Many gender differences in nonverbal behavior have been identified, but the ontogeny of these differences has as yet not been explained. Status differences between men and women are often suggested as a likely cause, but recent evidence suggests that social norms operating within gender groups, and not between them, are responsible. The current project attempted to elucidate the relations among gender, status, and nonverbal facial expressions of emotion by testing two causal possibilities. The results of Study I suggests that effectively encoding gender-appropriate emotions may influence social status. The results of Study II suggest that men's, but not women's, status may influence their expressive behavior.

Attachment researchers speculate that different working models of attachment contain within them different chronic interpersonal goals and that these goals guide behavior in ways consistent with each different model of attachment. The current study experimentally manipulated goals thought to be associated with different attachment prototypes and measured their effect on self-disclosure. 101 participants completed a priming task on the computer in which they were presented with neutral, intimacy-, or defensiveness-related words and were later asked to complete a questionnaire tapping their willingness to disclose personal information about themselves, and participate in an interview. Results indicate that although priming alone did not influence disclosure, it interacted with attachment style. Individuals low in dismissiveness and preoccupation were more likely to disclose information about themselves than those high in dismissiveness and preoccupation. These effects were moderated by priming condition. As dismissiveness increased, willingness to disclose decreased, but this effect was stronger for individuals primed with defensiveness-related words. Contrary to expectation, higher preoccupation predicted greater willingness to disclose in the defensiveness condition as compared with either the neutral or intimacy conditions. These results are discussed in terms of contrast and assimilation effects as they relate to working models of attachment.

Students from a large state university participated by responding to a survey on helping behavior. This research explored the effect of independence and interdependence on perceptions of obligation and the likelihood of helping. Results indicated that independence was associated with intrinsic motivation, whereas interdependence was related to both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Furthermore, analyses confirmed that motivation served as a mediator between these orientations and the likelihood of helping. Interdependence predicted helping via intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, whereas independence only predicted helping via intrinsic motivation. Even when helping was more costly, and therefore more likely to be driven by personal rather than social motives, interdependence remained as strong a predictor as independence of intrinsic motivation and subsequently of helping. Interaction and main effects of gender, severity of need, and closeness of the relationship also are discussed.

The hypothesis that as relationship costs increase, relationship satisfaction decreases has not received consistent empirical support. This series of three studies introduces a potential moderating variable: appreciation. Some people may have their debts of time, energy, or resources replenished by feeling appreciated by their partner. As a result, these people would not experience the negative relationship traditionally expected between costs and relationship satisfaction. Instead, there should be a positive relationship between engaging in these communal behaviors and relationship satisfaction when there is appreciation in the relationship. In addition, receiving appreciation may change the way individuals feel about the routine tasks associated with being in a relationship and running a household. In Study 1, 98 college-students in romantic relationships answered a short survey. In Study 2, a similar survey was given to a sample of 123 married and cohabiting women with a mean age of 43 years. Participants assessed how appreciated they felt for chores (behaviors done for the household and only asked of the non-student sample) and for favors (behaviors done for their partner and asked of both samples). The findings demonstrated that the negative relationship between costly behaviors and relationship satisfaction can be reversed if people perceive a partner's appreciation for their efforts. In addition, people felt less obligated and more motivated to engage in these behaviors when appreciation was present. A third study brought the same questions to a controlled laboratory study. Ninety college-students completed a boring task. They received either a reward, appreciation, or neither. The participants then rated the task, the experimenter, and their willingness to participate again in the future. No differences were found between the three experimental groups.

According to attachment theory, individuals develop working models that organize their understanding of themselves and others in relationships. These working models should guide interpretation of ambiguous relationship events, and thereby affect emotional reactions to those events. In this study, individuals with different attachment styles--who hold different working models of attachment--read and rated their emotional reactions to ambiguous relationship scenarios presented via computer. The computer timed their reactions. They later provided explanations for why the events might have occurred and completed a measure tapping their beliefs about relationships. Respondents differed by attachment style in their emotional reactions across all scenarios, and their patterns differed depending on the type of scenario, as well. They differed in how quickly they responded to the emotion questions, indicating potential defensive processing among members of one attachment group. Respondents in also differed in their tendency to explain the events as caused by themselves or their partners. There were no differences on the measure of relationship beliefs. Results are discussed in terms of attachment theory.

The study investigated the effects of changes in environmental cues on habitual behaviors. In the first stage, the researcher developed a procedure to form a habit based on past theoretical formulations. Participants sorted title pages containing the word attitude into a blue box and those containing the word habit into a red box until they were able to do so quickly. In the second stage, the disruptive effects of cognitive load (counting backwards in twos), changes in goal-relevant environmental cues (i.e., cues that are necessary to achieve a goal) and changes in goal-irrelevant environmental cues (i.e., cues that are not necessary to achieve a goal) on the habit formed in the first stage were examined. Changes in goal-relevant cues had a disruptive effect on habit while changes in goal-irrelevant cues did not. Cognitive load also disrupted habit. However, it was the joint effect of changes in goal-relevant cues and cognitive load that caused the greatest disruption. It is concluded that habits should be conceptualized as mindless skills guided by slightly controlled processes.

People feel in control when they effectively alter an external environment, their own behavior, or their own mental state. Past research on control emphasizes the psychological benefits of having environmental control, in which people bring the environment in line with their own wishes. The present research explores self-directed control, in which people adapt to the surrounding environmental context. Environmental control affirms the traditional Western cultural emphasis on an independent, agentic self that separates positively from others. But self-directed control assists an interdependent, contextual self-concept that values merging with and depending on other people. Guided by culturally informed views of the interdependent self and by initial theories on self-directed control (originally "secondary" control; Weisz, Rothbaum, & Blackburn, 1984), the present research develops an individual difference measure of self-directed control. Unlike past views that consider self-directed control a passive alternative to failed environmental control, this report considers how positive, active styles of self-directed control enable people to maintain social bonds. Initial items on the individual difference measure of self-directed control (SDC) reflect field work and re-interpretations of four categories outlined in Weisz, et al. (1984). Exploratory factor analysis, internal consistency analysis, and confirmatory factor analysis reduced the item pool to 21 items that comprise five correlated factors: trusting a higher power: allowing other people to fulfill persona needs; anticipating and adjusting to other people's needs; merging goals with others; and accepting that bad times will improve on their own. Over 2,300 participants in seven diverse samples completed the SDC scale. The scale meets traditional psychometric standards. It correlates with measures of interdependence and collectivism and is orthogonal to measures of environmental control, as predicted. The scale is uncorrelated with self-esteem. Women and Hispanics, two groups for whom role requirements and cultural background emphasize interdependence, score higher than men and Anglos, respectively. A diary study confirmed that the SDC scale predicts daily reports of self-directed control, and demonstrated that social situations support self-directed control. The results support the social nature of self-directed control, reveal the importance of trust in this type of control, and suggest that self-directed control may not engage conscious self-efficacy.

Modernists theorists propose that one's self is fragmented, invisible, or false when one shows different versions of one's self in various situations. Believing this, Modernists further suppose that with respect to one's gender or sexual orientation identity, one is either appropriately representing one's biological gender and earliest understandings of one's sexual orientation (usually presumed to be heterosexual), or else one is pathological and needs clinical treatment. Poststructuralists look instead at context, and offer a view of the self which takes contextual factors into account, avoiding the pathologizing of anyone's social identity variations. Since identities such as gender and sexual orientation are lived in contexts which include social pressures and restrictions and one's reactions to and actions towards these pressures, emphases also must be placed upon analyzing gender roles and privileges, and the impact these have on one's expectations, apparent choices, and decisions for the living of these social identities. This two-year ethnographic study investigated how gender and sexual orientation identities were continually socially negotiated in two small groups. These groups met as part of a program whose purpose is to offer theatre training, counseling, and performance opportunities for volunteer adolescents. Also investigated were the ways the members' changing perceptions of levels of group and interpersonal connection and safety affected these social identity negotiations, and how the variations in gender and sexual orientation identities were perceived and received by members. Members described the program Norms, of confidentiality, respect, punctuality, commitment, and sobriety, as the main factors which positively guided the members' favorable interactions and created the safe atmosphere. Despite wider cultural backlashes and restrictions, variability in identities occurred frequently among these adolescents; negative attitudes about social identities, with rigidity and intolerance, characterized many of their early group interactions. Most research on social identities usually presents development as consisting of "stages," with clashes among those at different stages offered as the cause for most identity-based social problems. The participants co-created the theory that liberational, and authentic gender and sexual orientation identities may be co-constructed. Differential Authenticity describes the ways program participants flexibly lived these social identities.

Emotional reasoning is emotionally-based cognition operating on subjective terms, independent of rationality, and using feelings as criteria. In Study 1, 113 participants, 29 men and 84 women, focussed either on their feelings or on the reasons for their choices as they made a series of decisions in a card-playing game. Contrary to predictions, participants who focussed on their feelings were less likely to make optimal decisions in the game. This study thus provided no evidence that emotional reasoning can reach optimal conclusions. In a second study, 96 participants, 35 men and 61 women, made a series of decisions to cooperate or compete with an unseen partner in a Prisoner's Dilemma game. Participants who focussed on their feelings were less likely to compete than participants who focussed on reasons for making each decision, so that they did less well in the short term, but significantly better over the long term, than participants in the Reasons condition. Participants who described themselves as highly rational were also less likely to do well in the game. This study demonstrates that emotional reasoning can be more effective than rational decision-making.

An empirical study was performed to test two explanations of changes in beliefs following from major life events. On the one hand, Cognitive-experiential Self-theory would predict that, in the aftermath of major life events, individuals go through a personal process of adjusting their basic beliefs about self and world on the basis of what they have experienced. On the other hand, script theory and social constructionist thought would predict that the well socialized individual has prior knowledge of the changes in cognition that should accompany any major life event. According to these approaches, when the event occurs, the individual undergoes the very changes he or she already knew one should undergo. Reports of actual and hypothetical experiences of seven major life events by 272 undergraduates indicated that for six of the seven events those who had and had not experienced the event had virtually identical understandings of the effects of the event. For the seventh event, sexual abuse, a coherent pattern of differences between the reports of those who had and had not experienced the event was found. The results were interpreted as largely supporting the script and social constructionist position. The contribution of personal experience to socially held scripts was also discussed.