A model describing the cognitive processes in which a child must engage in order to respond competently in social situations is presented in this document as the framework for several series of studies dealing with provocation by peers. A major tenet of the model is that in order to perform competently in a social situation the child must first…

Avoidance strategies involve the tactics and techniques people use when they don't wish to be influenced by others. To investigate the types of avoidance strategies men and women use to deal with an unwelcome persuasion attempt from an intimate partner, undergraduates wrote essays describing how they avoided such attempts. A 24-strategy coding…

Personal dispositional variables conflicting with social pressure and the resulting behavior, which follows a cusp catastrophe, were investigated. Female undergraduates (N=200) completed a set of attitude questionnaires using a Crutchfield console. Results indicate that: (1) when social pressure is low, behavior is a smooth, monotonic function of…

Social and cognitive theories indicate that conflict plays an important role in an individual's psychological development. Research findings bearing on this conundrum provide initial hints about what social conflict in children is like and how it relates to characteristics of the child, but the short and long term positive and negative effects of…

A teaching strategy designed to help elementary students conceptualize about peace as a process of conflict resolution is described. The Baboon Troop and Netsilik Eskimo materials of "Man: A Course of Study" provide the course content in which the students learn that cooperation is the most important ingredient in group survival.…

As the number of single-parent families has grown in the United States, network television programming has increasingly included programs portraying single parents and their attempts to cope with the role. In a study, the "Fall Preview" edition of "TV Guide" magazine was used to select programs featuring single mothers or…

This study investigated subordinates' choice of conflict strategies and communicative adaptability when interacting with their supervisor. In particular, participants were asked to recall their summer work experience while completing the Organizational Communication Conflict Instrument (OCCI) (Putnam & Wilson, 1982) and the Communicative…

This study examined the relation of social situation variables and children's gender to children's social problem solving ability in potentially unsafe situations. A total of 62 preschoolers (mean age 4.4 years) were shown a series of four vignettes. In two vignettes, an adult or a child asked a second child to cross a street. In two other…

Forty-nine introductory psychology students (28 female, 21 male) at the Mormon Church's Brigham Young University in Utah were tested to determine the effects of a pro-feminist, pro-Equal Rights Amendment demonstration by the Utah Women's Rights Movement on attitudes toward the women's movement, civil demonstrations, and Mormon Church leaders.…

A study examined the nature of audience perceptions of television characters' relationships in "Hill Street Blues" and displayed how relational differences in fictional couples are communicated. Using a relational dimensions instrument, the relationships between Frank Furillo and Fay Furillo and between Frank and Joyce Davenport were…

A study investigated whether parents' use of power-assertive or negotiating strategies to resolve conflicts with children predicted children's psychosocial adjustment and use of comparable strategies with peers. The study also determined whether children's behavior with mothers at 2 years of age predicted their behavior with peers at age 6. The…

To determine communication conflict style differences in black and white subjective cultures, 123 black and 180 white university students were administered the Organizational Communication Conflict Instrument (OCCI), a scale measuring the three conflict management styles: control (confrontation); nonconfrontation; and solution-orientation. Results…

This paper is based on 42 unstructured, tape-recorded interviews, conducted over a period of three months, with teachers who frequented a teacher bar. It was hypothesized that conversations teachers have with each other in an ambience of informal collegiality serve a cathartic function. Through their interactions, teachers helped one another by…

This study focused on how school-age children develop and refine their strategies for dealing with aversive emotions, defined as fear, shame, anger, sadness, and hurt feelings. Two groups of children were used, one from a public school, serving a working class neighborhood, and the other from a sexual abuse treatment agency. The aversive emotions…

This study compared the social adjustment of abused and nonabused children, ages 4 to 11 years, and examined whether sociometric status and friendship quality differentially predict children's loneliness and teacher ratings of peer behavior. Thirty-five abused children from a structured residential treatment center and 43 nonabused children from…