Dreams of traditional and nontraditional women: Are dream aggression and hostility related to higher levels of waking well-being?

In order to determine whether varying degrees of traditionality would be manifested in specific behaviors that would be present in women's waking and dreaming life, 100 women between the ages of 22 and 79, 12% of whom were African American, were administered a number of self-report measures of psychological well-being and were asked to complete ongoing dream diaries for a 2-week period. These instruments were then scored along with a variety of measures used to determine to what extent traditionality differentiated among the women. Randomly selected dreams from the dream diaries were scored for aggression, anxiety, emotion, hostility, self-efficacious problem-solving, and success/failure. While traditionality was not a significant factor among the self report scales, a number of significant relationships between traditionality and dream content scales were found. As predicted, nontraditionality was positively correlated with a high ratio of achievement-oriented success to failure interactions, self-efficacious problem-solving, and aggressive dream interactions. However, nontraditionality was also significantly correlated with higher overall dream hostility. The results are discussed within the context of recent dream function theory as well as within a broader sociocultural context on shifting gender roles.This research was completed in partial fulfillment of the first author's requirements for the doctoral degree in clinical psychology at Yeshiva University. The authors wish to thank Stan Fevens, Ph.D., for his enthusiastic support and encouragment as well as his invaluable assistance. An amended version of this paper was presented at the June, 1993 meeting of the Association of the Study of Dreams, Santa Fe, NM     

Realism,morality, and liberal democracy

Conclusions The picture of liberal democratic realism that we have presented can withstand a powerful set of criticisms that have emerged in the last two decades. We have argued that realism does not misconstrue the value of the state, it does not justify the ruthless suppression of every domestic threat that could face the state, it does not depend upon a conception of international politics that rules out moral constraints, and it does not misunderstand the relationship between self-interest and morality. The defense of liberal democratic reason of state depends upon the state protecting and securing the values and welfare of individuals and groups living within its domain. Realism cannot be justified if the state has lost its legitimacy.This version of realism, however, generates its own distinctive problems. The most significant of these is that it does not offer a clean, unambiguous solution to the problems raised by the survival of the liberal democratic regime. Unlike extreme realist or idealist conceptions of the role of morality in international relations, we have argued that for the liberal democratic state this problem cannot be settled without moral remainders. On this account, realism presents leaders with a moral dilemma that is theoretically unresolvable. But this is not a failure of realism. Indeed, it is an acknowledgement that the liberal democratic state can be seen as no more, and no less, than a necessary condition of value.     

Reaction time and diazepam plasma concentration in subjects with normal gastric pH

The present study investigated the relationship of reaction time with the plasma concentration of four different formulations of diazepam (liquid, original, new, and generic). On four separate days, over a 4-month period, subjects with normal gastric pH (N=7) were administered each of the diazepam formulations. Blood samples were obtained prior to each dose and at subsequent intervals. Likewise, reaction times were evaluated prior to dosing and then at ten different intervals post-dosing. As hypothesized, reaction time performance was associated with plasma diazepam concentration, regardless of formulation type. This suggests that reaction time is a sensitive measure of cerebral functioning for individuals who are treated with diazepam. In addition to providing a measure of drug effects on cognitive functioning, the results of this study have implications concerning possible hazards of operating machinery or driving motor vehicles for individuals being treated with diazepam.     

Dimensions of sexual behaviour in homosexual men: replicability across time and country

Data on sexual practices in the past two months were obtained from 176 Australian and 159 New Zealand homosexually active men. Factor analysis yielded three major underlying dimensions of homosexual behaviour in each sample, accounting for 53.4 and 54.0% of total variance at baseline and 55.1 and 62.1% at follow-up, respectively. These three dimensions represented unsafe sex involving predominantly anal activity, safe (oral and mutual masturbatory) sex without condoms, and safe anal sex with condoms and withdrawal. Comparison of the four matrices (two countries by two times), using Cattell's S index, indicated high stability of the factor structure across countries and times. These three dimensions of homosexual behaviour appear to represent consistent behavioural clusters across samples and times. They suggest that use of these dimensions in further research on homosexually active men is warranted and that homosexual activities cluster into a number of limited dimensions on which sexual behaviours are interrelated.     

Evaluations of pairs of experiences: A preference for happy endings

Experiences often consist of a number of temporally separated events or outcomes, events which might be positive or negative. Building on previous research, the present paper proposes that the chronological order of the component events influences overall evaluations of these experiences. In particular, a preference for happy endings is hypothesized such that an experience consisting of a positive and a negative event is evaluated as more satisfactory if the positive event occurs last. This preference is examined in three studies in a variety of contexts. A preference for happy endings is shown to influence people's preferences, even to the extent of influencing preferences for segregated versus integrated events (Thaler, 1985). The implications of a preference for happy endings for decision researchers are also explored.     

A text-stimuli presentation manager for the IBM PC with ipsatization correction for response sets and reaction times

IPSAPRO, an ipsative scoring program written for the IBM PC, aids in the detection and transformation of response sets that often contaminate rating scale and reaction time experiments. Response sets such as the tendency to use only extreme points of a rating scale or to work for speed over accuracy in reaction time experiments are removed in IPSAPRO by standardizing each subject’s ratings or times against their own means and standard deviations. Ipsatization can be applied to existing data sets or take place automatically at the data collection stage in a text-stimuli presentation manager that is provided with the program.     

UNDEFEATED NATURALISM

Philosophical Studies -     

Sex differences in the object representations in the dreams of adolescents

The present study explored sex and age differences in the level of object representations and human movement in the dreams of adolescents. In order to test empirically the contention that early object relations are significantly linked to the formation of children’s gender identity, 389 dreams recorded by 115 adolescents, ages 15–18, were scored for object representations and levels of human movement. As predicted, there were significant differences in the quality of object representations in male and female adolescent’s dream content. In addition, female’s dreams contained significantly higher amounts of human movement than males’ dreams although these differences may well be attributable to longer dream narratives in the female sample. Further, these sex differences were most pronounced at the highest end of the sample age range. Results are discussed in terms of object relations adolescent development. The authors wish to thank Patricia Heenan, M.A., for her invaluable assistance with data management, Alice Pope, Ph.D., for her helpful suggestions, and Dave Cowen, Ph.D., for making his data available to us. Portions of this paper were presented at the Association for the Study of Dreams, June 1996, Berkeley, CA.