Freud as Leonardo: Why the First Psychobiography Went Wrong

ABSTRACT The first genuine psychobiography, Sigmund Freud's Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood (1910/1957b), presented several important guidelines for psychobiographical research Among them were the rejection both of pathography and of idealization, and the avoidance both of arguments built upon a single clue and of strong conclusions based upon inadequate data Though the guidelines are sound, Freud violated those guidelines in the very work where they first appeared Freud's methodological errors and his “obsession” with the Leonardo book are traced in part to his projective identification with Leonardo, incorporating aspects of his own sexual history and his anxieties about the future of the psychoanalytic movement     

The relationship of social power to visual displays of dominance between men and women

Two studies, with undergraduate subjects, investigated how sex and situation-specific power factors relate to visual behavior in mixed-sex interactions. The power variable in Study 1 was expert power, based on differential knowledge. Mixed-sex dyads were formed such that members had complementary areas of expertise. In Study 2, reward power was manipulated. Consistent with expectation states theory, both men and women high in expertise or reward power displayed high visual dominance, defined as the ratio of looking while speaking to looking while listening. Specifically, men and women high in expertise or reward power exhibited equivalent levels of looking while speaking and looking while listening. High visual dominance ratios have been associated with high social power in previous research. Both men and women low in expertise or reward power looked more while listening than while speaking, producing a relatively low visual dominance ratio. In conditions in which men and women did not possess differential expertise or reward power, visual behavior was related to sex. Men displayed visual behavior similar to their patterns in the high expertise and high reward power conditions, whereas women exhibited visual behavior similar to their patterns in the low expertise and low reward power conditions. The results demonstrate how social expectations are reflected in nonverbal power displays.     

The evolution of human intrasexual competition: tactics of mate attraction

Darwin's theory of sexual selection suggests that individuals compete with members of their own sex for reproductively relevant resources held by members of the opposite sex. Four empirical studies were conducted to identify tactics of intrasexual mate competition and to test four evolution-based hypotheses. A preliminary study yielded a taxonomy of tactics. Study 1 used close-friend observers to report performance frequencies of 23 tactics to test the hypotheses. Study 2 replicated Study 1's results by using a different data source and subject population. Study 3 provided an independent test of the hypotheses in assessing the perceived effectiveness of each tactic for male and female actors. Although the basic hypotheses were supported across all three studies, there were several predictive failures and unanticipated findings. Discussion centers on the heuristic as well as predictive role of evolutionary theory, and on implications for other arenas of intrasexual competition.     

Personal vulnerability, life events, and depressive symptoms: a test of a specific interactional model

We tested Beck's (1983) hypothesis that depressive symptoms occur when an individual experiences a negative life event that specifically matches the individual's personal motivational vulnerability. Ninety-eight undergraduates completed measures of depression level, recent life events, and sociotropic and autonomous achievement motivations. Consistent with the theory, sociotropy was associated with depression level and also served as a moderator of the relations between depression and frequency of recent negative social events. However, sociotropy also demonstrated nonpredicted interactive effects with negative events categorized a priori as autonomy related. Autonomy was unrelated to depression and showed no evidence of being a vulnerability to any type of life event. The findings generally support the value of examining the role in depression of interactions between personality characteristics and life events, although they do not support the specific matching predictions.     

Depression and mental control: the resurgence of unwanted negative thoughts

In three experiments we examined depressed individuals' mental control abilities and strategies. Experiment 1 revealed that although depressed college students were initially successful in suppressing negative material, they eventually experienced a resurgence of unwanted negative thoughts. Analysis of subjects' stream-of-consciousness reports indicated that this resurgence was associated with the use of negative thoughts as distracters from the unwanted item. In Experiment 2 depressed subjects acknowledged that positive distracters were more effective than negative ones in suppressing negative thoughts. This acknowledgement suggests that depressed subjects in Experiment 1 did not deliberately focus on negative distracters but that those thoughts automatically occurred because they were highly accessible. Experiment 3 demonstrated that depressed subjects' use of positive distracters could be increased somewhat when we provided such distracters and made them easily accessible. Taken together, the findings suggest that depression involves an enhanced accessibility of interconnected negative thoughts that can undermine mental control efforts.     

Coping, locus of control, social support, and combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder: a prospective study

We examined the relations between coping, locus of control, and social support and combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The sample consisted of 262 Israeli soldiers who suffered a combat stress reaction episode during the 1982 Lebanon war and were followed 2 and 3 years after their participation in combat. Cross-sectional analyses revealed significant relations between locus of control, coping, and social support and PTSD at the two points of assessment. Changes in PTSD from Time 1 to Time 2 were also associated with changes in coping. We discuss theoretical and methodological implications of the findings.     

Effects of Playing Videogames on Children's Aggressive and Other Behaviors1

Noting the pervasiveness of videogames in American culture, the authors set out to examine the effects that playing videogames has on children. Thirty-one children were matched on sex, randomly assigned to play either a violent (karate) videogame or a nonviolent (jungle vine swinging) videogame, and then observed during free play. The main results were that the children who had played the jungle swing videogame later played more with a jungle swing toy and that the children who played the violent videogame later showed more aggression. The authors interpreted the findings as an indication that young children who play videogames later tend to act similarly to how their videogame character acted.