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Reports on students (N=40) who were confronted with the choice of riding with a driver who appeared intoxicated. Results show that participants' consistently chose to enter the car in all conditions except when the peer refused. The condition of the driver had no effect on participants' reported concern. (EMK)

Participants were 192 university students (96 males, 96 females) who completed the Body Esteem scale (Franzoi & Shields, 1984) under instructions to rate their feelings about their own bodies, rate their feelings about a specific or 'average' student's body, and rate the importance they and others attached to these feelings. One of the findings is that when individuals perceived themselves as less positive on a particular desirable physical trait, they also rated the trait as less important to possess in the first place. The only exception to this was women's weight concern. It was also found that men generally rated themselves higher on body-esteem subscales than they rated other men, while women did not exhibit such self-serving evaluations of their bodies. One implication from these results is that the same self-enhancement strategies successfully employed by individuals in other areas of self-evaluations were not successful in enhancing one's body esteem, especially women's weight concern.

Individuals who are low in assertiveness may take longer to sort out, process, and state their own perceptions, attitudes and priorities, which puts them at a disadvantage in getting their needs met. The reason for this may not be inhibition in social situations or cognitive ability, but a lack of clarity regarding their own attitudes, opinions, preferences, goals, and priorities. 101 undergraduate students (57% women and 43% men) completed a demographics questionnaire, the Wonderlic Personnel Test, a self-monitoring scale, the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale, the Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale, the College Self-expression Scale, and a test of the false-consensus effect. Response latencies to questions were measured. Individuals with higher scores on the Wonderlic Personnel Test answered items more quickly but, even when cognitive ability was controlled, individuals low in assertiveness still took significantly longer to respond to questions about themselves, their opinions, and their preferences. If individuals fall behind at this early step in the process of asserting themselves, then they may be more likely to miss opportunities to be assertive.

This study investigated the emotions involved in the writing process by analyzing a short inventory completed by 87 novice writers before and after self-sponsored and required writing exercises. Results are presented. (Author/MT)

The Brand Emotions Scale for Writers (BESW) is a 20-item scale designed to measure writers' emotions immediately before, during, and immediately after writing. This article describes the development of the BESW and the factor structure of the three different scale forms. (BS)

Reports on a study which evaluated the need of college students for social approval. Comparison between adult children of alcoholics (ACOA) to adult children of nonalcoholics; In-depth look at the high need for social approval by college-age ACOA; Methodology used to conduct the study; Results of the study.

The knew-it-all-along effect is investigated by comparing pre- and post-election predictions of subjects concerning three electoral races in the November 1984 elections. The results revealed that when the outcomes of the predictions are known, subjects recall having assigned higher probabilities and percentages to the actual winners of each election, remember having more confidence in the accuracy of these percentages, and claim to have had more knowledge of the candidates than they had before the election. The results were consistent across all three elections and in both repeated-measures and between-groups designs, suggesting that the knew-it-all-along effect is a very robust one. Two underlying processes are hypothesized to account for these results: the availability heuristic and an increase in confidence explanation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]