Sex differences in mortality rates among long-stay psychiatric inpatients

Study of the sex ratio of mortality rates among three categories of long-term psychiatric inpatients suggests a trend toward equalization of death rates between the sexes by specific cause of death, given the constant inpatient environment. The most dramatic example of this equalization was the virtual parity of death rates for ischemic heart disease among younger schizophrenic patients of both sexes in contrast to a three- to fourfold male excess in the general population. An exception to this equalization was seen for neoplasm deaths, which showed a female excess in all three patient groups in contrast to the male excess seen in the general population. Further study of chronically hospitalized psychiatric patients seems indicated to delineate patterns of death associated with biologic variation in a relatively constant environment.     

Sex differences on the MMPI-2 substance abuse scales in psychiatric inpatients.

Sex differences on the MMPI-2 addiction scales (MacAndrew Alcoholism Scale-Revised, Addiction Acknowledgement Scale, Addiction Potential Scale) and their ability to distinguish between substance-abusing and nonabusing psychiatric inpatients were examined. Men obtained higher mean raw scores than women on the MacAndrew Alcoholism Scale-Revised and the Addiction Acknowledgement Scale, and substance abusers scored higher on all three scales. Even relatively low cutoff scores, however, on the MacAndrew Alcoholism Scale-Revised resulted in false negative rates of 37 to 39%. The results support the utility of the MMPI-2 substance abuse scales; however, lower cutoff scores should be used with women and within a psychiatric population.     

Ethnicity/race, paranoia, and psychiatric diagnoses: Clinician bias versus sociocultural differences

Two contradictory assumptions underlie research on race differences in psychiatric diagnoses: (1) the clinician bias (CB) hypothesis, which assumes that Blacks and Whites exhibit symptomatology similarly, but diagnosticians mistakenly judge them differently; and (2) the cultural relativity (CR) hypothesis, which assumes that Blacks and Whites have different modes of expressing psychopathology but diagnosticians are unaware of or insensitive to such cultural differences. The purpose of the present study is to conduct a comparative test of the CB and CR hypotheses focusing on paranoid symptoms. The study examines race differences on the scales of Distrust (DST), Perceived Hostility of Others (PHO), and False Beliefs and Perceptions (FBP) from the Psychiatric Epidemiology Research Interview (PERI), which measure different types of symptoms ranging from relatively ordinary suspiciousness (i.e., mild paranoia) to the severe kind of paranoia often observed in schizophrenia, in relation to rigorous research diagnoses of depression and schizophrenia-like disorders. In effect, the CB and CR hypotheses become the null and alternative hypotheses, respectively, under conditions where the diagnoses are made according to research criteria. The present findings support the CR hypothesis over the CB hypothesis. The implications of these results for the psychiatric misdiagnosis of Black individuals are discussed.     

Sex differences in association of race performance, skin-fold thicknesses, and training variables for recreational half-marathon runners

The purpose of this study was to investigate the association between selected skin-fold thicknesses and training variables with a half-marathon race time, for both male and female recreational runners, using bi- and multivariate analysis. In 52 men, two skin-fold thicknesses (abdominal and calf) were significantly and positively correlated with race time; whereas in 15 women, five (pectoral, mid-axilla, subscapular, abdominal, and suprailiac) showed positive and significant relations with total race time. In men, the mean weekly running distance, minimum distance run per week, maximum distance run per week, mean weekly hours of running, number of running training sessions per week, and mean speed of the training sessions were significantly and negatively related to total race time, but not in women. Interaction analyses suggested that race time was more strongly associated with anthropometry in women than men. Race time for the women was independently associated with the sum of eight skin-folds; but for the men, only the mean speed during training sessions was independently associated. Skin-fold thicknesses and training variables in these groups were differently related to race time according to their sex.     

Sex differences in cognition

Sex differences in cognitive skills, grouped into three areas — motor, spatial, and linguistic — are assessed in the context of current notions of cerebral lateralization (Buffery and Gray, 1972). There are few convincing sex differences, either overall, or in interactions with (putative) functional localization. There are several qualifying criteria (nature of further interactions with age, birth order, culture, sex of experimenter, sex role pressure) which would have to be met, but these are as yet inadequately documented. Serious caution is urged on the proliferating number of researchers in this area.     

Sex differences in depression

The role of housewife has been hypothesized as the source of excess mental illness among married women as compared with married men. The present study found both housewives and working wives significantly more depressed than working husbands. Although working wives report that they do more housework than husbands, this factor was not significantly related to depression for either wives or husbands. It is suggested that the risk factors for depression, including marriage for women, may be better understood in the context of clinical theories of depression, especially the learned helplessness model.     

Sex differences in pain

Are there sex differences in pain? For experimentally delivered somatic stimuli, females have lower thresholds, greater ability to discriminate, higher pain ratings, and less tolerance of noxious stimuli than males. These differences, however, are small, exist only for certain forms of stimulation and are affected by many situational variables such as presence of disease, experimental setting, and even nutritive status. For endogenous pains, women report more multiple pains in more body regions than men. With no obvious underlying rationale, some painful diseases are more prevalent among females, others among males and, for many diseases, symptoms differ between females and males. Sex differences in attitudes exist that affect not only reporting, coping, and responses to treatment, but also measurement and treatment. So many variables are operative, however, that the most striking feature of sex differences in reported pain experience is the apparent overall lack of them. On the other hand, deduction from known biological sex differences suggests that these are powerful sex differences in the operation of pain mechanisms. First, the vaginal canal provides an additional route in women for internal trauma and invasion by pathological agents that puts them at greater risk for developing hyperalgesia in multiple body regions. Second, sex differences in temporal patterns are likely to give rise to sex differences in how pain is "learned" and stimuli are interpreted, a situation that could lead to a greater variability and wider range of pains without obvious peripheral pathology among females. Third, sex differences in the actions of sex hormones suggest pain-relevant differences in the operation of many neuroactive agents, opiate and nonopiate systems, nerve growth factor, and the sympathetic system. Thus, while inductive analysis of existing data demonstrate more similarities than differences in pain experience between females and males, deductive analysis suggests important operational sex differences in its production.     

Sex differences in self-silencing

The construct of self-silencing was proposed to account for women's greater vulnerability to developing depression. This study of 1,117 students (795 women and 322 men) explored possible explanations for the empirical finding that men self-silence to the same or greater extent than women. Analysis showed that men reported more self-silencing than women. A factor analysis confirmed the subscale structure of the Silencing the Self Scale for women and men, with relatively few departures from the originally proposed subscales. Depression and self-silencing scores were correlated positively for both men and women. The results of two multiple regressions, performed separately for men and women, showed that depressive symptomatology accounted for a significant percentage of the variance in self-silencing but that social desirability did not account for a significant increment in the variance accounted for in silencing the self. The scores on the Care as Self-sacrifice and the Divided Self subscales were intercorrelated for women, but not for men, indicating that there may be a sex difference in perception of self-silencing behavior.     

Sex and cultural differences in lefthandedness

Sex differences are presented for the students of architecture and music, and the distribution of sex in the tested sample, and the population is discussed. The results are related to other studies in Scandinavia, which give comparable results. A genetic/cultural model is used to discuss the differences between results from Scandinavia, USA, and other parts of the world.     

Sex differences in personality and expectancy

It has been shown that women have a lower expectancy than men before examinations, without there being any differences in past performance levels or in work spent in exam preparations. It was proposed that these sex differences in expectancy could be understood as an expression of differences in instrumental/expressive personality dispositions. In a group of undergraduate psychology students tested a short time before examination, scores on a composite index called “Strong” were found to account for a significant but small amount of variance in expectancy estimates. The relationship between expectancy and Strong was also found to depend on the level of another composite index called “Warm.” A fairly high correlation between expectancy and Strong was thus found for Ss describing themselves as warm. For Ss describing themselves as not very warm, no relationship between expectancy and Strong was found. When differences in personality traits were controlled, however, women were still found to have a lower expectancy than men. Expectancy was found to be a more accurate predictor of actual grades for Ss with high scores on instrumental traits than for Ss with low scores.     

Sex,race, and experiences of aggression

Most previous research on sex differences in experienced aggression has confounded the sex of the aggressor and of the target by considering married or dating couples. In the present study, black and white male and female college students were asked about specific acts of aggression which they had received from or directed toward a male or female. As predicted, males were likely to have both received and exhibited more forms of aggressive behavior, although females were somewhat more likely to have been honked at, to have been forced by a male to have sex, and to have slapped someone. Few racial differences were found, but it appeared that blacks might have been relatively more likely to exhibit physical aggression and whites to exhibit nonphysical aggression. Some differences were found in specific behaviors directed toward and received from males and females, but in general subjects said that they received more aggressive behaviors than they directed toward others. © 1992 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Sex differences in preadolescent self-disclosure

Both amount and content of self-disclosure may vary with sex role. Both adult and preadolescent females have been reported as engaging in greater amounts of self-disclosure than males; the present study attempted to replicate these findings with preadolescents, and to investigate sex differences in the content of self-disclosure. A self-disclosure questionnaire covering a wide range of subjects was administered to 307 urban children. The sex difference on the total number of items revealed to a friend closely approached significance, with girls showing greater disclosure. When only intimate content items were examined, the sex difference reached clear significance. Content analysis showed that girls were more willing to reveal items related to emotionality, anxiety, and dependence.     

Sex differences in achievement motivation

Abstract.— Norwegian undergraduate psychology students were given Heckhausen's TAT test of achievement motivation prior to or after final course examination. Women obtained higher mean score on Fear of Failure than men on both occasions. There was no sex difference in length of protocol, nor was this variable related to any of the motivation scores. Success in terms of examination results did not affect motivation scores, whereas failure led to higher score on Hope of Success for men but not for women.     

Sex differences in listening comprehension

In order to examine the effect of sex of the speaker on listening comprehension in a public speaking situation, 60 male and 60 female subjects viewed either a male or female speaker presenting a talk on either a masculine (chess), feminine (interior decorating), or neutral (snow skiiing) topic. The results supported the hypotheses that when a male speaks he is listened to more carefully than a female speaker, even when she makes the identical presentation. No differences were found when the topic was biased towards one sex; males were still recalled better than females. The above relationships were also true for male and female subjects; both recalled information more accurately from male speakers than from female ones. Rating of informativeness of the presentation showed no difference for sex of the speaker; but effectiveness ratings of the speaker indicated that while both male and female subjects rated male speakers equally effective, the same was not true for the female speakers. Male subjects rated the female speakers significantly more effective than they did male speakers, whereas female subjects rated male and female speakers equally effective.This article is based in part on the first author's master's thesis, submitted to the Graduate School, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, under the direction of the second author. This research was supported in part by the Center for Creative Leadership, Greensboro, North Carolina. A portion of this paper was presented at the 23rd Southeastern Psychological Association Convention, Hollywood, Florida, May 1977.     

Sex differences and adolescent depression

This study investigates the role of certain psychosocial variables--sex, age, body image/self-esteem, self-consciousness, stressful life events, and the degree to which an individual identifies with the cultural stereotype of masculinity--as correlates and antecedents to depression in adolescents and explores possible intraindividual mediators of the stress-depression relationship in adolescents. A battery of self-report measures was administered to public high school students in Grades 9-12 in their classrooms at two different times 1 month apart. Female adolescents reported more depressive symptoms, self-consciousness, stressful recent events, feminine attributes, and negative body image and self-esteem; no age effects were obtained. Results suggest a model of adolescent depression in which body/self-esteem and stressful recent events are significant contributors.