Investigates the ability of personality characteristics (achievement, conscientiousness, and resiliency), high school GPA, and Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) score to predict cumulative college GPA and retention (N=844). In predicting college GPA, conscientiousness added significant incremental variance to high school GPA and SAT.…

A study examined the relationships among creative problem solving (PS) and problem generation (PG) abilities and coping skills in 74 undergraduates. PG and PS abilities were negatively related to such coping processes as confrontation, distancing, escape-avoidance tendencies, and excessive acceptance of responsibility, and positively associated…

Three studies involving Chinese respondents from China and Hong Kong and diverse respondents from Hawaii compared the Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory factor structure with the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) and NEO-Five Factor Inventory. Results supported the universality of the five-factor model, the validity of NEO-PI-R,…

This study examined perceptions of a university-level occupation using the recently developed Position Classification Inventory (PCI). Results suggest that the PCI shows promise as a method of classifying specific occupations according to Holland's theory.

This ethnographic study explores patterns of conflict avoidance among university students, professors, administrators and staff. Analysis of their narratives of conflict avoidance suggests that avoidance can be beneficial in some circumstances, depending upon personality issues, cost?benefit analysis, power imbalance, type of work, length of…

Cultures of low aspirations, and more particularly young people's adaptation to them, are often presented as the major obstacle to an economic development agenda which requires more higher-level skills and a social agenda which is about enabling people from "non-traditional" backgrounds to go to university. The article analyses and discusses some…

In U.S. society dominance appears extremely desirable. The purpose of this study was an attempt to measure the relationship between dominance, self-esteem, and life satisfaction. Research questions were: "Do the people who score high on the Dominance scale of the California Psychological Inventory have higher self-esteem scores as measured by…

The cognitive style dimension of scanning refers to consistent individual differences in the extensiveness and intensity of spontaneous attention deployment, leading to individual variations in vividness of experience and the span of awareness. The cognitive style of focusing was conceived as an adaptive counterpart to the defense mechanism of…

A study investigated the possible reasons for low numbers of females in intercollegiate debate. Subjects, 164 debaters, completed a self-assessment using the Bem Sex Role Inventory. Twenty-six debate judges completed an assessment of the sex role of the "ideal" debater. The study tested the hypothesis that both female debaters and the…

This study was conducted to evaluate whether the adjectival self-description checklist may provide a viable method of quickly obtaining initial personality type information. The Personal Preferences Self-Description Questionnaire (PPDSQ) was administered to more than 420 college students, and data were analyzed using classical reliability analysis…

In the past 10 years, eating disorders among adolescent females have become of increasing concern. To assess the prevalence of eating disorders, unusual eating-related behaviors and attitudes, and psychological states among college women, 677 women, from three private northeastern United States colleges, completed a questionnaire assessing…

The Omnibus Personality Inventory and the Student Orientations Survey were administered to undergraduates at three institutions and substantial correlations between various scales of these two inventories were obtained. On the whole, students' educational attitudes were consonant with their general personality characteristics and orientations.…

Research has indicated that certain orienting activities help integrate new experiences with pre-existing cognitive structures. The content specificity hypothesis proposes that if the self-concept is distorted so that certain information is missing, then self-referencing that type of material will be ineffective. This notion of content specificity…

Past research has shown that the way one walks reflects one's personality traits and mood states. A study was conducted to examine whether the way one walks can reciprocally affect one's mood. The study tested the hypothesis that walking vigorously would cause a person to feel happier, and that a shuffling walk would cause a person to feel more…

As state and federal governments and private industry begin to slow the pace of giving to institutions of higher education, the planned giving officer becomes increasingly interested in competing for the gifts given through philanthropy. A study was conducted using 3,006 questionnaires obtained from members of the Association of Planned Giving…