Two studies were conducted to examine the long-term impact of parental divorce on beliefs about the self and others. In Study 1, college-aged children of divorce and students from intact families did not differ on 8 basic assumptions or on measures of depression. Those whose parents had divorced, however, were less optimistic about the success of their own future marriages. Assumptions about the benevolence of people best predicted the marital optimism of the parental divorce group, but not of the intact family group. In Study 2, assumptions about the benevolence of people were explored in terms of trust beliefs. College-aged children of divorce and a matched sample from intact homes differed only on marriage-related beliefs, not on generalized trust. Children of divorce reported less trust of a future spouse and were less optimistic about marriage. Exploratory analyses found that continuous conflict in family of origin adversely affected all levels of trust.

We performed secondary analyses on data originally collected by telephone from a random sample of 294 undergraduates from a large northeastern university to examine students' knowledge about acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and the students' reactions to the health threat posed by human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Our findings indicated that students are reasonably well informed about AIDS, are aware of the recommended precautions for avoiding HIV infection, and are fearful that the virus may spread within the student population. These data also show that students are reluctant to change their sexual behavior unless the threat of infection is personalized. The implications of our findings for future research are briefly discussed.

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