Youth in pain often show self-defeating and destructive patterns of behavior which should be seen as calls for help and positive support. Instead, deep-seated brain programs and cultural beliefs about discipline can trigger angry or avoidant behavior by adults who deal with these young people. This brief introduction to the Conflict Cycle…

In this article, we contrast evolutionary and psychobiological models of individual development to address the idea that individual development occurring in prototypically risky and unsupportive environments can be understood as adaptation. We question traditional evolutionary explanations of individual development, calling on the principle of…

Maternal and paternal responses to infant distress are studied to (1) examine differences among two-week-old infants in their levels of irritability; (2) investigate differences among parents in how they soothe their one-month-old infants; and (3) relate these parent and infant behaviors. (BJD)

Assessed the relative influences of sensation-seeking or tension-reduction motives on drinking behavior. Data indicated a strong positive relationship between sensation seeking and alcohol use, whereas the relationship between anxiety and alcohol use was nonsignificant. The importance of sensation-seeking motives to a comprehensive motivational…

R.S. Lazarus's theory of coping was used to investigate appraisal and reappraisal of threat in repressors and sensitizers. Two indexes of stress, self-report ratings of affect and palmar skin conductance, were measured prior to performance on a reaction time task, after one-third of the task was completed and after two-thirds of the task was…

On the basis of a three-year research project on the social-psychological aspects of divorce, characteristic patterns of individual and marital coping response to the stresses of divorce are described. Implications for clinical practice are discussed. (Author)

Two studies were conducted in order to test the hypothesis that the afereffects of stress on both performance and social behavior are attributable to a depletion of attentional capacity. This depletion, or "cognitive fatigue," was predicted to increase with both the attentional load and duration of an activity. Results were positive. (Author)

Gender differences in resistance to stress are not rooted in recognition of coercive elements, but in differences in responding to coercive elements. Type As are particularly sensitive to threats to personal control. The critical difference may be in the frequency rather than the intensity of the stress. (JAC)

This study of counselor trainee behavior during actual counseling sessions is an investigation of the associations between high and low levels of counselor anxiety and the following kinds of counselor responses; empathy, structuring, interrogation and "activity not relevant to the task of counseling." Subjects, two male and three female…

Attempts to relate psychological reactance and conformity and concludes that the social situation and personality factors necessarily play a part in specifications of the psychological reactance concept. (MB)

The various relationships of stress arousal and stress-prone personality traits to menstrual distress were investigated in order to quantify psychophysiological arousal differences between high and low menstrual distress symptom reporters and examine differences in stress-prone personality traits between high and low menstrual distress symptom…