The study examines the relationship between quality of a friendship at work and job satisfaction. Faculty and staff (N = 722) at two universities completed measures of the qualities of their best friendship at work and of job satisfaction. Multiple regressions for faculty and staff and for subjects whose best friend was a peer, supervisor or subordinate revealed that the quality of one's best friendship in the workplace is predictive of job satisfaction. A negative aspect of friendship, maintenance difficulty, was related to lower satisfaction for staff (but not faculty) and for workers whose best friend at work was a peer or supervisor. Wishing to spend free time with a best friend at work (voluntary interdependence) and an exchange orientation toward the friend were also negatively related to aspects of job satisfaction. The relationships between feelings about one's best friend at work and feelings about one's job are discussed.

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Two studies were conducted to design and validate a measure of perceptions of risk in intimacy. A 10-item scale with high internal consistency was developed and related to romantic involvement, self-esteem, assertiveness, interpersonal trust, sensation seeking, extraversion and attitudes toward love. Individuals who scored high on this `Risk in Intimacy Inventory' (i.e. who perceived high levels of risk in intimate relationships) reported fewer close relationships, less assertiveness, diminished trust in others, more introverted tendencies, and more hesitant approaches toward love than did individuals who scored lower on the scale. High scoring respondents also reported relatively high levels of thrill and adventure seeking and boredom susceptibility on the Sensation Seeking Scale. Potential applications of the scale are discussed.

Two studies examined the causal role of emotional arousal in self-evaluation maintenance processes. In previous work, Tesser and Campbell (1982) found that Ss were most charitable in their perception of another's performance when self-relevance was low and the other was close. If emotional arousal mediated this pattern of behavior, then the pattern of behavior should be replicated when arousal is present but attenuated when arousal is misattributed or low. The misattribution hypothesis was tested in Study 1. Study 2 was a correlational study in which physiological arousal and misattribution were measured. The results supported the prediction that SEM processes would be attenuated when arousal was attributed to external sources. The misattribution effect was particularly pronounced among more highly aroused Ss. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for the SEM model and person perception.