Some relationships among affection, aggression and alcohol abuse in the family setting.

Three questionnaire studies involving 101, 270, and 144 college students examined the relationship between affectionate behaviors and aggressive behaviors in the family environment as rated by the college students. Measures of affection and aggression were significantly negatively associated in nearly all analyses. Participants' ratings of parental alcohol abuse were positively associated with measures of parental aggression and negatively correlated with measures of parental affection.

Sexual aggression: perceptions of its likelihood of occurring and some correlates of self-admitted perpetration.

175 college undergraduate students completed a questionnaire which contained dating scenarios and questions designed to assess the participants' perceptions about the likelihood that sexual aggression would occur in the described dating situations and how justified sexual aggression would be in those situations. Also included were items to assess self-admitted sexual aggression, self-reported sexual victimization, attitudes toward certain affectionate behaviors, and enjoyment of several magazines including the "soft-core" sexually oriented publication Playboy. Analysis indicated that women made significantly higher estimates of the chances of sexual aggression occurring in the described dating situations.

Assumed personality characteristics of counseling center growth group participants.

Two hundred students enrolled at Eastern Kentucky University were administered a questionnaire designed to measure attitudes toward fictitious students. The "students" were described as being engaged in several kinds of activities including a growth group at the counseling center of the university. The results indicated that growth group participants were rated more negatively than control stimulus persons on several personality dimensions.

Racial prejudice, belief similarity, and human aggression.

Out of 66 undergraduates administered a scale designed to measure racial prejudice, 16 male Caucasians scoring above the median and 16 male Caucasians scoring below the median later interacted in a competition situation with an attitudinally similar or an attitudinally dissimilar black stimulus person. The competition situation was such that the Ss had the opportunity to aggress against their opponent using electric shock. The results indicated that highly prejudiced attitudes were related to high aggression scores.