Jack Demick

Relations among personality traits, mood states, and driving behaviors.

One hundred sixty-three individuals participated in this study, which assessed relations among personality traits, mood states, and driving behaviors. Each participant underwent a standard driving evaluation on the road and completed the NEO PI-R Personality Inventory and the Profile of Mood States (POMS). Results indicated that the mood states of depression-dejection, anger-hostility, fatigue-inertia, vigor activity, and tension-anxiety were related to Cautiousness while driving for young adults, while personality traits were not found to be related to driving. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Toward a Mindful Psychological Science: Theory and Application

It is argued that, toward mitigating the ‘centrifugal forces’ (Altman, 1987) currently splintering the field of psychology, Langers (1989, 1997) theory of mindfulness has the potential to become a unifyingframework for the field of psychological science. Toward this end, this article demonstrates the ways in which Langers work, usually associated with the subfield of social psychology, (a) constitutes a grand theory that advances contemporary developmental theory; (b) has relevance for other basic and applied subfields of psychology (e.g., cognitive, educational, organizational, clinical); and (c) offers practical directives for conceptualizing and treating such social issues as development and remediation of prejudice and discrimination; satisfaction and well-being of adoptive and foster families; and promotion of automobile safety across the lifespan (i.e., the translation of mindless experience into more mindful action).

Correlations among field dependence-independence, sex, sex-role stereotype, and age of preschoolers.

Preschoolers (27 boys, mean age = 4.7 yr.; 24 girls, mean age = 4.6 yr.) were assessed for field dependence-independence (Preschool Embedded Figures Test), sex-role stereotyping (Sex-role Learning Inventory), and receptive verbal intelligence (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test—Revised). Relative to the girls, the boys were significantly less field-independent and significantly more sex-role stereotyped. After age and Peabody IQs were partialled out by multiple regression, same-sex typing in boys and cross-sex typing in girls were significant predictors of field independence. The regression analysis also suggested that, by 5.3 yr. of age, the boys as a group surpassed the girls on field independence. Limitations of the present research and educational implications of the over-all findings are discussed.

Some Relations between Clinical and Environmental Psychology

Toward assessing some relations between clinical and environmental psychology, this article focuses on problems of mutual interest for scholars in both subfields. Broad definitions of both clinical psychology (i.e., as a content area dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders as well as a more general method for research and practice) and environmental psychology (i.e., as a content area that treats the environment as consisting of physical, interpersonal, and sociocultural aspects as well as a more general perspective on all organism-environment functioning) are used. Empirical studies described include the relocation of a psychiatric therapeutic community (physical aspect of environment), social networks and people-place relationships in boys with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (interpersonal aspect of environment), and systemic issues in families practicing open versus closed adoption (sociocultural aspect of environment). General implications for problem, theory, method, and practice are also discussed.

Editor's note: The parameters of adult development

Based on a recent extension of Heinz Werners (1957) organismic-developmental theory (e.g., Wapner, 1987; Wapner & Demick, 1990, 1991), suggestions for the parameters of theJournal of Adult Development have been generated. These include the need for: (1) a focus on adult development at all levels of integration (biological, psychological, sociocultural); (2) increased examination of the interrelations among these levels as well as between the psychological part-processes ofexperience (cognition, affect, valuation) andaction over the course of adult development; (3) the complementarity of theory and empiricism, of basic and applied research, and of quantitative and qualitative approaches to methodology; and (4) transdisciplinary collaboration. Preliminary editorial policies are sketched; recommendations for any aspect of policy and procedure are strongly encouraged.

Body and Self Experience

The present study examines differences between Japanese and American individuals in aspects of body and self experience. The research is based on previous work in the United States (e. g., Demick & Rivers, 1996; Demick & Wapner, 1987, 1996) that has attempted to provide a holistic, developmental, systems approach to body and self experience most generally. That body and self experience are of significant concern to environmental psychologists as well as to others interested in environment-behavior relations (e. g., architects, planners, sociologists) gains support from the notion that aspects of body and self experience encompass relevant general processes such as spatial relations (e. g., between the individual and his or her physical environment or between the individual and others in his or her interpersonal environment).