Development and validation of the State Hope Scale.

Defining hope as a cognitive set comprising agency (belief in one's capacity to initiate and sustain actions) and pathways (belief in one's capacity to generate routes) to reach goals, the Hope Scale was developed and validated previously as a dispositional self-report measure of hope (Snyder et al., 1991). The present 4 studies were designed to develop and validate a measure of state hope. The 6-item State Hope Scale is internally consistent and reflects the theorized agency and pathways components. The relationships of the State Hope Scale to other measures demonstrate concurrent and discriminant validity; moreover, the scale is responsive to events in the lives of people as evidenced by data gathered through both correlational and causal designs. The State Hope Scale offers a brief, internally consistent, and valid self-report measure of ongoing goal-directed thinking that may be useful to researchers and applied professionals.

Enhancing the prediction of self-handicapping.

Levels of test anxiety, Type A and Type B coronary-prone behavior, fear of failure, and covert self-esteem were studied as predictors of self-handicapping performance attributions for college women who were placed in either a high- (N = 49) or low- (N = 49) evaluative test or task situation. We hypothesized that test anxiety. Type A or Type B level, and their interaction would account for reliable variance in the prediction of self-handicapping. However, we also theorized that underlying high fear of failure and low covert self-esteem would explain the self-handicapping claims of test-anxious and Type A subjects. The results indicated that only high levels of test anxiety and high levels of covert self-esteem were related to women's self-handicapping attributions.

A comparison of negative practice and systematic desensitization in the treatment of acrophobia.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a symptom scheduling technique in reducing excessive fear. Acrophobic subjects were randomly assigned to one of three treatment conditions (negative practice, desensitization, and relaxation only) or to a waiting list control. Results from four self-report measures and a behavioral measure indicated that negative practice and desensitization were comparably effective. The relaxation only treatment was generally less effective, but did produce some improvement. It was concluded that symptom scheduling can be an effective treatment for acrophobia, and that these results are likely to generalize to clinical populations.

Arousal in alcoholics and social drinkers progressing through a drinking sequence.

Physiological and self-report reactions of 11 nonabstinent, nonhospitalized alcoholics and 11 social drinkers were monitored before, during, and after consumption of two supposedly alcoholic beverages. Unlike previous reports that alcoholics experience increased anxiety/arousal prior to drinking, no such evidence was observed in the present study. Both alcoholics and social drinkers, however evidenced reduced pulse rates during and following drinking. It is suggested that previous investigations may have found predrinking anxiety increases because of their use of hospitalized (and often abstinent) alcoholic and/or their use of procedures which highlighted the negative aspects/consequences of drinking.

A retrospective study of clinical, physiologic and immunologic changes in workers exposed to toluene diisocyanate.

A retrospective study was made of workers in a toluene disocyanate plant using an immunologic test procedure developed at the NIOSH laboratories. Case histories of 32 workers in seven response groupings are presented. Sensitization was found to correlate with the frequency and severity of significant exposures to TDI. Immunologic changes producing tolerance to TDI exposure also resulted in negative response to the antigen challenge tests. Some individuals exposed to TDI may have protective antibodies but still experience bronchoconstriction.