Nonclinical panic in college students: an investigation of prevalence and symptomatology

This article presents data on the prevalence and symptomatology of panic attacks and panic disorder (PD) in a large nonclinical sample (n = 2,375) of college students. Results showed that approximately 12% of the sample had experienced at least one unexpected panic attack and that 2.36% met DSM-III-R criteria for panic disorder. Although there were no sex differences in overall panic attack prevalence, men reported significantly more panic-related worry than women, and women reported a higher panic frequency than men. Compared to subjects who met DSM-III-R criteria for PD, infrequent panickers presented with fewer panic symptoms, fewer panic episodes, less panic-related worry, lower anxiety sensitivity, and less panic-related avoidance. Moreover, compared with PD subjects, the infrequent panickers were much less likely to report fears of dying, going insane, and derealization during a panic attack. The findings provide preliminary support for the role of anxious apprehension as a psychological vulnerability factor in the pathogenesis of panic disorder.     

Rorschach records of Nazi war criminals: a reanalysis using current scoring and interpretation practices

The Nuremberg trials focused worldwide attention on 22 Nazi war criminals. Rorschach Inkblot tests were administered to these Nazi leaders in an attempt to understand the Nazi personality. Past studies which have described and interpreted these Rorschach records have made at least two types of errors in their analyses. One is that of overinterpretation and excessive inference. A second common error has been the failure to detect meaningful distinctions between protocols that represent significant differences in personality style. This latter error is shown in repeated attempts to group all Nazi protocols into one distinct "Nazi personality." This investigation attempted to quantify the analysis of these Nazi Rorschach records, specifically those Nazi leaders who were sentenced to life imprisonment or execution for their war crimes against humanity, by utilizing Exner's (1985a) standardized Comprehensive Scoring System as well as computerized objective interpretation software based on the Exner system (1986). This modern analysis of the Rorschach records demonstrates that the Nazi war criminals cannot be grouped together into one specific mental disorder that would adequately characterize these diverse individuals. The varying degrees of psychopathology of the Nazi leaders are illustrated by analyses of individual Rorschach protocols.     

From rarity to evaluative extremity: effects of prevalence information on evaluations of positive and negative characteristics

Experiments showed a scarcity principle in evaluative judgments such that the identical characteristic is evaluated more extremely the lower its perceived prevalence. In Study 1, Ss evaluated a fictitious medical condition that was described as either beneficial or detrimental to health and as occurring in either 30% or in one half of 1% of a test population. The condition was evaluated more extremely--as as a more positive health asset or a more negative health liability--in the low-prevalence than in the high-prevalence conditions. Study 2 demonstrated the same effect in self-evaluations and with a different manipulation of perceived prevalence. Ss were told that they actually had the fictitious medical condition, that it was either beneficial or detrimental to their health, and either that they were the only 1 of 5 Ss who had it or that 4 of the 5 did. Low-prevalence Ss exhibited more extreme evaluative, affective, and behavioral reactions to the medical condition than did high-prevalence Ss. The origins and validity of the scarcity principle are discussed, as are its implications for uniqueness theory, reactance theory, and social evaluation theories.     

Social and cognitive strategies for coping with accountability: conformity, complexity, and bolstering

This experiment tested predictions derived from a social contingency model of judgment and choice that identifies 3 distinctive strategies that people rely on in dealing with demands for accountability from important interpersonal or institutional audiences. The model predicts that (a) when people know the views of the audience and are unconstrained by past commitments, they will rely on the low-effort acceptability heuristic and simply shift their views toward those of the prospective audience, (b) when people do not know the views of the audience and are unconstrained by past commitments, they will be motivated to think in relatively flexible, multidimensional ways (preemptive self-criticism), and (c) when people are accountable for positions to which they feel committed, they will devote the majority of their mental effort to justifying those positions (defensive bolstering). The experiment yielded results supportive of these 3 predictions. The study also revealed some evidence of individual differences in social and cognitive strategies for coping with accountability.     

Relation of sympathy and personal distress to prosocial behavior: a multimethod study

Assessed sympathy and personal distress with facial and physiological indexes (heart rate) as well as self-report indexes and examined the relations of these various indexes to prosocial behavior for children and adults in an easy escape condition. Heart rate deceleration during exposure to the needy others was associated with increased willingness to help. In addition, adults' reports of sympathy, as well as facial sadness and concerned attention, were positively related to their intention to assist. For children, there was some indication that report of positive affect and facial distress were negatively related to prosocial intentions and behavior, whereas facial concern was positively related to the indexes of prosocial behavior. These findings are interpreted as providing additional, convergent support for the notion that sympathy and personal distress are differentially related to prosocial behavior.     

The structure of interpersonal traits: Wiggins's circumplex and the five-factor model

Using a sample of 315 adult men and women, self-reports on Wiggins's revised Interpersonal Adjective Scales were jointly factored with self-reports, peer ratings, and spouse ratings on the NEO Personality Inventory to examine the relations between the two models. Results suggest that the interpersonal circumplex is defined by the two dimensions of Extraversion and Agreeableness, and that the circular ordering of variables is not an artifact of response biases or cognitive schemata. Circumplex and dimensional models appear to complement each other in describing the structure of personality, and both may be useful to social psychologists in understanding interpersonal behavior.     

Psychometric properties of the Survey of Personal Beliefs: a rational-emotive measure of irrational thinking

A test consistency and confirmatory factor analyses were performed on the Survey of Personal Beliefs, a new measure of irrational thinking based on rational-emotive personality theory. The survey, which was logically derived, includes a general rationality factor and subscales measuring five hypothesized core categories of irrational beliefs. Subjects included a nonclinical sample of 130 men and 150 women, with a mean age of 46. Results indicated that the Survey of Personal Beliefs had satisfactory total and scale reliability. The confirmatory analyses supported a higher order factor model including 5 first-order factors ( awfulizing, self-directed shoulds, other-directed shoulds, low frustration tolerance, and self-worth) and 1 second-order or general factor.     

Children's choice: Sensitivity to changes in reinforcer density

Two experiments were carried out in which children's sensitivity to changes in reinforcer density (number of reinforcers per session) was measured in a choice paradigm. In Experiment 1, 24 girls (ages 6, 9, and 12 years) performed on concurrent-chain schedules of reinforcement. The initial links were variable-interval 10-s schedules. One terminal link always gave three tokens after 30 s, but the parameters associated with the other were varied. Independent manipulations of reinforcer size (two tokens or four tokens) and prereinforcement delay (25 s or 65 s) led to equal changes in the relative density of tokens that could be earned on the schedules. Subjects at all ages were sensitive to changes in reinforcer density brought about by changes in reinforcer size, whereas only 3 12-year-olds showed sensitivity to the changes brought about by manipulation of prereinforcer delay. In Experiment 2, titration procedures were used to test the extent of this insensitivity to delay in 32 6- and 12-year-old children. In these procedures, a repeated choice of the large reinforcer increased the delay to its delivery, and a repeated choice of the small reinforcer reduced the delay to the delivery of the large reinforcer. Whereas 6-year-old boys and girls tended to maintain a strong preference for the large reinforcer, so increasing the delay to its delivery, 12-year-olds tended to distribute their responses to both alternatives, thus producing a stable level of delay to the large reinforcer. The results from the two experiments support the idea of two stages in the development of adaptive intertemporal choice.     

Gender and Sex-Role Influences on Children''s Self-Esteem

This study examined direct and moderating influences of gender and sex-role orientations on children's general self-esteem. Moderating influences of these variables on the prediction of self-esteem were examined with respect to two sets of competence beliefs regarding school achievement: perceived capacities and perceived strategies for doing well in school. One hundred nineteen fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade children were assessed using the Perceived Competence Scale for Children (Harter, 1982), the Multidimensional Measure of Children's Perceptions of Control (Connell, 1985), and the Children's Personal Attributes Questionnaire (Hall & Halberstadt, 1980). Correlational and hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated that upper elementary schoolchildren's general self-esteem is (a) marginally related to biological gender, with boys showing a slight advantage; (b) significantly related to masculinity and androgyny; and (c) predicted more strongly by perceived capacities to do schoolwork in girls than in boys, and by perceived (lack of) strategies for academic success in nontraditionally sex-typed children than in traditionally sex-typed children. Of the two nontraditionally sex-typed groups, androgynous children were found to have more positive school competence beliefs than were undifferentiated children.