S. Mark Pancer

Social Support Relations to Coping and Adjustment During the Transition to University in the People’s Republic of China

Life transitions, such as university attendance, entail the reconstruction of relations between the individual and the environment. This study aimed to explore how perceptions of social support changed across time during the first semester of university, and how social support, coping strategies, and adjustment were interrelated among 390 first-year students in Beijing, China. Results indicated that overall levels of social support among students did not change significantly across the first term, but that support from different sources (parents, peers, teachers, siblings) showed distinctive patterns of change. Support was positively related to adjustment and to coping skills in a dynamic way, and an integrative structural equations model showed that the role of social support operated both directly in relation to adjustment and indirectly through its relations to coping styles. These findings were related both to previous research on the transition to university in the West and to unique factors within the Chinese context.

Cognitive Complexity of Expectations and Adjustment to University in the First Year

Expectations about university and subsequent adjustment in the first year were examined in a longitudinal study of the transition to university. Two hundred and twenty-six students (158 females and 68 males) completed a preuniversity questionnaire in the summer prior to beginning university, and another questionnaire in February of their first year. The preuniversity questionnaire contained measures that assessed perceived stress and the amount and sources of information students had about university, as well as open-ended questions concerning their expectations about university. Responses to the open-ended questions were coded for integrative complexity of thought. The February questionnaire contained measures of adjustment to university. Results indicated that students with more complex expectations about university tended to adjust better to stressful circumstances than did students who had simpler expectations. The stress-buffering properties of complex expectations are discussed, as are some of the factors that may contribute to more complex thinking about university.

A Longitudinal Analysis of Personal Values Socialization: Correlates of a Moral Self‐ Ideal in Late Adolescence

There has been considerable study of the development of moral reasoning in adolescence within the cognitive–developmental paradigm, but less empirical attention to the development of moral valuing and motivation. In a two-year longitudinal study, we examined the correlates of high-school students’ endorsement of explicitly moral values as ideals for the self. Those who reported being involved in community helping activities at age 17 were subsequently more likely to increase their relative emphasis on the importance of prosocial moral values for themselves. As predicted, an authoritative family parenting style was associated with more parent–adolescent value agreement in general (regarding both moral and non-moral values). Particularly for males, reports of greater parent monitoring and strictness were associated with more emphasis on moral values for the self. This relation between parental strictness and males’ self-ideals was mediated over time by perceived stronger emphases on moral values by both parents and friends. These findings suggest the potential utility of studying moral motivation to help understand prosocial development in adolescence.

Who gains or who loses weight? Psychosocial factors among first-year university students.

Self-reported weight changes over 7 months and their relation to psychosocial characteristics (self-esteem, depression, social support, perceived stress and transition perception) and eating attitudes and behaviors (restrained eating and Eating Disorder Inventory subscales [EDI]) were assessed in first-year male and female students at six Canadian universities (N=2753). Results showed small but significant weight increases over time in males and females (M=1.5 kg). Males who lost weight versus those who gained reported greater negative well-being and more negative feelings about university transition. Females who either lost or gained weight had higher initial restraint and EDI scores than did weight maintainers. At 3 months, total EDI and body dissatisfaction increased in female weight gainers compared to weight losers, plus greater drive for thinness compared to weight maintainers. Thus, males distressed at the transition from high school to university appear more likely to lose weight while well-adjusted males are more likely to gain weight. For females, however, weight gain is associated with more negative well-being and preoccupations with weight and eating.

A Longitudinal Study of Religious Doubts in High School and Beyond: Relationships, Stability, and Searching for Answers

This questionnaire study of 939 senior high school students, and a follow-up of 336 of these people two years later, investigated a variety of issues related to religious doubts and their implications for adolescents’ lives. Although average doubt levels were “mild” as measured by the Religious Doubts scale, the greatest doubts were expressed based on religion’s failure to make people “better,” the claimed infallibility of scriptures, and pressures to accept religious teachings. Doubting was consistently related to decreased personal religiousness, and doubt levels remained relatively stable over the two years of this study. Greater doubting was linked with more problematic family environments, and less parental warmth and strictness. There was mixed evidence that doubt was associated with poorer personal adjustment, and when these relationships were investigated within major denominational subgroupings, only (some) associations for mainstream Protestants were significant. Doubting was also associated with an inclination to consult anti-religious sources of information (rather than pro-religious sources), and these styles of consultation also predicted levels of future religiousness.

Forming Impressions of Political Leaders: A Cross-National Comparison

This study was designed to determine the key dimensions along which individuals judge the personalities of political and nonpolitical public figures in three countries—the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. Samples of student respondents from each country used a 40-item trait battery to indicate their impressions of three national and two or three international political figures, as well as three nonpolitical public figures. The results indicated that certain key dimensions (charisma, competence, and integrity) were central features in both the description and evaluation of domestic political figures in all three countries. However, the weights assigned to these dimensions in determining overall evaluations varied in systematic ways, both within a nations leader cohort and across samples. There were strong similarities across the three samples (especially between the Canadian and U.S. samples) in the criteria they used to evaluate the most salient leaders in their respective countries. The same common model of evaluation was less useful in judgments of the less salient leaders, foreign leaders, and nonpolitical public figures.

Understanding and predicting attitudes towards computers

Abstract Two studies were conducted to assess the ability of the theory of reasoned action (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980) to predict computer-related attitudes and behavior. In the first study, 238 participants responded to a questionnaire concerning their intentions to engage in several different computer-related behaviors, and the attitudes and beliefs underlying those intentions. The results indicated that attitudes towards the behaviors were significant predictors of behavioral intentions, and that different beliefs underlay the different kinds of behavioral intentions. In Study 2, belief statements from Study 1 were used in a persuasive communication designed to enhance attitudes towards word processing. Subjects entered these belief statements onto the computer themselves, using a simple word-processing package. Beliefs which had been identified as more salient were more effective in changing attitudes than were less salient beliefs. Results were discussed with regard to their implications for computer training.

Religious fundamentalism and integrative complexity of thought: a relationship for existential content only?

Do religious people think about their lives and the world around them in ways that differ from less religious or nonreligious persons? This paper explores the possibility that religiousness may be related to one particular structural aspect of information processing, the integrative complexity of peoples thinking about various issues. Integrative Complexity. Recent conceptualizations of integrative complexity (IC) of information processing have emphasized the role of both dispositional and situational determinants, and their interaction (e.g., Tetlock 1985; Walker 1987). Here, we follow up recent work in further exploring religiousness, as well as specific dispositional (authoritarianism, dogmatism, need for cognition) and situational (content domain, familiarity with issues, and extent to which complexity is prodded) variables related to IC of thought, with a particular focus on religious fundamentalism and content domains.

Community and religious involvement as contexts of identity change across late adolescence and emerging adulthood

Latent growth curve modeling was used to describe longitudinal trends in community and religious involvement and Marcia’s (1966) four identity statuses (diffusion, foreclosure, moratorium, and achievement), as well as to assess relations between involvement and identity change. Cross-lagged regression models explored temporal ordering of relations between involvement and identity. The study involved 418 participants (Wave 1 M age = 17.44, SD = .81) over four occasions. Individuals on average showed decreases in community and religious involvement, identity diffusion, foreclosure, and moratorium, and no significant change in identity achievement. For community involvement, rates of change were related negatively to those for diffusion and positively to those for achievement. For religious involvement, rates of change correlated negatively with those for diffusion and moratorium, and positively with those for foreclosure. Cross-lagged models showed some effects in the expected direction (involvement to identity), as well as some reciprocal effects. All analyses were conducted for overall identity status as well as the three domains within each status (political, religious, and occupational). In short, the present study provides evidence for community and religious involvement as contexts facilitative of identity formation in late adolescence and emerging adulthood.

Reflections on Religion: Aging, Belief Orthodoxy, and Interpersonal Conflict in the Complexity of Adult Thinking about Religious Issues*

In this study, the integrative complexity of reasoning about three different types of religious issues was examined in a sample of 60 adults across the lifespan. Men and women, aged 18-26, 27-45, and 60-85, were asked about their current beliefs, justifications, and views on alternative positions regarding a personally conflictful religious issue of their own report, a personally nonconflictful issue, and a standard dilemma involving evolutionist versus creationist accounts of human origins. Results showed that older adults reasoned less complexly than did their younger counterparts in all three types of religious dilemmas. As predicted, personally conflictful dilemmas were discussed in a more complex fashion than were other types of dilemmas across age groups, suggesting that external dialogue about issues is linked to more sophisticated mental structures of argumentation. A summary regression analysis showed that those who were older, more orthodox, reported less religious reflection, and had poorer verbal skills, displayed less complex religious reasoning overall.