direction to the group, give emphasis to the second class while generally neglecting the first. Blake (1953), 0n the other hand, was more concerned with the behavior of the group, speaking in terms of the expression of positive and negative feelings, but he interpreted such in the light of what attitudes toward the group it reflected. Recognizing the problem, Cartwright and Zander (1960, p. 72) attempted to refine the concept of cohesiveness in the following: The term "cohesiveness" refers to phenomena which come into existence if, and only if, the group exists. A person must have some notion about the properties of a given group before he can react to it favorably or unfavorabLy. His attraction to the group will depend upon two sets of conditions: (a) such properties of the group as its goals, programs, size, type of organization, and position in the community; and (b) the needs of the person for affiliation, recognition, security, and other things which can be mediated by the groups. Both the nature of the group and the motivational state of the persons must be treated in any adequate formulation of group cohesiveness . . . The valence, or attractiveness, of any object or activity is a function of the needs of the individual and the properties of the object. In light of such a formulation it would seem that cohesiveness is defined by the needs of each group and its functions, and that a fruitful approach for investigation is to study it by varying these two conditions as much as possible. Perhaps some tendencies can then be found which will better explain the differences among groups. The present study deals with both the behavior of a group and the attitudes of its members in a situation in which their functioning was continually being affected by external factors. In one condition their progress toward the achievement of a goal was continually blocked, leading to eventual failure. In the second condition their progress toward the goal was permitted, and perhaps helped, to continually improve, leading to eventual success. In terms of cohesiveness the specific concern of this study is the differences in support and opposition between members of triadic groups and differences in their attitudes toward one another under these circumstances.

Substance abuse problems affect all segments of society including collegiate athletics. Drug testing programs are viewed as one method of combating this problem, however, more emphasis should be placed upon developing effective prevention programs. Towards this end, the first purpose of this study was to draw from available literature to design a prevention program which would cater to the specific needs of student- athletes. The position is taken that since multiple factors such as genetic predisposition, the pharmacological properties of various substances, psychological variables, and environmental/socio-cultural influences are implicated in the etiology of substance abuse difficulties, multi-focused/broad-spectrum intervention programs would likely be the most effective prevention strategies. Previous substance abuse prevention research has further suggested that the following core areas should be addressed in programs of this type: 1) education; 2) decision-making skills; 3) interpersonal/communication skills; and 4) alternative coping methods. Following this lead, the program utilized in the current investigation consisted of three major components: Education; Skill Training for Prevention; and Skills to Deal with Peer Pressure. Catering to the specific needs of the student-athlete population, the educational component addressed both performance- enhancing as well as recreational/"street" drugs. Specific skill areas addressed in the program included: decision-making/risk assessment; stress management; assertiveness training; and training in the ability to resist peer pressure. A transfer enhancement component was also included to maximize the transfer of learned skills to outside settings. The additional purposes of this investigation were: to Evaluate the overall effectiveness of this program, as well as the effectiveness of its individual components; and to Identify factors associated with pre- intervention usage patterns of student-athletes for the purpose of guiding future program development efforts. Fifty-eight student-athletes were recruited from both men's and women's varsity athletic teams at Virginia Commonwealth University to participate in this program and were randomly assigned to either the Intervention or the Delayed Intervention/Control conditions. Participants in both conditions completed a variety of questionnaires at pre-intervention, post- intervention, and at a two-month follow-up session. Instruments utilized for this study assessed data from the following three categories: 1) Process Measures (knowledge, attitudes, adjustment, and skill level); 2) Outcome (alcohol, drug, and tobacco usage patterns); and 3) Compliance to Completion of assignments. Results based upon these data suggested that: participation in the intervention program resulted in a significant, yet delayed, decrease in general anxiety level; the degree to which participants used adaptive coping skills was inversely related to self-reported alcohol consumption; and that social/environmental risk factors and pro-usage attitudes were positively related to actual usage patterns of alcohol, drugs, and tobacco products prior to intervention. These significant findings, the factors which potentially accounted for the overall lack of significant results relative to the number of analyses run, and additional comments/observations based upon the writer's experience implementing this program are discussed in terms of: 1) Intervention Implications; 2) Active Ingredients; 3) Pertinent Predictor Variables; 4) Future Directions; and 5) Limitations of the study.

Bronchial asthma is described as a relatively common and heterogeneous disorder. The complexity of the pathophysiological process and the myriad of etiological and precipitating factors are discussed. Such factors include: heredity, allergies, and psychological precipitants. The position is taken that regardless of what caused the initial onset of symptoms, psychological factors may contribute to the intractability and severity of the disorder. The utility of Behavior Therapy Techniques such as: Relaxation Therapy, Biofeedback- Assisted Relaxation Therapy, and Systematic Desensitization; as adjunct strategies for the treatment of bronchial asthma is discussed. It is concluded that while each of these arousal reducing strategies can result in statistically and clinically significant improvement, their usage may be restricted by such variables as: asthma type (intrinsic versus extrinsic); asthma severity (nonsevere versus severe); treatment type (mental versus muscular relaxation); and personality type (only two of nine panic-fear subtypes). The objectives of the current investigation were twofold. First, this study was proposed as an attempt to reconfirm the utility of relaxation therapy as an adjunct strategy for the treatment of bronchial asthma. Second, it was intended to examine specific psychological and illness variables which could potentially be useful in predicting responsiveness/unresponsiveness to relaxation therapy. The variables under consideration in this study were asthma severity and panic-fear personality type. Fifteen asthmatics (primarily of the extrinsic type) of varying degrees of severity and panic-fear personality types were treated in groups with 5 sessions of relaxation therapy. Results on self-report, pulmonary function, and physician ratings partially confirmed the utility of relaxation therapy for treating this population. The results were only suggestive of the importance of severity and panic-fear variables in predicting successful/ unsuccessful response to such a treatment strategy. The results are discussed in terms of: 1) Treatment Implications; 2) The use of Psychological and illness variables as selection criteria; and 3) the necessity of further and larger scale investigations to examine these important issues.

The present study examined the perceptions of assertiveness, limited to the situation of ability to refuse requests, by assertive and nonassertive subjects as they rated assertive and nonassertive encoders. Gender differences were also assessed. Subjects were 40 Caucasion male and female undergraduate General Psychology students at a large urban university. Within each gender group there were 10 high-assertive and 10 low-assertive subjects as determined by their scores on the second part of the Conflict Resolution Inventory. The subjects rated videotaped assertive and unassertive encoders on an attractiveness scale, assertiveness scale, and on the Impact Message Inventory, (an interpersonal assessment instrument). Results indicated that the assertiveness of the encoders was perceived accurately; however, neither the assertiveness nor gender of the decoders produced significant differences in their ratings. The IMI cluster-scores of Dominance and Submission produced significant differences between the assertive male and female encoders and the unassertive male and female encoders. The cluster Friendly was significantly different between the assertive female and the unassertive male and female. The Hostile cluster was not significantly different. The male assertive encoder was also perceived as significantly more dominant than the female assertive encoder. The assertive female encoder was rated significantly lower in attractiveness than all other encoders and the high—assertive raters rated the assertive female lower in attractiveness than all other ratings. The unassertive female was rated more attractive.

<p>The 1980s mark the beginning of systematic research and theoretical advances in the field of psychic trauma in children. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was a diagnosis for adults in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, DSM-III (American Psychiatric Association, 1980). In a later version, children and adolescents were partially included (American Psychiatric Association, 1987). Since 1980, a range of traumatic events have been identified as having the required stressor characteristics for posttraumatic stress reactions to manifest in children and adolescents.</p><p>In this study, the role of the stressor and peritraumatic reactions in PTSD of children and adolescents was studied. In addition, co-existing factors were assessed and related to the development and maintenance of PTSD reactions. A cascade of distressing events described the stressor in children who reported sexual abuse in daycare (paper I), and single-incident events were studied in adolescents (paper III). Subjective reactions during or immediately after the traumatic event, such as intense emotions, physiological arousal, dissociation and having thoughts of intervening, were strongly associated to the subsequent development of PTSD reactions in adolescents. The findings indicate that subjective responses to traumatic events play an important role in PTSD etiology. Objective features of the stressor, such as death or physical injury did not relate significantly to the levels of posttraumatic stress reactions. Half the children exposed to the cascade stressor in the case of alleged child sexual abuse, showed significant levels of PTSD reactions four years later. The objective features of the cascade stressor depended on the reported severity of child sexual abuse as well as media exposure, medical examinations, forensic interviews and the court trial. Children with high levels of PTSD reactions reported more severe CSA and were also more exposed to the media and the court trial, but the tendency was not significant.</p><p>Moreover, co-existing factors not related to the traumatic event may play important roles in the development and maintenance of PTSD reactions. After alleged sexual abuse and subsequent distressing events, older children displayed more PTSD reactions than younger children, which may indicate that younger children were more protected from developing distress in this situation. On the other hand, five weeks after a tram car accident, age was negatively associated with the levels of PTSD reactions in a group of children (paper IV). The findings may be due to the diverse nature of the stressors and methodological issues.</p><p>Other co-existing factors to PTSD, such as behavior problems in children and adolescents, may represent considerable difficulties in a young person’s life. In the current study, children displayed significant levels of behavioral problems four years after alleged sexual abuse.</p><p>The impact on parents and the rest of the child’s family cannot be ignored in the assessment of posttraumatic stress reactions of children and adolescents. In this study, comprehensive assessments were made of the parents’ experiences and levels of distress after alleged sexual abuse of their children. The parents were exposed to a cascade of events, including hearing about the sexual abuse, being involved in the police investigation and the court trial and being exposed in media reports. Four years after the events, elements of the stressor were significantly associated to the level of posttraumatic stress reactions. The findings illustrate how child sexual abuse reports may involve the children’s parents and expose them to high levels of distress over a long period of time.</p><p>In addition, interactions in the family may contribute in the development and maintenance of posttraumatic stress reactions in children and adolescents, and impede the healing processes. </p><p>After traumatic events in childhood, researchers tend to prefer parental reports of the children’s reactions to spare the children. In this study, children reported significantly higher levels of distress than observed by their parents after a tram car accident (paper IV). These findings indicate that parents unintentionally may bring in a response bias in their reports, which future research and clinical practice should take into account.</p><p>The study illustrates that traumatic events are complex experiences involving cognitive and emotional reactions, physiological arousal and dissociation, and that these reactions may induce posttraumatic stress reactions in children and adolescents. The cascade stressor subsequent to alleged sexual abuse of children showed how different elements of the stressor may lead to distress over a long period of time. The distress involved both children and parents in this study.</p> / Paper II reprinted with kind permission of Elsevier, www.sciencedirect.com

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The Conditional Reasoning Test for Aggression (CRT-A; James, 1998; James & McIntyre, 2000) is an inductive reasoning test designed to assess the extent to which individuals use implicit reasoning biases – known as justification mechanisms (JMs) – to justify engaging in behavioral aggression. James and colleagues (James, 1998; James & Mazerolle, 2002; James et al., 2005) have consistently described the CRT-A as an indirect measure of these implicit cognitions, or JMs, but they recently reframed their discussion of the test to emphasize its theoretical grounding in the concept of defense mechanisms (A. Freud, 1936/1966). In particular, they indicated that the JMs for aggression are influenced by the defense mechanism known as Rationalization (James et al., 2005). However, a close examination of the JMs for aggression reveals that they may also be influenced by a number of additional defense mechanisms. The main purposes of this paper are: 1) To demonstrate the theoretical consistency between defense mechanisms and the CRT-A, and 2) to empirically evaluate the extent to which the CRT-A and its JMs for aggression are related to specific, theoretically relevant defense mechanisms. The theory of ego defense is reviewed, the CRT-A is integrated into the framework of that theory, the JMs for aggression are aligned with specific defense mechanisms that appear similar in function and form, and hypotheses are developed to guide empirical tests of the proposed relations between the JMs for aggression (as assessed with the CRT-A) and those specific defense mechanisms (as assessed with both the Defense-Q [Davidson & MacGregor, 1996] and the MacORDS [MacGregor, Olson, Langford, Meterson, & Lahti, 2003]). Results were largely non-supportive of the hypotheses. In particular, none of the defense mechanisms under investigation (Rationalization, Projection, Grandiosity, Turning Against Others, Identification with the Aggressor, Devaluation, and Neurotic Denial) showed any relation to the CRT-A at the item level. Furthermore, only Grandiosity showed a somewhat consistent relationship with CRT-A scale scores, and even this was exceptionally small. Implications include the possibility that JMs for aggression are not as implicit/unconscious as once believed, and that the CRT-A’s predictive ability may be cogently explained in terms of the theory of threatened egotism (Baumeister, Smart, & Boden, 1996).

The primary purpose of this study was to obtain a description of women faculty members’ experiences of discrimination in higher education. The phenomenological research methodology informed the study. Seventeen participants were asked to respond to the question, “Can you tell me about your experience of discrimination as a faculty member in a higher education institution?” The interviews were in-depth and unstructured. Verbatim transcripts of the audio-taped interviews were completed and a phenomenological research group analyzed the data using the phenomenological method. Two grounds and three main themes emerged from the data. The first ground was Minimize/Describe Discrimination. This captured the participants’ tendencies to deny or minimize discriminations at times and then to describe experiences of discrimination at other times. The second ground was Overt/Covert Discrimination. This ground served as the foundation for each of the themes. Participants’ descriptions varied between obvious and overt acts of discriminatory behavior to subtle and covert examples. The three main themes were: 1) Burdened, 2) Devalued, and 3) Supported. Each of these themes encompassed several sub-themes which illustrated the participants’ experiences of discrimination in higher education. The final chapter of this dissertation related the major findings of this study to existing literature and included research and practical implications of the findings.

This study examined the effects of counselor level of training and gender on counseling outcome in a university counseling center environment. Data was collected from an archival database of approximately 4500 clients seen over a six-and-a-half year time period at a mid-sized Southeastern university counseling center. The Outcome Questionnaire 45.2 was used to measure client outcome, which consists of 45-items scored on a five-point Likert scale. The OQ produces three subscale scores (Symptom Distress, Interpersonal Relations, and Social Role) and a Total Score. The Social Role subscale was found to have low reliability in this study, and was omitted from further consideration. Data on client and counselor gender were also included in this study. Two analyses were performed on the archival data. In the first analysis, 338 clients who completed an OQ at intake and after their fourth session were assigned to groups based on the training level of their assigned counselor (Senior Staff, Pre-Doctoral Intern, and Master’s Extern). A series of repeated-measures and one-way ANOVAs were conducted. Total Scores and subscales decreased significantly for clients in all three groups between sessions. There were no significant differences on OQ scores between the groups at intake. However, Master’s level clients showed a significantly greater decrease than Senior Staff or Pre-Doctoral clients on the Interpersonal Relations subscale at fourth session. A significant difference was also found for client gender on the IR subscale at both intake and fourth session, with males scoring higher than females. There were no client/counselor gender matching effects observed. In the second analysis, 2772 clients were assigned to groups based on whether or not they returned to counseling after their intake session (Returnees and Non-Returnees). A one-way MANOVA showed a small, but significant difference between the groups at intake, with Returnees showing slightly higher OQ scores than Non-Returnees. Follow-up ANOVAs showed this was due to a significant difference on the IR subscale. Implications for counseling center outcome assessment and treatment and directions for future research were discussed.