Gangestad and Snyder (1985) have proposed two types of personality variables: continuous variables (characteristics possessed to some degree by all individuals) and class variables (characteristics distributed into discrete classes). This study examined whether alcoholism could be classified as a class variable. Because a class variable will…

Surveyed 85 students, 72 medical patients, and 66 state employees to assess the relationships between personality dimensions and child-rearing. Results indicated that parents of extraverts were performance-oriented and stimulating, parents of high psychoticism scorers were unstimulating and unaffectionate, and parents of high neuroticism scorers…

Twelve studies relating writing apprehension to a variety of measures of self-esteem and personality are summarized in this paper. The findings reported indicate that apprehension is inversely related to self-esteem, marginally related to some personality measures (alienation, tolerance for ambiguity), inversely associated with mathematics…

Tests the degree of generalization from attributions of "overweight" to other personality attributions made by college students (N=223). Students were asked to write stories about male and female stimulus characters who varied only in body image. (CM)

This study was conducted to construct a normalized table which described the typical personality profile of nontraditional female undergraduate full-time students at Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. It was hypothesized that the nontraditional female undergraduate at MTSU would differ from both traditional female…

Administered Multidimensional Sense of Humor Scale and Edwards Personal Preference Schedule to 426 adults, aged 18 through 90. Findings suggest that men create humor more, although women used more coping humor. As age increased, so did humor creativity, coping humor, and humor appreciation. Those who sought to create humor appeared to have need…

Female college students (n=194) completed the Bem Sex Role Inventory and a 12-item index of tomboyism. The hypothesis that childhood tomboyism would be positively related to adult androgyny was not supported, but the hypothesis that tomboyism would be related to adult masculinity was. (SLD)

Explores some of the possible distinctive traits of midlife suicides, which include: loss of spouse, years of heavy drinking, reaching the age of high depression risk, and occupational problems. Midlife suicides tend to be highest among white males, although female suicide rates peak in midlife. The paper concludes with a review of assessment and…

An extremely unpleasant film was shown to one group of students, while another group served as controls. Results suggest that, under conditions of stressful emotional arousal, learning outcomes are influenced predominantly by the combined effects of personality traits, motivational dynamics, and emotional states, which outweigh the influence of…

Nominal-level analysis of 4 primary learning styles (doing, thinking, watching, and feeling) of 292 subjects (mostly college students) from the Learning Styles Inventory demonstrated their discriminant/convergent validity but not the validity of the learning-style types suggested by D. A. Kolb (1976) (accommodator, diverger, converger, and…

Investigates the personality traits that people believe to characterize moral exemplars and to compare that trait description with those for related types of exemplars. Reveals differences in personality attributions across types of exemplars and indicates that traits reflecting the Conscientiousness and Agreeableness factors were salient for the…

A 1973 study by Lott posed some serious questions about attitudes toward children, the quality of childhood experiences with parents, and the extent of agreement with the women's liberation movement. A replication and extension of Lott's research was conducted to assess the current attitudes of 76 college students and 63 community residents toward…

Examines types of adventure show content (violence, conflict, realism, and action) and viewer characteristics which may influence program liking. Findings suggest that the average viewer somewhat dislikes the typical violence portrayed in adventure shows; emotional conflict, however, seems to enhance liking for adventure shows. (PD)

The Personal Reaction Scale was developed as a test for adults to measure their locus of control perceptions. It was administered to women college students, their parents, and parents of preschool children. Responses were factor analyzed to yield six factors: Fate, Social Self, Personal Self, Self-Determination, Luck, and Powerlessness.…

Research on trait descriptions of interpersonal behavior tends to converge on a two-dimensional representation in which descriptive variables are arrayed in a circular fashion around the major axes of affiliation and dominance. Wiggins' self-report adjective checklist (1979) reflects this theoretical ordering. To explore the utility of Wiggins'…