This experiment compared the effectiveness of a dissuasive message about illicit drugs alone (one-sided condition), and combined with similar material about licit drugs (balanced conditions). The subjects were high-school students. Contrary to expectation, the one-sided message proved effective while its balanced counterparts did not. Explanations in terms of reactance and demand characteristics were found inadequate. It was suggested that the licit-referent content of the balanced messages offered subjects a worse-peril rationalization for permissive attitudes to illicit drugs.

A total of 315 Northern Ireland university students were compared to 302 Republic of Ireland university students in terms of death anxiety, manifest anxiety, and perception of dangerousness of aspects of their environment and attitudes toward the civil disturbances in Northern Ireland. Also using these variables in the Northern Ireland sample, Protestants were compared to Catholics, those having had experiences with the disturbances were compared to those not having had such experiences, and those living in nominally dangerous areas of Belfast were compared to those living in nominally safer areas of Belfast. Students living in Northern Ireland had higher death anxiety and stronger fears than students living in the Republic. Those having had experiences with the civil violence had higher manifest anxiety and stronger fears than those not having has such experiences. Persons living in safe environments thought the disturbances to be more serious than those living in more dangerous environments, a result which is discussed in terms of the media and cognitive dissonance. Finally, an argument is made that the influence of religious denomination is an overemphasized variable in the understanding of the civil disturbances.

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Northern Ireland university students' contact with the Northern Ireland civil disturbances was examined with regard to five dimensions: Friends' Contact; Bomb Contact; Confrontation or Riot Contact; Harassment; and Property Damage. Confrontation and Bomb contact dimensions were further investigated in terms of their personality, social attitude, and alcohol use correlates. Since analyses of variance did not differentiate Protestants and Roman Catholics in terms of intelligence, socioeconomic status, age, location of residence (rural‐urban), or religious homogeneity of peer group with regard to these two contact dimensions, these two groups were combined in stepwise discriminant analyses. The discriminant analyses suggested that, for both genders, contact with the “troubles” may be conceptualized in terms of a positive feedback loop involving social dissatisfaction and helplessness combining with previous contacts to produce future contacts. Further, having been in a bombing appeared to subdue males, but to produce pro‐social aggression in females. The sample consisted of 65 males and 133 females.

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