Adler (2002; Adler & Fagley, 2001) argued that being appreciative facilitates and enhances feelings of well-being and life satisfaction, as well as feelings of connection to what we have, to what we experience, and to life itself. In addition, expressing appreciation to others is believed to build social bonds. Although appreciation is viewed as a disposition, it is also viewed as something people can learn over time, making it an especially valuable construct to measure. Appreciating something (e.g. an event, a person, a behavior, an object) involves noticing and acknowledging its value and meaning and feeling a positive emotional connection to it. We defined eight aspects of appreciation and developed scales to measure them: a focus on what one has ("Have" Focus), Awe, Ritual, Present Moment, Self/Social Comparison, Gratitude, Loss/Adversity, Interpersonal. Scores on the subscales may be totaled to yield a score representing one's overall degree of appreciation (or level of appreciativeness) (coefficient alpha=.94). We also developed an 18-item short form (coefficient alpha=.91) that correlates .95 with scores on the long form. The scales correlated in predicted ways with measures of life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect. More importantly, appreciation was significantly related to life satisfaction and positive affect, even after the effects of optimism, spirituality, and emotional self-awareness had been statistically controlled.

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Tversky and Kahneman reported a large effect of the framing of decision options on choice. When options were phrased positively in terms of gains, people chose the sure thing. But when options were phrased negatively in terms of losses, people chose the risky option. However, not all researchers have replicated this finding, especially when using different decision problems and task requirements. Consequently, problem and/or task variables may be important. The current study investigated two problem variables: degree of apparent gain/loss in the risky option (e.g., partial vs. total) and probability of success in the risky option. The effect of requesting a rationale on the framing effect was also studied. Although framing significantly affected choice, its effects were mediated or moderated by rationale request, degree of apparent gain/loss, and probability, sometimes in complex ways. The findings suggest that framing is less pervasive than previously believed.

Two studies examined the effect of an individual difference variable, need for cognition (NC), and processing of the options on the occurrence of risky choice framing effects. In Study 1 (N ¼ 206), frame interacted with NC and math skill such that no framing effect was observed among those high in both NC and math skill. No effect was found for the processing manipulation of requesting a reason for one's choices. Study 2 (N ¼ 257) enhanced the processing of the problems by asking participants to write out the options as they would describe them to a friend. Results showed that frame interacted with NC and depth of processing such that no framing effect was observed among those high in NC who were in the deep processing condition. These findings suggest that NC and depth of processing need to be considered in concert in order to understand their moderating effects on framing.

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GFA. Colleges and universities continue to face the issue of student retention. For some researchers (e.g., Braxton & Brier, 1989) and many college counselors and administrators, retention is viewed as a fundamental indicator of student success. Several factors have been shown to be related to college success, such as high school grade point average (GPA), minority status, and study skills (Bean & Metzner, 1985; Carroll, 1988; Guloyan, 1986; Miller, Finley, & Mckinley, 1990; Stoecker, Pascarella, & Wolfe, 1988;Terenzini & Pascarella 1980). Universities are faced with balancing the need to provide educational opportunities and to assure that students have adequate preparation for success in higher education. The study focuses specifically on attitudes, behaviors, and skill development that may enhance college performance and lead to student retention. Some suggestions for intervention are provided.Many factors affect success in college, apart from traditional predictors of academic "success" such as the American College Test (ACT). This suggests that a variety of students' skills, attitudes, and motivational factors need to be investigated (see Britton & Tesser, 1991 ; Schmeck & Grove, 1979). Consequently, a variety of areas were assessed: attitudes about school, learning and study behaviors, test taking ability, attributions about responsibility for school success and school faiIure, and prior academic achievement. GPA had the largest relation to attrition in Miller's (1 991) study. Age, high school performance, study skills, educational goals, minority status, and absenteeism all had significant effects on GPA. Tinto's (1 975, 1982) model of student attrition suggests four components to the process of student attrition: preentry characteristics, initial goals and commitments (motivation), external commitments, and academic and social experiences.Time management practices have been the subject of extensive popular literature (Bliss, 1976; Green 1969; Lakein, 1973). But few empirical studies have included time management; consequently, there is a need for the assessment of the relation between time management abilities and quantitative measures of achievement (Britton & Tesser, 1991). Macan, Shahani, Dipboye, h Phillips (1 990) reported a significant relationship between self-reported time management behaviors of students and their performance, as reflected in both self-reported GPA and quality of performance. They also found that those who practiced time management were clearer about their role and perceived that they performed better than those who did not report time management behaviors. Macan et al. (1 990) suggested education by means of a manual or seminar to help students develop skills to assist them in successful college matriculation. Learning centers, counseling centers, and orientation courses are other avenues that could provide students with this information.This study focused on the hypothesis that study skills and attitudes about achievement are more significantly correlated with academic pe...

A recent article discussing the costs and benefits of judgment errors and presenting a taxonomy of judgment behaviors (H. Arkes, 1991) included an error. This note corrects the error in H. Arkes's article in which framing effects were mislabeled as reflection effects. In addition, readers may have mistakenly received the impression that evidence for reflection and framing effects is more consistent than it is. So, it is clarified that research evidence for reflection and framing effects is variable rather than uniformly positive.Arkes (1991) offered a taxonomy of judgment behaviors and associated biases linking classification with possible debiasing strategies. He stressed that some errors are perceptually based so that education does not prevent them. It is likely that the article will become an important reference; consequently, it is important to correct an error that it contains and to correct an impression that it inadvertently conveys.