The psychotherapist's duty to act reasonably to prevent suicide: A proposal to allow rational suicide

It is proposed that society should re-examine its assumptions about suicide. Rational suicide is viewed as an extension of the right to die. After a review of the legal liability of the psychotherapist and psychiatric facility for both inpatient and outpatient suicide, the author presents an analysis of philosophical, ethical, and psychoanalytic arguments for allowing rational suicide. It is argued that emotional pain should be given more legitimacy as a reason for suicide. The decision to live or to die is argued to best rest with the individual.     

Research in Consultation: Toward Better Analogues and Outcome Measures

Recommendations for improving consultation research include (a) strengthening consultation analogue research by incorporating “boundary” conditions into research designs and (b) extending the outcome measures used.     

Using focus groups to facilitate culturally anchored research

Scholars have acknowledged the need to anchor scientific knowledge about social and psychological processes in the norms, values, and experiences of the partticular population under study. This article describes how focus groups can be incorporated into the planning stages of a research pogram to facilitate these goals. After a brief overview of teh central components of focus group research, and example from a program of research involving dual-earner African American families is used to as an illustration. The article describes how (a) the identification of cultural knowledge and (b)access to the language participants use to think and talk about a topic can help researchers formulate a conceptual framework, identify important constructs, and develop appropriate instruments for assessing constructs. Some strengths and limitations of focus group research are discussed.     

Gender and height: Developmental patterns in knowledge and use of an accurate stereotype

The belief that men are taller than women is an accurate gender stereotype that is presumably learned through everyday encounters with men and women. It is unlike most gender beliefs that are difficult to quantify and verify, and that may be learned through means other than direct experience. This research makes use of several advantages available when studying an accurate stereotype (e.g., the ability to know the “truth” about judged targets). Subjects from five different age/grade levels (kindergarten, third grade, seventh grade, tenth grade, and college, N=491, 92.26% Caucasian, 7.54% Arabic, 0.2% African American) made judgments of “who is taller” among photographed male—female pairs that had actually been matched in height. Judgments were made of kindergarten, seventh grade, and college photo pairs. In a developmental context, height judgments are particularly interesting because the gender difference in height changes at different ages—specifically, girls are taller than boys around seventh grade. The data indicated that subjects were sensitive to the changing height stereotype—i.e., they judged adult males taller than adult females, but seventh grade females taller than seventh-grade males. However this was most strikingly true among subjects directly faced with this reality in their peer context—seventh graders—and among college students. Height judgments were also sensitive to an ingroup (gender) bias. The data are discussed in reference to the broader literature on stereotyping and base rate influences on judgment.     

Stereotypes on Campus: How Contact and Liking Influence Perceptions of Group Distinctiveness

In two studies, subjects' stereotypes of various campus groups were assessed using a content-free, cognitive methodology in which stereotypes are defined as "generalizations about a class of people that distinguish that class from others" (McCauley, Stitt, & Segal, 1980, p. 197). In an effort to predict strength of stereotypes, four main findings emerged: (a) contact with a group's members was associated with increased liking of the group; (b) contact predicted increased stereotype strength; (c) liking a group was associated with decreased stereotype strength; and (d) over time, the strength of stereotypes tended to decrease. These data are discussed in regard to the contact hypothesis (Airport, 1954; Amir, 1969; Cook, 1978,1984), the role of positive affect in altering cognitive organization, and more generally, to the issue of stereotype development.     

Social Interactions of Obese and Nonobese Women

The stigma associated with obesity is likely to limit the opportunities obese women have to develop social skills. This hypothesis was tested by having obese (n = 15) and nonobese (n = 22) women converse on the telephone with college students who were unaware of the women's weights. Ratings made by judges who listened to the women's contributions to the conversations but who were unaware of their weights showed that obesity was negatively related to judgments about the women's likability, social skills, and physical attractiveness. The telephone partners of obese women rated the women and themselves more negatively than did the partners of nonobese women. Obese and nonobese women generally did not differ in their evaluations of their own and their telephone partners' behavior, and they also did not differ on a measure of social self-esteem. These findings suggest that there are real differences in the social behavior of obese and nonobese women and that these differences affect the impressions formed by those with whom they interact.     

Sex differences in visual-spatial ability: The role of performance factors

Two studies were designed to explore the role of performance factors as sources of the frequently noted higher male scores on visual-spatial ability tests. In the first study, the mental rotations test (MRT) was administered to male and female college students of equally high quantitative ability (based on SAT math scores). Although males had significantly more correct responses on the test than did females, their advantage was eliminated when the ratio of correct responses to items attempted was used as the dependent measure. In the second study, the same test was administered to new groups of male and female college students. In this sample, the males had significantly higher SAT math scores. The MRT was administered under standard, timed conditions and under untimed conditions. Both raw and ratio scores were calculated. With SAT math score as the covariate, analyses of covariance indicated that males demonstrated higher performance in the timed, raw-score condition but not in the untimed or in the ratio-score conditions. The theoretical and social policy implications of these studies are discussed.     

Sex roles and friendship patterns

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationships among sex, sex role orientation, and friendship. Based on the Bem Sex Role Inventory, 164 participants were categorized as either androgynous (17 males; 29 females), traditional (36 males; 39 females), or undifferentiated (26 males; 17 females) in their sex role orientation. Participants reported the number of close male and female friends, and responded to several questionnaires: interpersonal trust of male and female friends, communal and exchange orientations, affective and activity attributes associated with male and female friends, loneliness, and friendship satisfaction. Results indicate that close friends tended to be same sex, even though females had more close friends overall than did the males. Androgyny was related to characteristics that enhance the development and maintenance of close friendships, such as a communal orientation and positive conceptions of friends, while the undifferentiated orientation was related to less relationship enhancing orientations and a less rewarding interpersonal milieu. The study confirms that sex and sex role orientation are important factors in both quantitative and qualitative aspects of friendship during young adulthood.Portions of this paper were presented at the annual convention of the Southwestern Psychological Association, Houston, Texas, April 13, 1989. We appreciate the extensive help of an anonymous reviewer on earlier versions of this paper.     

Using a Person-Centered Approach in Community-Based Instruction for Adults with Developmental Disabilities

Instruction is a variable that has enhanced community access for adults with developmental disabilities. Community-based instruction emerged as an especially useful format to teach individuals daily living and work skills in the settings where skills would be used. As advocacy and self-advocacy for individuals with developmental disabilities increased, professionals recognized the importance of empowerment and self-determination in gaining community access. Adult education that incorporates the values of person-centered planning will evolve beyond what has traditionally been viewed as community-based instruction. This article describes the characteristics of community-based instruction designed to enhance not only community access, but also the participant's overall quality of life.     

WHO CONSIDERS THEMSELVES VICTIMS OF DISCRIMINATION?

We focus on the general issue of how and why individuals might decide if they have been victims of gender discrimination and how social status differences between women and men may change the significance of experiencing gender discrimination. Because both self-protective and situational factors have been found to influence interpretation of prejudicial events, in the present study we explore several individual-difference factors that might differentially predict perceived gender discrimination in women and men. We found that, for men, low self-esteem and high personal assertiveness were related to higher ratings of personal discrimination. Low self-esteem was also related to men's perceptions of discrimination against men as a group. For women, high need for approval was negatively related to perceptions of personal discrimination whereas depression was positively related. Depression was also related to higher ratings of discrimination against women, as was feminism. We argue that perceptions of discrimination serve different purposes for structurally privileged and disadvantaged groups.