The objective of the study was to develop a test which could measure both the qualitative and quantitative aspects of drug-using behavior, including such factors as attitudes toward drugs, experience with drugs, and knowledge about drugs. The Drug Use Scale was developed containing 134 items and dealing with five classes of drugs: marijuana,…

The composite results from eight surveys conducted between 1985 and 1987 by CENSIS (Social Investment Study Center, Italy) reveal some behavioral trends of Italian youth. Part 1 of this paper discusses the indications from the collected data. The instruments tested youth perceptions on seven topics that included values orientation, formal…

Adolescent coital activity and the attendant risk of pregnancy is a problem with far-reaching implications. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of family variables on adolescent sexual behavior and contraceptive practices. More specifically, the research question was: Could a set of parent-adolescent interpersonal variables be…

The reactions of observers (N=168 college students) to an actor's embarrassment were examined by manipulating the perceived link between actor and observer (cooperative, competitive, or independent) and the observational set of the observer (empathic or nonempathic). The observers' self-ratings of embarrassment and measures of their skin potential…

Freudian theory and subsequent research indicates a connection between sexual and aggressive motivation. The present study investigated preferences among nonsexual, sexual, and aggressive humor as a function of induced aggressive mood. One-hundred and twenty male and 120 female university students participated in one of four 2x2 factorial designs…

This study assessed attributions made to an attractive or unattractive person who took either a proximal or distal seating position following task performance. Greater attributions of success were made to an attractive person, regardless of the proximity, which suggests pervasive influence of physical attractiveness on attributions in behavioral…

Clinical judgement involves a search for internal consistency which can be validated by predicting responses within a protocol, or internally. Internal predictive validity assumes that one source of consistency is the individual--an assumption that was tested in a prediction task using the sentence completion test (SCT). Artificial protocols…

Effective birth control is needed to combat adolescent pregnancy which is a major health and social problem, the adverse consequences of which have been well-documented along a variety of dimensions. A significant obstacle to the provision of birth control services to teenagers is the belief that such services will encourage adolescent coital…

Previous research indicates that social beliefs can act in a self-fulfilling manner, affecting responses to individuals and thereby constraining these individuals to behave in ways that spuriously confirm attitudes about them. The possible role of self-perception, i.e., whether targets of such self-fulfilling prophecies not only alter their…

The explanatory cornerstone of most currently viable social theories is a strict cost-gain assumption. The clearest formal explication of this view is contained in subjective expected utility models (SEU), in which individuals are assumed to scale their subjective likelihood estimates of decisional consequences and the personalistic worth or…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of being imitated on behaviors of preschool children. Each of 24 subjects was given a choice of three responses in a marble-dropping task and was required to make one choice, after which an experimenter either imitated or did not imitate a subject's behavior. The results indicated that when a…

This paper investigated whether children can learn to cooperate under minimal social conditions. The research also compares the effectiveness of verbal instructions and a training task for teaching subjects the "win-stay/lose-change" rule. This rule has been used to explain the development of cooperation in the minimal social situation. Subjects…

Normal drinking patterns in an older population were examined by posing a series of questions directed at identifying drinking norms and practices, the social context and changes in alcohol use over time, and the ways individuals perceive alcohol and drinking. Instruments (N=3) were constructed: a schedule for structured personal interviews with…

To investigate sexual aggressiveness in college-age males, a sexual experiences questionnaire was used for preselection of university males high, moderate and low in sexual aggressiveness. High and moderate males were individually interviewed by a trained male graduate psychology student, and all three groups were administered a variety of…

The effects of different schedules of noncontingent reward on subsequent learning in children were investigated. In the first phase of the experiment subjects performed a block-design matching task and received one of three schedules of noncontingent reward, i.e., continuous reward (Group CRF), random reward on 50% of the trials (Group 50R), or no…