I that the disclosure of emotions can have positive consequences for individuals-that emotional disclosure is a Good Thing like democracy, mother, and an annual physical. But, although contemporary psychologists may view emotional disclosure as a Good Thing, this has not been the prevailing view in much of Western thought nor even in twentieth century psychology. For example, the psychologists who first studied human intelligence contrasted rational thought with emotional experience (Schaffer, Gilmer,

Three studies are conducted to assess the uncertainty- threat model of political conservatism, which posits that psychological needs to manage uncertainty and threat are associated with political orientation. Results from structural equation models provide consistent support for the hypothesis that uncertainty avoidance (e.g., need for order, intolerance of ambiguity, and lack of openness to experience) and threat management (e.g., death anxiety, system threat, and perceptions of a dangerous world) each contributes independently to conservatism (vs. liberalism). No support is obtained for alternative models, which predict that uncertainty and threat management are associated with ideological extremism or extreme forms of conservatism only. Study 3 also reveals that resistance to change fully mediates the association between uncertainty avoidance and conservatism, whereas opposition to equality partially mediates the association between threat and conservatism. Implications for understanding the epistemic and existential bases of political orientation are discussed.

A motivational model of alcohol involvement (M. L. Cooper, M. R. Frone, M. Russell, & P. Mudar, 1995) was replicated and extended by incorporating social antecedents and motives and by testing this model cross-sectionally and longitudinally in a sample of college students. Participants (N = 388) completed a questionnaire battery assessing alcohol use and problems, alcohol expectancies, sensation seeking, negative affect, social influences, and drinking motives. Associations among psychosocial antecedents, drinking motives, and alcohol involvement differed from those found by M. L. Cooper et al. (1995). These findings point to the importance of social influences and of positive reinforcement motives but not to the centrality of drinking motives in this population.

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Social influences are among the most robust predictors of adolescent substance use and misuse. Studies with early adolescent samples have supported the need to distinguish among various types of social influences to better delineate relations between social factors and alcohol use and problems. Method: The first major goal of the present study (N = 399, 263 women) was to examine unique relations between particular facets of social influence and alcohol use and problems in a relatively heavy-drinking population (i.e., college students). We hypothesized that active social influences (offers to drink alcohol) and passive social influences (social modeling and perceived norms) would demonstrate positive associations with measures of alcohol use and problems. We also tested the hypothesis that alcohol outcome expectancies would mediate associations between social influences Social influences Social influence variables have been observed to be among the strongest correlates of adolescent substance use and misuse (Hawkins et al., 1992; Jacob and Leonard, 1994). As noted by Jacob and Leonard (1994), there is little doubt that others' substance use, particularly that of close friends, is among the strongest predictors of adolescent substance use. Some research in the area of alcohol use and misuse among underage drinkers has suggested the utility of distinguishing among various types of social influences in order to parse out differing effects on drinking behaviors and suggest optimal intervention strategies (De Vries et al., 1995; Flay and Petraitis, 1993; Oostveen et al., 1996). To this end, Graham and colleagues (1991) proposed a framework that delineated two distinct mechanisms by which social reference groups might influence drinking and labeled these "active" and "passive" social influences.