CHANGES IN THE FACIAL PROMINENCE OF WOMEN AND MEN OVER THE LAST DECADE

Two studies measured the facial prominence of women and men in popular images over the last decade. The first study used 1,200 photo-graphs from Time and Newsweek for the years 1970 and 1980. The results indicate that overall, men have received greater facial prominence than women, and facial prominence has increased over the decade. Only for Newsweek did women show a significantly greater increase in facial prominence than men. The second study used 640 photographs from Good Housekeeping and Ms. for the years 1974 and 1984. The results show that overall, men have received greater facial prominence than women, and facial prominence has risen over the decade, although not by much. In Ms. , women but not men gained; in Good Housekeeping , women gained slightly, but not as much as men. The results are consistent with earlier reports of an asymmetry in representation of men's and women's faces and suggest that this asymmetry is slowly diminishing.     

Providing help and desired relationship type as determinants of changes in moods and self-evaluations

Observed in 2 initial studies was converging evidence that helping improves the helpers' moods and self-evaluations. In these studies Ss induced to help showed improved moods and self-evaluations relative to Ss not given an opportunity to help. A 3rd study examined the moderating effects of desired relationship type on reactions to having helped. In this study Ss were led to desire either a communal or an exchange relationship with another. They then helped the other or were not allowed to help. Among Ss led to desire a communal relationship, but not among those led to desire an exchange relationship, helping was associated with greater improvements in moods than not helping. Helping tended to improve self-evaluations regardless of desired relationship type. However, this effect reached statistical significance only among subjects led to desire a communal relationship.     

What is the mechanism by which suicide attempts predispose to later suicide attempts? A mathematical model

A state dependence model of serial behavior suggests that each occurrence increases the subsequent likelihood of that behavior being repeated. A heterogeneity model, by contrast, suggests that the likelihood of a behavior occurring is predetermined, and uninfluenced by intervening occurrences. We have applied the random-effects probit model of Gibbons and Bock (1987) to examine the fit of the state dependence and heterogeneity models to longitudinal data on suicide attempts by 928 patients with affective disorder. Heterogeneity but not state dependence was required to model these data. The findings suggest that when considering patients with moderate to severe major affective disorder, the clinician should not interpret the absence of any recent suicide attempts to mean that the patient is at relatively low risk for attempting suicide in the future. An implication of the heterogeneity model is that suicide attempts made many years ago may have equal value to recent attempts when estimating an individual's "predisposition" to nonlethal attempts in the future.     

Depressive, anxious and intrusive thoughts in psychiatric inpatients and outpatients.

A revised form of the Distressing Thoughts Questionnaire as well as standardized self-report measures of depression, anxiety and obsessionality were administered to a large sample of psychiatric inpatients, outpatients and non-clinical controls. A subsample of the clinical subjects completed the questionnaire battery after 3 months. Factor analysis identified three distinct dimensions of negative thinking which corresponded to anxious, depressive and intrusive thoughts. Further analysis revealed that the intrusive thoughts differed from the anxious and depressive negative automatic thoughts in terms of their reduced association with psychopathology, increased temporal stability and nonspecific association with negative affect in general. These findings suggest that by adopting a more specific focus on obsessive-like ego-dystonic intrusive thoughts, researchers will be in a better position to investigate the role of this phenomena in the development of clinical obsessions.     

Book reviews

Lack and transcendence: The Problem of Death and Life in Psychotherapy, Existentialism, and Buddhism. David Loy, 1996 New Jersey, Humanities Press 186 pp.

Obscenity, Anarchy, Reality. Crispin Sartwell New York, State University of New York Press 192 pp.

Extracting the Essence of the Sruti.. The Srutisārasamuddharanam of Totakācārya Michael Comans (Trans.), 1996 Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass Publishers xxvi + 122 pp., hb Rs 195, ISBN 81 208 1410 x     

A Six Year Longitudinal Study of Graduate Expectations: The Implications for Company Recruitment and Selection Strategies

All job extrants formulate a set of expectations about what a new job will be like. A least in part, these expectations are shaped by their experience of the organization's selection process. What impact do these early impressions have upon subsequent job attitudes and behaviour? This article reports the findings of a longitudinal study of UK graduates from a few weeks prior to organizational entry to five or six years after commencing employment. Both the level of pre-entry expectations and the congruency of these expectations with work experience are found to correlate with subsequent job satisfaction and organizational commitment. More support is found for the congruent expectations hypotheses, and the implications of this for company selection and socialization strategies are discussed.     

Neuroticism and the recall of positive and negative personality information

Recent investigations have shown that high-N scorers preferentially process negative information about themselves. The present experiment investigated: (1) whether this effect is related to, or independent of, the well-established effects of depressed mood on information processing; (2) whether the effect is specific to self-referent information or extends also to information about others; and (3) the mechanism by which the effect occurs. High-N scorers, compared to low-N scorers, recalled more negative information about themselves but not about others, and this effect was independent of depression. In addition, the positive self-referent, but not other-referent, personality information recalled by high-N scorers was more extremely positive than that recalled by low-N scorers. Detailed examination of the data provided evidence that the idiosyncracy in information processing associated with high neuroticism is one of selective attention. The findings are discussed in relation to cognitive vulnerability to depression, certain cognitive-therapy procedures and the effects that a therapeutically-induced change in neuroticism is likely to have on an individual's memory for past emotional experiences.     

THE USE OF IMPOSED AND SELF-SELECTED TRAINING PACKAGES TO ESTABLISH CLASSROOM TEACHING SKILLS1

Although much is known about techniques for teaching elementary pupils in the classroom, no procedures have been consistently effective in training teachers to use these techniques. In the present study, six teacher trainees were observed individually and trained sequentially to use a variety of teaching skills: praise for academic responses, praise for appropriate classroom behavior, correction procedures for incorrect academic responses, and token fines. These skills were examined under four conditions: (1) baseline sessions were taught by the trainees before any instructions on the use of the teaching skills. (2) Instruction sessions were taught by the trainees after they were given instructions describing the use of several teaching skills. (3) During each Imposed-Package session, the trainees received modelling, verbal feedback, graphic feedback, and grade and quiz contingencies on their use of a particular teaching skill. (4) During each Self-Selected Package session, a grade contingency was in effect with the trainees choosing the components (modelling, verbal feedback, graphic feedback, quiz contingency) they wanted included in their training package for a particular skill. The effects of instructions were quite varied. Large increases on three of the four skills occurred with one trainee; almost no changes occurred with another trainee; and changes with the remaining four trainees fell within these extremes. The Imposed and Self-Selected Packages reliably increased the use of teaching skills, including those skills for which instructions had not been effective. The Self-Selected Package was considered to be as effective as the Imposed Package, since the time required for training a teaching skill varied from two to nine sessions with both packages. Under the Self-Selected Package, the trainees chose from modelling, verbal feedback, and graphic feedback, but none chose the quiz contingency. Questionnaire data collected after training showed that all six trainees preferred the Self-Selected Package to the Imposed Package. The effectiveness of the Self-Selected Package, together with the trainees' preference for it, suggests that it may be desirable for teacher training programs to specify the teaching skills, arrange a contingency for performance, and allow trainees to choose which additional components are to be used in each training session.     

Acceptance of Help as a Function of Similarity of the Potential Helper and Opportunity To Repay1

College students were given the task of making an object from balloons while being observed by someone who they were told had highly similar values (similar conditions) or highly dissimilar values (dissimilar conditions). Later they were to observe while the other made an object from wire coat hangers that were already unwound (no opportunity to repay conditions) or were not unwound (opportunity to repay conditions). In preparation for the subject's task, the balloons had to be blown up and the other offered to help. The number of balloons the subject gave the other was the measure of acceptance of help. An interaction between similarity and opportunity to repay was found. As hypothesized, acceptance of help was greater when the potential helper was similar than when he was dissimilar only when the opportunity to repay was anticipated; when no opportunity to repay was expected, the reverse was found.