We hypothesized that the effects of personality (self-esteem, control, and optimism) on postabortion adaptation (distress, well-being, and decision satisfaction) would be fully mediated by preabortion cognitive appraisals (stress appraisals and self-efficacy appraisals) and postabortion coping. We further proposed that the effects of preabortion appraisals on adaptation would be fully mediated by postabortion coping. Results of a longitudinal study of 527 women who had first-trimester abortions supported our hypotheses. Women with more resilient personalities appraised their abortion as less stressful and had higher self-efficacy for coping with the abortion. More positive appraisals predicted greater acceptance/reframing coping and lesser avoidance/denial, venting, support seeking, and religious coping. Acceptance-reframing predicted better adjustment on all measures, whereas avoidance-denial and venting related to poorer adjustment on all measures. Greater support seeking was associated with reduced distress, and greater religious coping was associated with less decision satisfaction.

Most women do not experience psychological problems or regret their abortion 2 years postabortion, but some do. Those who do tend to be women with a prior history of depression.

The authors examined the impact of women's perceptions of negative (conflict) and positive (support) exchanges with their mothers, partners, and friends before having an abortion on negative (distress) and positive (well-being) indexes of adjustment after the abortion. Preabortion conflict and support from the partner predicted postabortion adjustment in the same affective domain: Conflict uniquely predicted distress, whereas support uniquely predicted well-being. Within-source interactions were observed between support and conflict from mothers and friends. Women who perceived high support from their mothers or friends were more distressed if they also perceived them as sources of high conflict than if they perceived them as sources of low conflict. Among women who perceived their mothers or friends as nonsupportive, no relationship was observed between conflict and distress. Cross-source buffering was not observed.

This research examined antecedents of short-term success in mediation. Seventy-three hearings were observed at two community dispute resolution centers in New York State. Measures of short-term success were: reaching agreement, goal achievement, and immediate satisfaction with the agreement and with the conduct of the hearing. Results indicated that the likelihood of short-term success increased with disputant joint problem solving and decreased with disputant hostile and contending behavior and the prominence of intangible issues in the case. Satisfaction with the hearing increased with disputants' involvement in a continuing relationship; and goal achievement and both types of satisfaction decreased with escalation of the conflict prior to hearing. As predicted, joint problem solving increased with involvement in a continuing relationship and decreased with disputants' hostile and contentious behavior, the prominence of intangible issues, and escalation of the conflict prior to the hearing. Five mediator behaviors were either unrelated or negatively related to short-term success: providing reassurance, displaying expertise, keeping order, criticizing, and asking embarrassing questions. Mediator behaviors that were positively related to short-term success were those that demonstrated empathy, structured the discussion, and stimulated thinking. Multiple regression analyses revealed several interactions of mediator behaviors with disputant behaviors and prior conditions in predicting agreement and goal achievement.

ne of the many questions explored by Janet Taylor Spence and 0 her colleagues concerns the relationships among gender, selfesteem, and so-called "masculine" agentic personality characteristics and "feminine" communal personality characteristics. In what has been considered a surprising finding, Spence's research indicates that the same relationships are typically observed in both men and women: Possession of masculine attributes is substantially and positively correlated with self-esteem, whereas possession of feminine attributes tends to have a minimal relationship with self-esteem (e.g., Spence, Helmreich, & Stapp, 1975). One implication of this finding is that men might be higher than women in global self-esteem by virtue of their superiority in masculine attributes. Yet, despite thousands of articles related to gender and self-esteem that have appeared in the scholarly journals, no one has yet to offer a definitive answer to the seemingly simple question, Are men and women different in global self-esteem?Global self-esteem is widely regarded by many psychologists as one of the most important determinants of personal well-being and ad-Preparation of this chapter was supported by National Science Foundation Grant SBR-9596226.

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