From W. B. Cannon's identification of adrenaline with "ftght or flight" to modern views of stress, negative views of peripheral physiological arousal predominate. Sympathetic nervous system (SNS) arousal is associated with anxiety, neuroticism, the Type A personality, cardiovascular disease, and immune system suppression; illness susceptibility is associated with life events requiring adjustments. "Stress control" has become almost synonymous with arousal reduction. A contrary positive view of peripheral arousal follows from studies of subjects exposed to intermittent stressors. Such exposure leads to low SNS arousal base rates, but to strong and responsive challenge-or stressinduced SNS-adrenal-medullary arousal, with resistance to brain catecholamine depletion and with suppression of pituitary adrenal-cortical responses. That pattern of arousal defines physiological toughness and, in interaction with psychological coping, corresponds with positive performance in even complex tasks, with emotional stability, and with immune system enhancement. The toughness concept suggests an opposition between effective short-and long-term coping, with implications for effective therapies and stress-inoculating life-styles.Confrontations with stressors and challenges evoke central and peripheral physiological arousal. Characterizations of that peripheral arousal traditionally have been negative, but some modern views are more positive. After providing some definitions, I discuss the apparent contradictions between literatures whose basis is an assumption of the harmfulness of peripheral physiological arousal and those whose basis is not. DefinitionsAccording to Folkman and Lazarus (1985), the term stress implies "a relationship between the person and the environment that is appraised by the person as relevant to his or her well-being and in which the person's resources are taxed or exceeded" (p. 152). As components of stress, Folkman and Lazarus described threat as "potential for harm or loss," challenge as "potential for growth," and harm-loss as "injury already done" (p. 152). However, because I often emphasize the differences between challenge, on the one hand, and threat and loss, on the other, I use the term challenge separately, using stress to capture only the components of the concept associated with threat and harm/loss.

What are personality traits? Are all “broad” traits equally broad in the constructs they encompass and in the pervasiveness of their effects? Or are some traits more or less affective, behavioral, or cognitive in nature? The present study examined these issues as they applied to the Big 5 traits of Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. Expert and novice raters judged the extent to which items from four popular Big 5 inventories contain behavioral, cognitive, or affective components. Traits and inventories were then compared in terms of their relative assessment of these components. Results indicate convergence among inventories but remarkable differences between traits. These findings have implications for the conceptualization and assessment of traits and suggest directions for future research.

One, hundred and five college freshmen were given one of two different side-effects lists associated with a placebo pill. In a "second" experiment, subjects experienced failure on a vocabulary test, supposedly predictive of college success, and received an opportunity to cheat on the test by changing answers. Although it was anticipated that all subjects who considered cheating would experience some arousal, it was predicted that those subjects told to expect drug-induced side effects related to sympathetic arousal would not label their experienced arousal as fear or guilt, and would cheat more than the subjects who anticipated benign side effects. Of the subjects expecting arousal side effects, 49% cheated, as compared with 27% of the control subjects (p < .025). Sex differences and implications for theoretical approaches to emotion and conscience are discussed.

Summary Two studies were conducted in order to investigate positive prejudice toward Negroes By defining positive prejudice as favoritism toward Negro stimulus persons over white stimulus persons of identical personality descriptions, it was possible to compare patterns of Negro bias on a variety of measures The results of Study I indicated that positive Negro prejudice was more likely when stimulus persons at the positive personality level were compared The results of Study II indicated that dogmatism and rigidity and attitudes associated with authoritarianism are negatively related to positive prejudice Dimensions of formality of relationships and antisubordination of Negroes were useful in understanding positive prejudice. The relevance of the results to the belief theory of prejudice are discussed.

A theory is presented concerning the impact of attributions about the causes of emotional responses as they influence self-control in temptation situations. Research is reviewed indicating a high level of adult sensitivity to external influence in making such causal attributions. Two studies are presented in which the posttransgression emotions of second-grade children are labeled shame (because of being found out) or guilt (due to the transgression itself); when a similar situation was subsequently represented as safe from detection, shame-condition children transgressed 60-80% more than guilt-condition subjects. It is suggested that emotional arousal elicited in temptation situations because of past punishment or options that are inconsistent with the self-image is necessary for inhibition but not sufficient unless attributed to a relevant cause. The literature on the relative effectiveness of moral socialization techniques is discussed with respect to the theory, and the relevance to cognitive dissonance and to over justification approaches to motivation is discussed An integration of social-learning and cognitive-developmental theories is approached through explicating the translation of moral decision into behavior by focusing on the ways that cognition may exert partial control over the impact of less finely differentiated emotional response, allowing cognitive overrides of contradictory emotional dispositions without eliminating the emotion.Most of the modern literature on the development of conscience or morality is related to one of two major approaches-cognitive, concerned with moral reasoning and decision processes, or social learning, concerned with the emotional states and behaviors associated with self-control in the The authors wish to thank Sister Leonarda and Richard Eisenhauer for their kind permission to use the students and facilities of St.