MATERIALISM, SOCIOCULTURAL APPEARANCE MESSAGES, AND PATERNAL ATTITUDES PREDICT COLLEGE WOMEN'S ATTITUDES ABOUT COSMETIC SURGERY

Rates of cosmetic surgery procedures have increased dramatically over the past several decades, but only recently have studies of cosmetic surgery attitudes among the general population begun to appear in the literature. The vast majority of those who undergo cosmetic surgery are women. We examined cosmetic surgery attitudes among 218 undergraduate women, most of whom were White. Specifically, we examined their acceptance of cosmetic surgery and expressed desire to undergo cosmetic surgery procedures, and several potential predictors: appearance attitudes of mothers, fathers, and friends; awareness and internalization of sociocultural appearance messages; and materialism. Multiple regression analyses indicated that materialism and internalization of sociocultural messages consistently emerged as significant predictors of acceptance of cosmetic surgery and desire for cosmetic surgery procedures. Paternal attitudes positively predicted acceptance of cosmetic surgery for social reasons and desire for cosmetic surgery; nonmaterialism negatively predicted considering cosmetic surgery and the desire for cosmetic surgery procedures.     

Patterns of reflex action,their autonomic components,and their behavioral significance

This is a discussion of the evidence that autonomic system reflexes are invariably triggered by stimuli that evoke both simple and complex somatic reflexes. Stimuli not only initiate reverberatory activity but sequences of reinforcements from higher centers. Reflexes come in chains, one reaction triggering another. Reflex actions are patterned, and these patterns are appropriate to the behavioral requirement indicated by stimuli. Reciprocal action produces a powerful braking or stimulatory action. Coactivation or synergic action of autonomie “antagonists” also occurs and can effect a greater cardiac output in certain vascular reflexes than can sympathetic action alone. Coactivation of vagus and sympathetic fibers occuring in reflex action or resulting from stimulation of specific areas in the hypothalamus has a physiologic importance to attainment of maximal cardiac function. Finally, two additional suggestions are made: (1) that the rhythmic reflex feedback discharge of the vagus from the baroreceptors aids in maintaining the regularity of cardiac rhythm as by interaaction of oscillators and (2) that the autonomic system, due to its early and often conditioned response, can be determinative as well as modulatory and supportive of behavior.     

Role of specific similarity in a medical diagnostic task.

Three experiments are reported showing that diagnosis of skin disorders by medical residents and general practitioners was facilitated by similar cases previously seen in the same context. Diagnosis of similar cases was facilitated more than that of dissimilar cases in the same diagnostic category, demonstrating that facilitation was not solely due to activation of the diagnostic category as a whole. Because diagnosis was posed in a multiple-choice format that always included the correct diagnosis, the relative disadvantage of dissimilar items was not due to the unavailability of the category name. The similarity effect also occurred with 2-week delay between the initial case and the test cases. Variations in diagnostic procedure, ranging from giving a quick first impression to arguing for given alternative diagnoses before selection, did not interact with the effect of similarity. This result suggests that the similarity effect is not strongly dependent on a particular diagnostic strategy.     

Instantiated features and the use of "rules."

Classification "rules" in expert and everyday discourse are usually deficient by formal standards, lacking explicit decision procedures and precise terms. The authors argue that a central function of such weak rules is to focus on perceptual learning rather than to provide definitions. In 5 experiments, transfer following learning of family resemblance categories was influenced more by familiar-appearing features than by novel-appearing features equally acceptable under the rule. This occurred both when rules were induced and when rules were given at the beginning of instruction. To model this and other phenomena in categorization, features must be represented on 2 levels: informational and instantiated. These 2 feature levels are crucial to provide broad generalization while reflecting the known peculiarities of a complex world.     

Three steps to open science for qualitative research in psychology

Principles and applications of open science (also referred to as open research or open scholarship) in psychology have emerged in response to growing concerns about the replicability, transparency, reproducibility, and robustness of psychological research alongside global moves to open science in many fields. Our objective in this paper is to inform ways of collectively constructing open science practices and systems that are appropriate to, and get the best out of, the full range of qualitative and mixed-method approaches used in psychology. We achieve this by describing three areas of open research practice (contributorship, pre-registration, and open data) and explore how and why qualitative researchers might consider engaging with these in ways that are compatible with a qualitative research paradigm. We argue it is crucial that open research practices do not (even inadvertently) exclude qualitative research, and that qualitative researchers reflect on how we can meaningfully engage with open science in psychology.     

What do children know about the universal quantifiers all and each?

Children's comprehension of the universal quantifiers all and each was explored in a series of experiments using a picture selection task. The first experiment examined children's ability to restrict a quantifier to the noun phrase it modifies. The second and third experiments examined children's ability to associate collective, distributive, and exhaustive representations with sentences containing universal quantifiers. The collective representation corresponds to the “group” meaning (for All the flowers are in a vase all of the flowers are in the same vase). The distributive representation implies a pairing (e.g., each flower paired with a vase for Each flower is in a vase). The exhaustive representation exhausts both sets (e.g., for The flowers are in the vases all the flowers are in vases and all the vases have flowers in them). Four- to 10-year-old children had little difficulty restricting the quantifier all to the noun it modified in a task which required them to attend to the group feature of all. In contrast, only 9- and 10-year-olds were able to solve the task when the quantifier was each and the pictures showed entities in partial one-to-one correspondence. Children showed a preference for associating collective pictures with sentences containing all and distributive pictures with sentences containing each. The results suggest that between the ages of 5 and 10 years, children's semantic representations undergo less radical changes than others have proposed. Instead, developmental change may occur gradually as children acquire linguistic cues which map onto existing semantic representations.     

The effects of muscle tension on cerebral circulation in blood-phobic and non-phobic subjects

This study aimed to assess whether (1) a muscle tensing procedure which has been found to be useful in the treatment of blood-phobic patients produces an increase in heart rate and cerebral blood flow and (2) whether this increase is greater than that produced by mental effort alone. Subjects were 17 volunteers with a history of fainting in response to blood-injury stimuli, (12 were phobic) and 8 volunteers with no fainting history. They were required to (a) rest, (b) do mental arithmetic, and (c) repeatedly tense and release their arm and leg muscles. It was found that Ss, heart rate and cerebral blood flow velocity were significantly greater during the muscle tensing procedure than during mental arithmetic or resting conditions. The increased cerebral blood flow produced by muscle tensing may enable blood phobic patients to prevent fainting during exposure treatment.     

Failure of strange females to cause pregnancy block in collared lemmings, Dicrostonyx groenlandicus

The effects of exposure to unfamiliar females on pregnancy success of recently mated females were examined in collared lemmings (Dicrostonyx groenlandicus). Four days after mating, females in their home cage were exposed to strange, female intruders that were either nonpregnant or 16 days pregnant. Other recently mated females were introduced to the home cage of 16-day-pregnant females. Pregnancy success of the recently mated females was not reduced in any of these treatments. In the paired encounters, there was no relationship between dominance status and pregnancy status, nor between dominance and pregnancy success. These results do not support the hypothesis that in species in which females are aggressive and readily commit infanticide, unfamiliar females should cause other females to terminate early-stage pregnancies.