For the love of reading: Recreational reading reduces psychological distress in college students and autonomous motivation is the key.

OBJECTIVE: Reading is often cited as beneficial for one's mental health, but the research on this topic is limited. The goal of the present research was to examine whether recreational reading is beneficial for mental health during college, and to determine what motivates recreational reading. PARTICIPANTS: Participants were 231 university students from a large Canadian University. Methods: A longitudinal design was employed and students completed online surveys on recreational reading, motivation, psychological distress and need frustration at the beginning and end of the academic year. Results: Recreational reading was associated with reduced psychological distress over the school year. Recreational reading seemed to buffer against the frustration of one's basic psychological needs which led to improved mental health over the school year. Students who were more autonomously motivated reported reading more books recreationally. Conclusion: Recreational reading is a simple and cost-effective tool to help college students cope with mental health problems.

Autonomous motivation and support flourishes for individuals higher in collaborative personality factors: Agreeableness, assisted autonomy striving, and secure attachment.

INTRODUCTION: Individuals who strive autonomously for their goals, and who perceive autonomy supportive environments are more successful during goal pursuit. What dispositional factors predict autonomy flourishing during goal pursuit? METHODS: Four longitudinal studies were conducted over an 8-month academic year, and university students (Ntotal  = 1,544) completed surveys on motivation, support, and personality. Structural equation models were created using Mplus software to test whether collaborative personality factors were related to growth in autonomous motivation and autonomy support. RESULTS: All three distinct collaborative personality factors, trait Agreeableness, assisted autonomy striving, and secure parental attachment, were related to increases in autonomous motivation over the academic year. Conscientiousness, assisted autonomy, and secure attachment were related to increases in perceived autonomy support. A higher order latent collaborative traits factor, composed of Agreeableness, assisted autonomy, and secure attachment was found to be related to increased autonomous motivation and support over the academic year and resulted in increased goal progress. CONCLUSION: These results suggest that individuals higher in collaborative personality factors experience growth in personal autonomy during goal pursuit. Future research is needed to determine how to promote collaboration in goal pursuit to further help individuals successfully strive for their goals.

Size-exclusion chromatography of perfluorosulfonated ionomers.

A size-exclusion chromatography (SEC) method in N,N-dimethylformamide containing 0.1 M LiNO(3) is shown to be suitable for the determination of molar mass distributions of three classes of perfluorosulfonated ionomers, including Nafion(®). Autoclaving sample preparation is optimized to prepare molecular solutions free of aggregates, and a solvent exchange method concentrates the autoclaved samples to enable the use of molar-mass-sensitive detection. Calibration curves obtained from light scattering and viscometry detection suggest minor variation in the specific refractive index increment across the molecular size distributions, which introduces inaccuracies in the calculation of local absolute molar masses and intrinsic viscosities. Conformation plots that combine apparent molar masses from light scattering detection with apparent intrinsic viscosities from viscometry detection partially compensate for the variations in refractive index increment. The conformation plots are consistent with compact polymer conformations, and they provide Mark-Houwink-Sakurada constants that can be used to calculate molar mass distributions without molar-mass-sensitive detection. Unperturbed dimensions and characteristic ratios calculated from viscosity-molar mass relationships indicate unusually free rotation of the perfluoroalkane backbones and may suggest limitations to applying two-parameter excluded volume theories for these ionomers.

A meta-analytic review of experiments examining the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation.

A meta-analysis of 128 studies examined the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation. As predicted, engagement-contingent, completion-contingent, and performance-contingent rewards significantly undermined free-choice intrinsic motivation (d = -0.40, -0.36, and -0.28, respectively), as did all rewards, all tangible rewards, and all expected rewards. Engagement-contingent and completion-contingent rewards also significantly undermined self-reported interest (d = -0.15, and -0.17), as did all tangible rewards and all expected rewards. Positive feedback enhanced both free-choice behavior (d = 0.33) and self-reported interest (d = 0.31). Tangible rewards tended to be more detrimental for children than college students, and verbal rewards tended to be less enhancing for children than college students. The authors review 4 previous meta-analyses of this literature and detail how this study's methods, analyses, and results differed from the previous ones.

Identified and introjected forms of political internalization: extending self-determination theory.

Canadian voters' reasons for following political events were assessed prior to the 1992 Constitutional Referendum and the 1993 federal election. Results showed that reasons reflecting identification were endorsed more frequently than those reflecting introjection, and distinctive patterns of cognitions, emotions, and actions were associated with the 2 types of internalization. Identification was associated with actively seeking information about political events, possessing a complex set of political attitudes, and being more likely to actually vote. Introjection was associated with relying on the influence of important others, experiencing conflicted emotions about political outcomes, and vulnerability to persuasion. The study also provided evidence that identification and introjection toward politics are distinguishable from intrinsic motivation and amotivation.

Dependency, self-criticism and social interactions.

We investigated the social interactions of college students varying in dependency and self-criticism. Forty-eight college students used a modified version of the Rochester Interaction Record to record quantitative and qualitative features of every 10-minute or longer interaction during a seven-day period. Daily measures of mood were also collected. Dependency was related to more frequent and more intimate interactions, and self-criticism was negatively related to pleasantness of social interactions. Although dependency and self-criticism were both associated with daily dysphoria, the social interaction findings could not be attributed to the effects of mood. The social environments associated with dependency and self-criticism may influence the aetiology and course of depressive episodes.

A multifactorial approach to the study of gender characteristics.

The present article reviews some of the central conceptual issues confronted by gender researchers as they have tried to forge a theory of gender identity that can account for the complexity and diversity of gender-related characteristics displayed by women and men. An emerging consensus suggests that gender is incorporated into an individual's self-concept in multiple and loosely connected ways. We review one example of this emerging multiplicity perspective, Spence's (1993) multifactorial gender identity theory, and describe three recent studies testing its usefulness. We also discuss ways in which multiplicity models of gender could benefit from considering parallel developments in the general personality literature regarding the problem of levels or domains. In particular, it is argued that McAdams's (this issue) integrative three-level model of the structure of personality offers a helpful framework for guiding future test construction and theory development in gender research.

Theories of ability and the pursuit of challenge among adolescents with mild mental retardation.

Dweck (1991) distinguishes two different ways children can view their abilities. Children who have an 'incremental theory' of their ability believe that it is a changeable, increasable and controllable quantity. Those who have an 'entity theory' believe their ability represents a fixed, unchangeable trait. Children with an 'incremental theory' tend to display adaptive achievement behaviours such as pursuing challenging activities, whereas children with an 'entity theory' tend to avoid challenges. The present study examined the usefulness of this distinction in understanding the behaviour and affect of children with mental retardation in an achievement situation. Results from an attributional questionnaire showed that children with mental retardation were significantly less likely to possess an incremental theory of their abilities than children without retardation. However, experimental results showed that when the context highlighted an incremental theory of ability, children with mental retardation showed the same positive motivational response as children without retardation (i.e. they chose high levels of challenge and reported greater interest-enjoyment). One unexpected finding emerged: children with mental retardation showed a tendency to choose lower challenge levels after receiving verbally administered success feedback relative to neutral feedback.

Causality orientations, failure, and achievement.

Two studies examined similarities between Deci and Ryan's (1985) causality orientations theory and Dweck and Leggett's (1988) social-cognitive theory of achievement. Study 1 examined the conceptual similarity between the individual difference measures central to the two theories. It was shown that autonomous college students are likely to adopt learning goals and report high confidence in their academic abilities; controlled students are likely to adopt performance goals and to report high levels of confidence in their ability; and impersonal students are likely to possess the classic helpless pattern of performance goals and low confidence in their academic abilities. Study 2 examined whether causality orientations, like Dweck's measures of goals and confidence, moderate the impact of failure feedback on motivation as measured in persistence and performance. The results suggested that autonomous individuals respond to failure in a mastery-oriented fashion, whereas impersonal individuals respond in a helpless manner. The response of controlled individuals to failure parallels that of people described as ego-involved or reactive.

Gender characteristics and adjustment: a longitudinal study.

The present study used a prospective longitudinal design to investigate the long-term developmental implications of gender-related interests and traits. Archival data were available for Ss in the R. R. Sears, Maccoby, and Levin (1957) study. Men, who at age 12 endorsed interests and undesirable traits more typically associated with women, had poorer social-personal adjustment at ages 31 and 41. No effects were found for women. Feminine expressive traits at age 31 did not impact on 41-year-old adjustment for either men or women, whereas masculine instrumental traits were positively related for both. These findings support a multidimensional view of gender and indicate that harsher consequences follow when adolescent boys endorse nontraditional gender-related interests and undesirable traits than when girls do so.

Family origins of adolescent self-criticism and its continuity into adulthood.

We used a prospective longitudinal design to examine the relation between parenting experiences at age 5 and level of self-criticism at age 12 and the stability of self-criticism from age 12 to age 31 in 156 subjects. The results showed that mothers' reports of parenting behaviors that reflect restrictiveness and rejection were related to the development of self-criticism, particularly when received from the same-sex parent. Partial correlational analyses revealed that the parenting-self-criticism relations remained significant when the mother's report of the child's early temperament was statistically controlled. The results also showed that for women, self-criticism was very stable from early adolescence to young adulthood. By contrast, there was no relation between self-criticism at ages 12 and 31 for men; however, there was a strong relation for men between age 12 self-criticism and inhibited aggressive impulses at age 31.

The family origins of empathic concern: a 26-year longitudinal study.

This study examined whether adult empathic concern was associated with parent behavior in early childhood. Subjects were drawn from a longitudinal sample first investigated by Sears, Maccoby, and Levin (1957). At age 31, 75 subjects completed the Adjective Checklist (Gough & Heilbrun, 1965, 1983), from which an index of empathic concern was derived. Scores on this index were regressed on 11 parenting dimensions derived from maternal interviews when the subjects were 5 years old. The results revealed a significant multiple R indicating that, taken together, the parenting dimensions predicted the level of empathic concern at age 31. Adult levels of empathic concern were most strongly related to the following parenting dimensions: paternal involvement in child care, maternal tolerance of dependent behavior, maternal inhibition of child's aggression, and maternal satisfaction with the role of mother.