This paper is concerned with the personality dimensions and learning styles of secondary school students, attending grammar and technical vocational school. The aim of the study is to examine differences in personality traits and learning styles between students from these types of schools, as well as to determine the predictive power of…

Features of everyday conceptions of a "wise person" were examined, based on a model of wisdom-related knowledge (Baltes & Smith, 1990). The goal was to examine whether the psychological theory underlying this model is consistent with lay conceptions of wisdom, and whether everyday conceptions contain additional features not contained…

While research on humor in children has increased in the past 20 years, there is less information on adult humor. The Humor Assessment Instrument (HUMA) was developed as part of an ongoing humor intervention project. HUMA was used to interview 398 adults on their perception of humor in the media, humor among acquaintances, humor in parents, most…

Implications of parental self-esteem for the subsequent personality qualities and self-esteem of the developing child were explored in this investigation. The sample consisted of 65 mothers and 44 fathers who completed a self Q-sort and an ideal-self Q-sort when their children were 12 years of age. At the ages of 3, 4, 5, 7, 11, and 14 years, 54…

Much attention has been given to generational differences in level and rate of age changes in the study of adult behavioral development. Much less work has been done on generational differences in personality development. This study examined cross-sectional and longitudinal data from the Test of Behavioral Rigidity administered to more than 3,000…

While most lifespan developmental theories of personality predict age-related changes in coping, little direct evidence exists for determining whether age differences in coping style are due to intrinsic developmental processes or to age differences in the kinds of stresses encountered. To evaluate age differences in coping strategies and whether…

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…

Rigidity, as it relates to aging, refers to motor/cognitive, personality/perceptual, and psychomotor functioning. To investigate the relationship of rigidity to intelligence and educational level in younger and older adults, and of rigidity to age and sex, 48 young adults (25 male, 23 female), with a mean age of 23, and 45 older adults (21 male,…

Using a path analysis on simplex pattern models of adolescent drug use, Potvin and Lee (1980) studied the personality and perceived environmental variables associated with drug use. To evaluate the appropriateness of the drug use models derived by Potvin and Lee, a structural modeling methodology using LISREL VI was applied to the data from their…

Many important social judgments involve deciding whether a person is likely to be successful in a particular situation. The literature on stereotypes suggests that there is a differential application of conceptualizations of ability in describing age and sex groups. This study investigated the hypothesis that age and sex stereotypes are associated…

The enhancement of the self-concepts of elementary school students through the "Let's Get Excited about Life" program and the recognition of such enhancement by their teachers were studied for 100 inner-city students in Atlanta (Georgia) in grades 1 through 5. All of these students, as well as their teachers, were African-Americans, and…

Personality characteristics of 101 epileptic children in two age groups (5-11 and 11-16) were studied by means of the child-reported Missouri Children's Picture Series and the mother-reported Missouri Problem Behavior Checklist. Scores for each age group across both parent and child reports were compared to published norms. A one-way multivariate…

Money has significant impacts on people's motivation, behavior, and performance. This study was conducted to further validate and explore the Money Ethic Scale (MES), an instrument developed to examine the meaning of money, in a sample of mental health workers in Tennessee. It examined mental health workers' (N=155) attitudes toward money, as…

Relatively little research exists on the relationship between adaptability and the structural aspects of self. The research that does exist suggests that a more mature personality, i.e., a self that is differentiated and integrated, has a greater capacity to adapt to crises. To identify the empirical relationship between three structural…

The reliability and validity of three measures of infant temperament were compared in this study. The measures included the revised Carey (1978) Infant Temperament Questionnaire, a version of the Bayley (1969) Infant Behavior Record revised for completion by the parent, and a modified version of Buss and Plomin's (1975) EASI, an acronym standing…