This study examined how emotion and discipline differed in response to children's relational and physical aggression in African American and European American women. Affective (e.g., concern) and discipline responses of adults toward physical aggression have been linked with children's behavior problems. However, these reactions have not been explored as a function of ethnicity and only little examined as a function of gender. Even less is known about reactions toward relational aggression. Better knowledge about adult perceptions of children's aggressive behaviors could improve theoretical understanding of the development of these problems, and guide efforts at improving treatments. In the present study, hypothetical vignettes depicting a boy or a girl engaging in physical and relational aggression were used to assess how participants report they would respond to such behaviors in their own children. Consistent with initial hypotheses, adults were more concerned and embarrassed about physical aggressive behavior among children than relationally aggressive behaviors. Additionally, adults were more lax for relational aggression and more overreactive toward physical aggression. Adult behavioral responses toward relational aggression were more likely to include discussion and they were more likely to provide a consequence for physical aggression (i.e., adults displayed more reparation and reprimands for physical aggression). With respect to ethnicity, African Americans generally reacted more strongly to aggression, though European Americans made more reparation responses than African Americans for physical aggression. With regard to gender, participants were more overreactive to boys being relationally aggressive than girls and less overreactive to boys being physically aggressive than girls, and this finding appeared to be largely accounted for by African American participants. Results point to the need for psychoeducation regarding the seriousness of relational aggression.

Identifying effective strategies for encouraging individuals to disclose their personal information on the Internet is important for marketers. In today's information-based economy, access to consumer data is imperative for organizations in conducting marketing activities. However, the extant privacy literature has found conflicting results regarding the effectiveness of safety cues (e.g., privacy policies) and rewards (e.g., discounts) for encouraging consumers to provide their personal information to Web sites (Andrade et al. 2002). There is also scant research on the implications of compensating consumers for their information, and its subsequent impact on privacy control expectations. This dissertation consists of two essays that examine how consumers respond to marketers' strategies for encouraging self-disclosure on the Internet, and how these strategies affect expectations for privacy control. Essay 1 employs regulatory focus theory for investigating the impact of consumers' goals (privacy protection vs. acquisition of benefits) on how they respond to marketers' online influence strategies and brand reputation. The use of safety cues, rewards, and brand reputation have been identified in the privacy literature as important factors that influence consumers' trust, privacy concern, and willingness to provide personal information (Milne and Culnan 2004). Essay 2 draws on theories of social exchange and social contracts for examining how the value and type of compensation received influences the degree to which consumers believe they own the information provided to marketers and their expectations for control over how their information is used. Although consumers frequently trade their personal information for benefits online, it has been suggested in the privacy literature that the point at which consumers own and control information about themselves and when that information becomes the property of marketers is unclear (Sheehan and Hoy 2000). This dissertation employs a mixed methods approach that includes a series of scenario-based experiments using survey panel data, and in-depth interviews. The results of essay 1 provide evidence of the importance of consumer goals in decisions to disclose personal information to marketers. Findings from essay 2 reveal that privacy exchanges may affect the degree to which consumers believe ownership and control over their information is shared with marketers.

The purpose of this study was to analyze the psychosocial development of college student-athletes and to determine if there are differences within the student-athlete population. Attempts were made to survey the entire student-athlete population at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass). Of the approximately 700 student-athletes at UMass, 335 were surveyed. 280 of these surveys were deemed usable for the purposes of this study, yielding a response rate of 40.0%. Seniors were left out of the final discussion due to a low response rate of 16%. The response rate for first year students was 65% making these results the most valid. The Student Development Task and Lifestyle Inventory (SDTLI) was used to examine psychosocial development on three tasks: Establishing and Clarifying Purpose (PUR), Developing Mature Interpersonal Relationships (MIR), and Academic Autonomy (AA). A number of independent variables were used in examining these tasks including sex, type of sport, likelihood of a future in the sport, and grade point average (GPA). GPA and future in sport were found to have the most significant relationships with AA and PUR, while sex was the only variable to have a significant relationship with MIR. Four hypotheses were examined in this study. The first found that women had not achieved a higher level of psychosocial development than men. The second found that those in sports without an anticipated future had developed to a higher degree on the PUR task than those in sports with a possible future. This difference is even greater for men than for women. The third hypothesis found that those in team sports were not developed to a higher level on the MIR task than those in individual sports. Finally, the fourth hypothesis supported the idea that those with a higher GPA would be developed to a higher level on the PUR task than those with a lower GPA. These findings support the idea that there are a number of differences within the student-athlete population and that those with higher GPAs and those in sports without an anticipated future have developed to a higher level than their student-athlete peers. Greater emphasis needs to be placed on helping student-athletes to succeed in the classroom, therefore allowing them more options outside of athletics.

Research indicates that mothers structure or scaffold children's early play. However, it is unclear whether these findings can be generalized to mothers and children of different cultures. Culture-specific and ecological factors may affect a mother's inclination and motivation to play with her child, her scaffolding behaviors, her involvement in play, and the type and kind of play she engages in. This study explores and provides preliminary descriptions of how play is defined, perceived, and valued by a sample of fifteen rural Nepali mothers. The study also describes the kind of play interactions Nepali mothers have with their young children who range in age from twelve to thirty-six months. The qualitative method of research was used to address the research questions. Data were collected through participant observation, videotapes of mother-child play in the course of everyday activity in the home, and interviews and discussion with the mothers based on the videotaped activities between them and their children. The results of the study reveal that play appears to be an integral aspect of mother-child interaction in daily care routines and is seen as a valuable means for keeping the child engaged, for managing child behavior, and for encouraging children's co-operation. The mothers in this study have a positive attitude towards play and are aware of the developmental impact it has on children, even though they underestimate their own roles in play interaction with their children. Findings contribute to the field of child development and education by building on existing cross-cultural literature on play. Early childhood educators and practitioners will be able to utilize the results of this study to inform their work in designing and implementing culturally relevant child development and education programs that are meaningful for the target population.

Researchers and clinicians alike have struggled with limited success to understand and treat the most troubled adolescents of our time, those who have been variously described as delinquent, conduct disordered, or aggressive. The very nature of their disruptiveness has sometimes obscured their complex psychological problems, yet psychoanalytic object relations theory provides a rich framework for understanding the interplay of intrapsychic factors and overt symptoms in producing the phenomena of conduct disturbance. The self and object relations of 19 conduct disturbed adolescents were compared to those of 15 nondisturbed adolescents via the analysis of data from the Thematic Apperception Test. Conduct disturbed adolescents demonstrated greater levels of impairment on four dimensions of object relations, measured with the Social Cognition and Object Relations Scale (Westen, Lohr, Silk, Kerber, & Goodrich, 1985): Complexity of Representations of People, Affect Tone of Relationship Paradigms, Capacity for Emotional Investment and Moral Standards, and Understanding of Social Causality. Impairments in object relations were related to teacher assessments of conduct problems but were unrelated to self-reported externalizing symptoms or relationship problems, suggesting that a combination of objective reports and assessments of intrapsychic relational constructs may be particularly useful in understanding adolescents with conduct disturbances. A model based on observed symptomatology and object relations effectively predicted membership in the conduct disturbed and nondisturbed groups.

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Three studies explored people's experience of intense emotion in conflictual and non-conflictual romantic relationships. All studies showed that when subjects reported how they generally experienced emotion in their relationship, people in highly conflictual relationships reported equally intense positive emotion and more intense negative emotion than people in non-conflictual relationships. Study 3 also showed that when subjects described their emotional reactions to specific happy times in their relationship, people in more conflictual relationships reported more love and marginally more idealization of their partners than people in less conflictual relationships. There is some evidence that women in high conflict relationships differ from women in low conflict relationships on certain personality variables. High Conflict women score higher than Low Conflict women on preoccupied and avoidant attachment style dimensions, report a more manic love style, are greater sensation seekers, and report a general tendency to experience extreme affect in all aspects of their lives. The relevance of these findings for increasing our understanding of the formation of emotional bonds in conflictual relationships is discussed.

This research study has explored the kinds of thoughts that therapists report having had in response to their experiences with therapy failures. The central goal was to develop a model for organizing therapists' thoughts to form a basis for further investigations into therapists' conceptual processes for coping with and learning from therapy failures. The methodological approaches used in this study were designed to conform to a set of hermeneutic and social constructionist assumptions about the development and function of "meaning making," as it applies to both psychological research and the therapeutic relationship. Thus, the research methods replicated a social construction process, using a "community" of participants for all stages of data gathering and analyses. The application of Thought Listing and Multiple Sorting Procedures in combination with Cluster and Multidimensional Scaling Analyses yielded a three dimensional solution with which to organize these therapists' thoughts. Additional findings suggest that the ways in which therapists examine therapy failures is socially constructed and may function to preserve therapists' core beliefs. The three dimensional solution challenges the usefulness of an exclusively causal model for understanding therapists' reflections on failures.