Suchergebnisse

This study examines how the American electorate has been described by political campaigners between 1948 and 1996. Using a database of some five hundred speeches given on the stump or during national political broadcasts, the authors isolated 898 uses of the phrase "the American people." By examining these phrases for descriptions of the roles, actions, qualities, and circumstances of the people, and by noting their time orientation and the forces aligned against the electorate, the authors present a picture of the people as described. Generally speaking, the people live in the moment, focus on cognitive and axiological matters, serve as agents of the state, and have an equal number of moral, intellectual, and psychological strengths. The texts also show that the people are bedeviled by government itself, but a number of factors—party, era, incumbency, campaign cycle, and so forth—affect the tenor of those characterizations.

Fifty‐six mothers and their 24‐month‐old toddlers were observed on two occasions in a series of laboratory procedures designed to assess relations between emotional functioning (emotional reactivity and emotion regulation) in an individual assessment and social behavior with a same‐sex peer. Emotional reactivity was assessed using two frustration tasks designed to elicit distress. Emotional regulation was assessed by examining the child's behaviors (venting, distraction, focal‐object focus, self‐orientation, and mother‐orientation) when confronted by the two distress‐eliciting tasks. Peer play behaviors were coded for social participation and peer‐directed conflict (aggressive) behavior. The results indicated that both emotional reactivity and emotion regulation were important predictors of at least two types of social behavior: conflict and cooperation. Distress to frustration, when accompanied by high venting or high focal‐object focus, was significantly related to conflict with peers but not when accompanied by distraction, mother‐orientation or self‐focused behaviors. These findings are discussed in terms of the adaptive value of emotion regulation skills in early development, and the importance of identifying the causal relations between child regulation and early social competence.

Sixty‐five mothers and their 24‐month‐old toddlers were observed in a series of laboratory procedures designed to assess relations between maternal interactive style and emotional, behavioral and physiological regulation. Emotional regulation was assessed by examining the child's behaviors (aggression, distraction, object focus) when confronted by three emotion‐eliciting tasks. Behavioral regulation was measured by examining children's ability to comply to maternal requests and to inhibit behavior during a delay task. Physiological regulation was derived from children's cardiac vagal tone responses to emotionally‐arousing situations. Maternal interactive style was assessed by examining mothers' strategies for child behavior management (negative controlling, positive guidance) during three mother‐child tasks. Maternal behavior was related to regulation in each of the three domains. Negative maternal behavior was related to poor physiological regulation, less adaptive emotion regulation, and noncompliant behavior. Positive maternal behavior was correlated with compliance, but not with any of the physiological or emotional measures. These findings are discussed in terms of the adaptive value of self‐regulation in early development, and the importance of identifying the causal relations between maternal behavior and child regulation.