The best selling literature on relationships is written in terms of gender differences. Information and advice from psychologists and counselors is directed to either females or males based on counseling clients and personal experience. In this study, I present evidence that a gender list of attitudes and needs without age considerations cannot provide accurate information. This study included a sample of 1020 volunteers from a randomized group of individuals attending jury duty in Pima County, Arizona. The participants answered a questionnaire consisting of 44 items developed from four authors' best selling books on information and advice on relationships. The participant responses were evaluated in terms of three factors: gender, attendance in counseling, and age. Phi coefficients were calculated for the gender and counseling factors. Eta coefficients were calculated for females and males across four age groups. Meaningful results were determined by Cohen's criteria of effect size. Item responses were compared with expectations from the literature. The results indicate gender and age are necessary to accurately determine relationship attitudes and needs. The factors of gender and age provided specific information for females and males across age groups unavailable with dichotomous gender designations. The counseling sample did not respond consistently when compared to the non-counseling sample on items relating to counseling subjects. A comparison of item responses to the literature suggests participants did not respond to items consistently with information and advice in current self-help literature.

Previous research has found that reminders of one's mortality provoke hostile reactions to those who threaten one's worldview, but such reminders have not been found to create conscious negative affect. Two studies were conducted to investigate the role of subtle affective reactions to different mortality primes as indexed by physiological measures. In Study 1, participants responded to an open-ended mortality or control treatment while skin conductance and pulse rate were recorded, and then evaluated worldview impinging essays. In Study 2, participants were exposed to masked presentations of either "death" or "pain," and then to a worldview threatening essay. Facial EMG was recorded throughout. Results of both studies found the expected increase in worldview defense following mortality primes. Whereas Study I found an increase in arousal that was not specific to mortality salience, Study 2 found greater corrugator EMG specifically during exposure to the death primes. Across both studies, there was no evidence for a mediating role of affect on worldview defense following exposure to death primes. Possible explanations and future research directions are briefly discussed.

The purpose of this qualitative dissertation was to describe the experience of safe sex via consistent condom use for unmarried, young women involved in committed, long-term relationships. A phenomenological research approach was utilized throughout the study. The intent of phenomenological research is to describe and understand human experience. Phenomenology accomplishes this goal through a process of revealing the fundamental, defining structures of experience, called "essences." Essences are the invariant, shared elements of phenomena that are similar or common to anyone with that experience. Twelve women (M age = 20.6 years; M length of relationship = 19.3 months) recruited from a large, Southwestern university participated in semi-structured, individual, one-hour interviews. Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed word for word. Transcripts were submitted to an adaptation of Giorgi's (1985, 1997) phenomenological data analysis procedure. Analysis revealed four essences that defined the experience of consistent condom use within the context of long-term, committed relationships: self-protection, an unwavering internal standard, personal responsibility, and relational support. (1) Participants maintained a conscious awareness of the need to protect themselves against the perceived, realistic threats of both pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. (2) Participants' internal standard to practice safe sex was formed independently and prior to meeting their current partners. Practicing consistent condom use was a resolute and integral facet of being sexually active, such that the decision to practice safe sex within their relationships was not regarded as optional. (3) In addition, participants believed that they alone were ultimately responsible for their own health, and the majority expressed this responsibility through dual method contraceptive use (i.e., condoms and the birth control pill). (4) Characteristics of partners (e.g., supporting participants' decision to use condoms, absence of complaints about condom use) and of the relationship itself (e.g., open communication) made the practice of safe sex easier for participants. Finally, neither participants nor their partners interpreted condom use in the relationship as a sign of infidelity. Results were discussed in the context of existing research on the intrapersonal and interpersonal influences on safe sex behavior, as well as with respect to feminist literature on female sexuality.

From the inception of Family Science as a discipline, researchers have shown great interest in understanding the workings of marital relationships. This effort intensified with relatively recent statistics on high rates of divorce and marital failure. In the 50th anniversary issue of the Journal of Marriage and the Family, several authors discussed the dominating presence of topics related to marital quality throughout the history of family research (Adams, 1988; Nye, 1988). Although the most examined human social relationships in our field, prominent researchers still suggest that the workings of a marriage are unknown to us (Gottman, 1994; Nye, 1988). One limitation of past research on marital quality has been the dominating presence of prediction-based research. Although conventional methods have furthered our understanding, scholars have suggested that divergent, interpretive data may produce "new insights" which may enhance or challenge conventional thinking (Elder, 1981; Jayaratne, 1983; Walker & Thompson, 1984). Various research strategies, placed under the broad label of qualitative methods have attempted to empower respondents by allowing them to describe a phenomenon of interest. The present study modeled the qualitative research method advanced by Paul Colaizzi (1978). The primary research goal of his descriptive approach is to allow the respondents to answer the question, what does it mean to have a successful marriage in our own historical time? More specifically, the research questions addressed were: How will the respondents describe successful marriages? How well do the emergent themes correspond with the themes delineated from the review of current measures of marital quality? To what extent do group differences or similarities exist between researchers and lay respondents? Ninety-eight respondents provided detailed descriptions of events that exemplified successful marriages. Descriptive analysis generated the following 16 global themes of marital success: relationship climate, daily nurturing, supportiveness, overcoming hardships, differences disagreements, communication, knowledge of spouse, growth and learning, relationship vs. Individual, commonalities, individual characteristics, equal partnership, teamwork, longevity and resiliency, spirituality, and outside influence. It was found that among others, general emergent themes such as spirituality, supportiveness, individual and mutual growth, and knowledge about the spouse, were not represented in many of the widely utilized measures of marital quality.

Rubinstein's alternating offer bargaining model is extended to uncertain situations. When the players do not have complete information on the feasible payoff set, the bargaining is based on the players' own estimations on the Pareto frontier. It has been proved that there always exists a unique stationary fictitious subgame perfect equilibrium (SPE) if the estimates of the Pareto frontier are close to each other. Monotonicity and convergence properties of the stationary subgame perfect equilibria (SPEs) are next examined. It has been shown that the convergence of the disagreement payoff vector and the break-down probabilities implies the convergence of the SPEs as well. The controllability of the resulting dynamic systems is examined and it is shown that by selecting an appropriate disagreement payoff vector and a break-down probability, any desired outcome or maximize payoffs can be reached. The bargaining processes with time-varying Pareto frontiers are also analyzed. Four examples are provided to illustrate how to use the general model to design optimal negotiation strategy. The results of the dissertation provide schemes that can be applied to design and conduct future negotiations.

The prevailing wisdom in current intercultural research is that people in collectivistic societies such as Hong Kong have low levels of conflict and competition. This view is challenged, however, based on three arguments: cultural values are too often equated with actual practice, the multiple goals of actions are ignored, and the in-group/out-group distinction is not adequately addressed in theory and research. Data drawn from an ethnographic study of organizational relationships in Hong Kong indicate that a reexamination is in order. While the surface harmony reported in many studies was acknowledged, informants also consistently pointed to underlying currents of competition and conflict within the organization. Two models are proposed based on a reanalysis of the literature. The Classical Confucian Collectivist model represents the received view that Confucianism and collectivism lead to suppression of personal goals in favor of group goals. The Pragmatic Collectivist model, on the other hand, argues that instrumental goals still are the primary drivers of human interaction. While the Classical Confucian Collectivist might represent an idealized model that influences actors' accounts, the Pragmatic Collectivist model is a better representation of everyday action. Analysis of results in an experimental study lends support to these challenges.

Interpersonal influence between peers is marked by the need to (1) maintain a positive image, (2) achieve instrumental or task goals, and (3) maintain interpersonal relations with one's partner. This investigation examined the process of balancing these three objectives or needs, and further examined the consequences associated with failure to balance all objectives. Peers were videotaped during an influence interaction, and their verbal strategies were coded by trained coders along a 5-dimensional scale. Verbal evaluations made by coders were correlated with self-report measures of (1) issue importance, (2) stress, (3) communication satisfaction, and (4) relational message interpretations. Correlation results indicate that while unsupported, there is a trend between stress and self-defense strategies, and between issue importance and other-accusation strategies. Results of hypotheses testing the correlation between communication satisfaction and relational message interpretations, and strategy usage were unsupported. Post-hoc analyses are offered.

The Children's Self-Perception Scale (CSPS), an instrument to measure self-perceived gender identity in school age children, was developed based on the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI; Bem, 1974). The children's scores on the CSPS were correlated with two measures of educational achievement, grade point average (GPA) and Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS; Hieronymus, et al., 1986) to determine the relationship between femininity and masculinity in males and females and educational achievement. The subjects were 950 third, fourth, and seventh grade students from two school districts. The majority of students was Hispanic. The CSPS was not able to differentiate reliably between masculinity and femininity; reliabilities for the CSPS ranged from .17-.78. Although results were inconsistent across grades, significant (p<.05) positive correlations were found between femininity and GPA, .25, and masculinity and achievement (.23-.31) for seventh graders in only one district. Several possible explanations for the non-significance and inconsistencies are explored.

This study examines the linkage between similarity and relational satisfaction within friendship dyads. The central proposition states that both actual and perceived similarity between relational partners will be positively associated with relational satisfaction. Actual and perceived similarity were measured using a conflict that had occurred between the relational partners. It was further posited that perceived similarity (PS) will be a better indicator of relational satisfaction than actual similarity (AS). It was found that when both length of relationship and amount of PS were held constant, AS was moderately associated with relational satisfaction. It was also found that PS was negatively associated with relational satisfaction. Furthermore, the findings indicate that PS is a better indicator of relational satisfaction than AS. These findings raise questions about operationalizing perceived and actual similarity, the relationship between relational type, similarity, and satisfaction, and the use of accounts in this type of research.

This study was designed to investigate if adult children who have returned home to live affect their parents' marital satisfaction. The contributing factors that preceded the return of these adult children were also examined. To measure marital satisfaction, the Kansas Marital Satisfaction (KMS) Scale was used. The Marital Conventionalization Scale (MCS) was also utilized to measure marital social desirability distortion. Seventy-seven married individuals, recruited from the general population, were divided into three subgroups consisting of parents whose adult children have either returned, departed from, or remained at home. Participants were administered a questionnaire containing specific questions regarding one's adult children along with the two test instruments. The findings indicate no significant differences in marital satisfaction between parents who have returning adult children and the other 2 subgroups. However, many factors (financial problems, college, divorce, etc.) contributing to an adult child's presence at home were discovered.