Socialization into sport has been viewed as a social learning process through which significant others teach, demonstrate, and reinforce sport roles and behaviors. This social learning paradigm has been synthesized into a social role-social systems approach which combines psychological and sociological indicators (family, peers, school,…

Quality of performance feedback provided an individual may have pronounced impact on his motivation level and be at least partly responsible for social facilitation results. Male students (N=118) performed a dart-throwing task in the presence or absence of a three-person evaluative audience. After each of seven trials they received consistently…

Aging is a continuum which begins at birth and ends at death. A multidisciplinary approach is necessary to the study of aging as a part of developmental psychology. The individual is a biological organism as well as a member of society. Biological adjustments to life are affected by physical changes which influence motives and emotions. Some of…

Develops an analysis which speaks to the future, a stimulation toward our own self determination as a people who can first recognize the problem, move to identify and categorize the causative factors, move further to eliminate those causes, and then take the steps necessary to institute for ourselves a value system, a way of life, which is…

Reviews two recent books that place the discussion of Japanese education within the social and psychological context of Japanese culture. One book depicts Japanese society's commitment to children; the other explores conceptual and empirical issues related to U.S.-Japanese comparative studies in child development. (RH)

This new and expanded Third Edition analyzes blindness within the context of two overlapping theoretical constructs: the development of self-esteem and the process of adjusting to social and/or physical trauma. The book is divided into four sections. The first section, provides an overview of blindness and the essential background for subsequent…

This report stems from an invitation to the Center staff to reflect on the past, present, and future of mental health in schools for a brief presentation. Because the topic is so broad, we knew that the request for a "brief" overview would not provide sufficient detail. Anyone who has spent time in schools can itemize the multifaceted…

The organization of farming among the Plateau Tonga of Zambia is described in the first part of this paper, after which a case study is reported which describes an attempt by an agricultural extension worker to introduce new methods of pig husbandry. (Author/KM)

Presents six major methods by which characteristics of environments have been related to indexes of human functioning: (1) ecological dimensions; (2) behavior settings; (3) dimensions of organizational structure; and, (4) dimensions identifying the collective personal and/or behavioral characteristics of the milieu inhabitants; and two others.…

Presents experimental evidence showing that the desirability of an alternative choice increases when one's freedom to choose it is threatened; this reactance will be reduced if freedom is reinstated by another person; and desirability will also be reduced if another person under similar threat manages to restore his own freedom. (RW)

Developed scale for each sex to measure defensiveness about the marital relationship and to measure defensiveness about the sexual relationship of couples. Presents evidence to support that these content specific scales surpass a global defensiveness scale as a measure of defensiveness regarding couples' sexual or marital relationship. (Author)

Proposes a social-psychological model of the dissolution decision in marriage based on prior theoretical formulations. Sequential in character and emphasizing the duality of the marital relationship, the model modifies and refines previous theoretical efforts, and seeks to extend their explanatory power by incorporating various principles of…

Presents evidence against the "deficit" interpretation of Black dialect and argues instead for at least one version of the "difference" hypothesis. (FL)

Investigated gender differences in the motivation for alcohol use in a sample of 240 Nigerian undergraduates, ranging in age from 17-24 years. Males were more likely to drink for psychological and social reasons than females. Females, however, were more likely than males to drink only at parties. (RJM)

This investigation reports on the development and initial validation of the Psychosocial Costs of Racism to Whites Scale (PCRW), which operationalizes the idea that racism has a host of psychosocial costs for White individuals. Data from 727 participants were collected in 3 interrelated studies that subjected the items to the rigors of both…