We assessed how children's self-concepts of ability for mathematics, English, social, and physical skills activities, ratings of the importance of these activities, and general self-esteem change across the transition to junior high school. Three types of change were assessed: change in mean levels, change in stability, and change in relationships. Twice each year during the sixth and seventh grades, 1,450 children completed questionnaires. Mean levels of children's self-esteem were lowest immediately after the transition, but recovered during seventh grade. Self-concept of ability and importance ratings for math and sports activities showed linear declines. Self-concept of ability for social activities showed a cubic trend, but importance ratings for social activities declined in a linear fashion. Children's self-concepts of ability for math and English became less stable across the junior high transition, whereas beliefs about other activities and general self-esteem were more stable in seventh grade.

Researchers have proposed that life satisfaction may be increased by reduced life involvement (i.e., the scarcity hypothesis) or increas ed by greater life involve ment (i.e., the expansion hypothesis). In this study we aimed to determine if female and male college students are more satisfied with their lives if they have more or less a ctive life styles. A total of 157 females and 86 males were assigned to either a high, moderate, or low life satisfaction group and additional instruments were administered to assess the manner of decision mak ing, the extent of role demands and tim e pressures, and the respondents' satisfaction with sch ool performance and th eir dating and f amily relationships. Results indicated that both male and female college students with high life satisfaction had more demanding life styles than individuals with low life satisfaction, but they did not suffer greater personal stress. The significant role of ful filling interpersonal relationships in overall life satisfaction was also evident.The objective in this study was to determ ine if global life satisfact ion in college students related to active involve ment in li fe. It was assu med that a person who is life-active will tend to set and actively pursue more goals and have a larger number of roles an d obligations, while at t he same time maintaining interpersonal relationships they can rely on for sup port and decision-making. On the other hand, it was felt that college students with less life satisfaction will be characterized by more constricted life styles, i.e., fe w responsibilities, roles, and obligations, and l ess satisfying interpersonal relationships. In other words, global life satisfact ion will be related to a person's tendency to approach or avoid life. Barnett and Baruch (1985) have suggested that fem ale college students may experience negative consequences from assuming more roles and increasing life demands. They proposed a scarcity hypothesis that postulates adverse effects ______________

The primary purpose of the experiments presented in this report was to study systematically the geographic site-name, associative memory of male and female college students (predominantly White and middle class) for locations that varied in distance: local, national, and international sites. In the first experiment, participants were to match listed names of campus buildings and local cities with their marked locations on maps. In the second experiment, under a site-name memory, a site-name/map-aid memory, and a map-aid/name-aid memory (site-name associative memory) condition, participants were to recall or match as many of the 50 US states and the 25 largest US cities as they could. In the third experiment, the participants were to match a listed grouping of the world's largest bodies of water and continents, a set of countries, and the world's largest cities, with their marked locations on maps. In the first experiment, men matched significantly more local cities than did women; in the second experiment, men recalled significantly more of the cities under the site-name/map-aid and the map-aid/name-aid memory conditions than did women; and in the third experiment, men matched significantly more sites on all three maps than did women. The absence of gender differences for campus buildings and states may have been a product of the participants having had extensive opportunities to learn these sites. That men displayed greater knowledge of cities and international sites suggests that they have a greater interest in geography than do women. Because of the limitations of the methodology used, the gender differences favoring men could not be interpreted as primarily a product of nature or of nurture, and thus it was concluded that they were a joint product of nature and nurture.

Rogers (1959) developed an interpersonal congruency model that suggests the greater the degree of agreement among within-person perceptions of the self and a role partner, the more adjusted and satisfied with a relationship one would be. American college students were categorized as occasional, steady or engaged daters and they provided ratings of self and partner on dimensions of perceived dating satisfaction, personal integrity, financial influence, and role of sexuality in the relationship. Congruency measures were then derived which allowed the assessment of cognitive agreement in perceived self/partner perceptions. As predicted, respondents in the Engaged category displayed greater congruency in within-person perceptions than did those in the Occasional and Steady dating groups. There was also a tendency for women to display more within-person congruency than men, particularly on matters involving finances and sex. Rogers (1959) proposed a theory that assumed that an individual whose selfperceptions and self-other perceptions were in cognitive agreement and consistent with objective reality should be better personally adjusted and more capable of dealing with stress. In other words, congruency among self-perceptions could serve as an indicator of personal and interpersonal well-being. The primary goal of the present research was to determine whether or not cognitive congruency in an individual's self-other perceptions was related to the degree of commitment in a dating relationship. In general, it was assumed that the greater the degree of commitment that existed in a relationship, the more congruence would exist in the person's perceptions of a relationship.