Empathy has been hypothesized as a mediator facilitating prosocial behaviors such as altruism. Definitions and measures of empathy disagree as to the extent to which the observer's response is affective and the necessity for the observer to understand the other's point of view. A conceptualization of empathy which includes these considerations has…

Questions whether role loss significantly influences volunteering, based on data from a sample of 4,339 older adults. Findings suggested that other social characteristics such as socioeconomic status and gender have a greater influence on volunteer patterns. (JAC)

The demographic and psychological variables associated with seeking help in coping with emotional problems in early and middle adolescence from parents, friends, and professionals were studied with 221 adolescents. Differential patterns of predictor variables emerged for each helping resource and for both genders. (SLD)

Social and health service utilization have been the subject of numerous studies, but most have examined service utilization from the perspective of the type of service delivered to older adults. To determine the factors that predict overall utilization of services, data that had been collected in 1975 for the General Accounting Offices' survey of…

Interventions designed to prevent drug abuse have typically focused on the gateway drugs of tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana, on the assumption that such prevention would indirectly prevent use of harder substances. Little data has been available, however, for examining the onset of harder substance use in a normal adolescent population. This…

Systematically assessed replicability and generalizability of a multidimensional alcoholism typological system in 399 inpatient, outpatient, and non-treatment-seeking cocaine abusers. Two different procedures supported the construct, concurrent, and predictive validity of the Type A-Type B distinction in cocaine abusers. Multidimensional…

A study was done to investigate the relationship between a selected set of personality dimensions and the propensities of supervisors to use varying levels of both positive and negative reinforcements. Data were collected during exercises involving 129 male undergraduate business students carried out in a behavioral laboratory wherein a…