Television is a pervasive influence in today's family life. The number of hours family members, particularly young children, spend watching TV must replace some other functions in the viewer's lives. Since one of the primary tasks of families with young children is the socialization of their youngsters, one might assume that TV interferes to some extent with this process. Among aspects of the socialization process are the need for the child to observe and interact frequently with role models, to obtain ample feedback on the appropriateness of his behavior, and to have many opportunities to test out what he has observed through role playing so he can incorporate and adopt relevant behaviors and values. These all take much time since socialization is a long-term, subtle process. It was the basic premise of this research that television can be a disruptive force in the socialization process because it limits children's opportunities for interaction with parents and for play. To test this, 39 mothers and their preschool-aged children were observed under two conditions, when a television was on and when it was off. On both occasions, observers rated each dyad on interactive measures such as eye contact, physical touch, proximity, and verbalization, and on interaction with alternate activities. Attention to the television was also measured. Analysis of the data showed that the presence of television significantly decreased eye contact, verbalization, and interaction with alternate activities. Furthermore, interactions were less extensive and Ss tended not to respond to each other's comments or questions when the TV was on. Children also tended to shift attention more frequently if they watch considerable amounts of TV at home, while children of mothers who watch little TV at home tended to be considerably more attentive to the TV in the experimental condition. It was concluded that TV does interfere with some aspects of the socialization process by decreasing interaction and play-related activities. A question was raised, however, whether children who watch substantial amounts of TV might not attend less to the set, thus offsetting some of the negative effects related to decreased interaction with parents and toys.

This study investigates socialization and ideal expectations for the health professional role in the provision of quality terminal care. Guiding the research are role theory, socialization theory, and Talcott Parsons' (1951) pattern variables. The research was conducted in three phases. The first phase involved development of an analytical framework elaborating upon Parsons' five pattern variables, which were first conceptualized as dimensions describing the ways in which roles could vary. Specific indicators for each of the pattern variables were developed. Typologies characterizing (1) the medical, or conventional, model and (2) the holistic model (specifically, the hospice model) for the provision of health care based on these indicators then were developed. Using the analytical framework, the second and third phases consisted of: (1) a content analysis of the physician and nurse socialization literature to determine the role prescriptions learned by these health professionals; and (2) a content analysis of open-ended interviews with a group (N = 94) of terminally ill elderly patients (n = 17), family members (n = 38), and health professionals (n = 39) from 10 urban health care programs (five conventional and five hospice) to identify ideal role expectations for the health professional. Major findings were that: (1) Parsons' pattern variables, with elaboration, can provide a useful framework for role analysis; (2) physicians and nurses appear to be socialized to a number of role prescriptions consistent with the medical model, although there is evidence of conflicting socialization (to both models) for some role prescriptions; (3) respondents' expectations generally were consistent with those prescribed by the hospice model with some notable exceptions; (4) the role expectations of the three groups of respondents were more congruent than was expected, although subgroups' (conventional versus hospice) expectations tended to differ. Implications of the findings for: (1) role analysis; (2) socialization of health professionals to minimize role strain and conflict with patients and families; (3) continued implementation of conventional and hospice models for the provision of quality terminal care; (4) assessment of the quality of terminal care are explored; and (5) further research are explored.

The present study focused upon both behavioral and cognitive aspects of sympathetic responses in preschool children. Subjects, 36 boys and girls aged 33-75 months, were seen at their regular day care center. An attempt was made to promote comforting behavior through the use of a peer model both alone and accompanied by an adult's inductive statement regarding the consequences of a sympathetic response; a six year-old girl served as the sympathetic model and as an apparently injured victim in need of comforting. In addition, age- and sex-related relationships for the measures of social cognition, affective perspective-taking and knowledge of strategies for intervening when another person's plight invites sympathetic concern, were examined. The former measure employed a commonly used task presenting children with picture stories in which a target character's facial expression is not congruent with information provided by the story situation. Such stimuli have been thought to assess the ability to assume the emotional point of view of a particular person (empathic judgment), as opposed to the egocentric projection of one's own perspective onto another (projective judgment). Capacities for recognizing and explaining situationally consistent emotions (social comprehension and explanation of affect) and explaining the incongruent facial and situational cues (awareness of discrepancy) were also evaluated. The psychometric properties of these measures were a major concern; consequently, internal consistency reliability as well as age- and sex-related differences among item means, which were presumed to reflect differences in item difficulty, were examined for each component of both measures. Finally, relationships among all measures were examined.

The Swedish police force is characterized by long working hours, shift work and hardworking conditions. This affects the men and women working within the force both mentally and physically. The aim of this study is to see how police officer’s wok life affect their private friendships.  I have chosen to use qualitative method in my research to get a deeper understanding on what affects friendships to create, sustain and change when one of the friends is a police officer. I used the snowball effect to help me with this task and interviewed a total of six respondents. To help me analyse the interviews I used three theories them being, Relationships theory, role theory and vocational socialization. With their help I could pick out patterns in the transcribed material that could help me understand better why police officer’s friendship were created, sustained and changed and sometimes even broken. One of the things that I found interesting was that the respondents quickly sorted their friendships between close friends and acquaintances this took me by surprise since I hade been focusing on the definition friendship it had not dawned on me to bring acquaintances to the table. However, I found that all the respondents had only made new friends within the police force or during the police training. The respondents were verry reserved people that did not like to tell people that they were police officers. An other thing that stood out to me was that some of the respondents were more prone to take the time to be with their old friends then others and that some had been more attached to the people that they worked with witch meant that the old friends were not that interesting any more compared to the new friends.

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Peters (1985), defines racial socialization as "tasks Black parents share with all parents - providing for and raising children ... but include the responsibility of raising physically and emotionally healthy children who are Black in a society in which Black has negative connotations" (p. 161). Racial socialization is a complex multidimensional construct and scholars have made attempts to capture the essence of its process. However, due to its complexity, no single or commonly accepted definition currently exists in the literature (Lesane-Brown, 2006). To date, most of the racial socialization literature has addressed the types of messages that African American parents transmit to their children, for example, preparation for bias and promotion/socialization of mistrust (Hughes & Chen, 1999). However, what is specifically absent in the current racial socialization literature are the types of messages transmitted to African American women related to skin tone. Sociologists and psychologists have demonstrated that the racial socialization of skin tone impacts an African American woman's sense of self worth and efficacy (Boyd-Franklin, 1989; 2003; Jones & Shorter-Gooden, 2004). Utilizing a qualitative methodological design, with a phenomenological orientation, the purpose of this study was to better understand the lived experiences of the racial socialization of skin tone in a cohort of older African American women. Twenty older African American women (10 light skinned and 10 dark skinned) from three mid-sized, Midwestern cities were interviewed utilizing an adapted classical phenomenology interview approach (Siedman, 2006). This researcher, two-hour semi-structured interviews, and 30-60 minute formal member checks were the primary research tools implemented to obtain rich data for this project. Once the interview data was collected, the interviews were professionally transcribed verbatim to capture the full essence of the participants' lived experiences of the phenomenon under investigation. The data were then critically and rigorously analyzed, by hand, utilizing a phenomenological data analytic method as outlined by Hycner (1985; 1999). Five salient thematic domains, along with twenty-three subthemes, emerged from the phenomenology data analysis procedure. An additional verification method (i.e., inter-rater reliability Kappa coefficient) was employed to assist in cross-validation of the study's findings (Landis & Koch, 1977). Kappa coefficients demonstrated that of the twenty-three subthemes, which emerged from the analysis, 7 had slight inter-rater agreement 5 had fair inter-rater agreement, 7 had moderate inter-rater agreement, 2 had substantial inter-rater agreement, and 2 had almost perfect inter-rater agreement. Limitations of the current study, recommendations for future research, and recommendations for clinical practice are also discussed.

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Emotion socialization influences adolescent emotional adjustment. Friendships provide a venue for emotion socialization, yet little research has compared emotion socialization processes with parents versus friends and how they correspond to adolescent outcomes. The present study examined parent and friend socialization of negative emotions in relation to adolescents' emotional coherence, emotion regulation, and internalizing symptoms. Thirty parent-adolescent-friend triads (13–18 years old; 60% female, 40% male) from the community participated. Study variables were measured with a multi-method approach, including observational data, heart rate variability, and self-report. Parents and friends evidenced disparate patterns of socialization responses and unique ties to adolescent outcomes, which has important clinical applications. Friends, as well as parents, are important and distinct socialization agents within the developmental context of adolescence.