acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu

The stereotype-based physical characteristics of psychiatric patients were investigated to understand hospital staff perceptions of dangerous and voluntary patients. It was predicted that certain patient characteristics, such as race, sex, attractiveness, and muscularity, that are stereotypically associated with a predisposition towards violence would influence the causality and stability of staff attributions at the time of patient admission and release Hospital staff, employed in the psychiatric ward of a state-hospital, made attributions for the admission and release of 92 target patients. The target patient sample consisted of 55 patients involuntarily hospitalized for dangerousness and 37 patients who were voluntary admissions. Upon the admission and release of a target patient, two staff members selected for their familiarity with the case history of the patient, completed an attribution interview form. Staff selected three attributional statements, coded for their causality and stability by graduate research assistants, that they considered most relevant to the behavior leading to the admission and release of target patients As expected, patient legal status and stereotypic physical characteristics affected staff causal attributions. Staff attributions for the admission of target patients indicated that: (a) black males received more internal stable causes than white males and (b) less attractive black females and males regardless of their attractiveness received more internal stable causes than attractive black females. Upon patient release, the effect of stereotypic characteristics was supported among dangerous patients. Staff chose more internal stable reasons for the release of white males than for black males. Also, attractive patients received more internal release attributions than less attractive patients. The effect of patient legal status was contrary to predictions: (a) voluntary males received more internal stable admission attributions than dangerous males and (b) voluntary white males received more external temporary release attributions than dangerous white males The effect of stereotypes and patient legal status on staff causal attributions are discussed. Also, the limitations and implications of the present study, and suggestions for future research are presented / acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu

The high prevalence of heavy alcohol use and its associated consequences in college student populations has been well documented. Studies of adolescent alcohol use patterns show that alcohol-related problems are a function of level of alcohol consumption as well as of other factors, including gender and social learning influences. Although there is evidence that peer influences extend to alcohol-related problems, the role of parent influences in the negative consequences of alcohol use and the potential moderating role of gender in these relationships remains unclear. This study sought to answer the following questions. First, do parent and friend influences extend to the alcohol-related problems of college freshmen, and if so, is their effect mediated by level of alcohol consumption? Second, does gender moderate the relationships between parent and friend influences and alcohol-related problems or between alcohol use and alcohol-related problems? Participants were 260 incoming freshmen (nondrinkers were excluded from analyses) who completed a mail-distributed questionnaire during the first two weeks on campus (Time 1) and two weeks before final exams of the fall semester (Time 2) in exchange for a nominal incentive. Results revealed both direct and indirect paths from Time 1 friend influence variables to Time 2 alcohol-related problems, but parent influences failed to show a relationship with the criterion. Mediation by Time 2 frequency of binge drinking was stronger for perceptions of alcohol use versus perceptions of alcohol acceptability and when predicting moderate versus severe alcohol-related problems. Male participants reported more frequent binge drinking and higher rates of severe alcohol-related problems, but gender did not moderate the effects of friend influences or frequency of binge drinking on alcohol-related problems This study shows that alcohol consumption partially mediates the relationships between friend influences and alcohol-related problems, but that gender does not moderate these pathways, despite its main effects on alcohol consumption and severe alcohol-related problems. Findings suggest that alcohol-related problems of college freshmen are a function of their intoxication, but also of their perceptions of friends' alcohol acceptability and use that may influence their expectations and norms for alcohol use behavior and/or reflect a behavioral disposition towards risk-taking behavior / acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship of age trends in social cognitive skills and aggressive behaviors in normal children. It was predicted that sophistication in social cognitive skills would be negatively related to the rate of aggression and to the proportion of aggressive responses to accidental antecedent events. Age differences were also expected for the aggression measures (including physical and verbal, person-oriented and material-oriented aggression) and for the social cognitive measures Subjects were boys (from middle socioeconomic backgrounds) from kindergarten, first and third grades at two elementary schools. They were observed during free play situations at school over a 12 week period. Observations focused on aggressive events, using a time-sampling procedure and written specimen recording. Data on aggressive events was subsequently coded by the observer according to a classification system which categorized the aggressive behavior by function and the antecedent event by both function and intent (accidental, purposive, ambiguous or unknown). During the latter half of the observation phase, subjects were individually administered a battery of four tests to obtain measures of moral judgment, empathic role-taking, use of intention information, and verbal ability The major analyses of the data involved multivariate regression analyses to determine the relationship between the test measures and the aggression measures and multivariate analyses of variance to determine if grade accounted for differences in the aggression measures and the social cognitive measures separately. (Verbal ability was used as a covariate.) The results generally supported the predictions of age trends in the social cognitive test measures. However, no age trends were found in the aggression measures and no relationships were found between any aggression measure and any social cognitive measure. Various factors were suggested as possibly influencing the low rate of aggression and the lack of age trends, e.g. socioeconomic background, the age of the sample, and the observation procedure. It was proposed that a detailed theoretical framework is crucial for further investigation of developmental trends in cognitive/behavioral relationships and that more specific cognitive and behavioral measures are necessary / acase@tulane.edu