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.     

Explanatory style across the life span: evidence for stability over 52 years

Analyzed explanatory style across the life span. 30 Ss whose average age was 72 responded to questions about their current life and provided diaries or letters written in their youth, an average of 52 years earlier. A blind content analysis of explanatory style derived from these 2 sources revealed that explanatory style for negative events was stable throughout adult life (r = .54, p less than .002). In contrast, there appeared to be no stability of explanatory style for positive events between the same 2 time periods. These results suggest that explanatory style for negative events may persist across the life span and may constitute an enduring risk factor for depression, low achievement, and physical illness.     

Relations between anger expression and cardiovascular reactivity: reconciling inconsistent findings through a matching hypothesis

Previous psychophysiological research has demonstrated that both anger expression and anger suppression are related to cardiovascular responses, but in an inconsistent fashion. The present study tested the following hypotheses: (a) that the influence of anger expression style on psychophysiological responses would be limited to Ss exposed to an anger instigation, and (b) that the specific pattern of psychophysiological responses would vary as a function of whether Ss were induced to use their preferred vs. nonpreferred mode of anger expression style in response to the instigation. Seventy-eight male college undergraduates were randomly assigned to work on a task with either an annoying or a pleasant confederate and subsequently to write either a negative or a positive evaluation of the confederate. Blood pressure was measured intermittently and heart rate continuously throughout task performance and a subsequent 15-min rest period. Ss' preferred method of anger expression had been previously assessed by a self-report questionnaire. Systolic blood pressure results generally were consistent with the hypotheses. Implications of the findings for the etiology of cardiovascular diseases are discussed.     

The sensitivity of the Bender-Gestalt Test as a screening instrument for neuropsychological impairment in older adults

We investigated the sensitivity of the Bender (1938) Visual-Motor Gestalt Test (BGT) using the Halstead-Reitan Neuropsychological Battery (HRB) as the criterion for cortical dysfunction. We studied 95 subjects over age 55 who had been diagnosed as having dementia or pseudodementia. Subjects were classified as mild, moderately, or severely impaired on the HRB and as impaired or unimpaired on the BGT. The results indicated that the BGT is less sensitive (36%) than was expected when used on an impaired geriatric population. The data further indicated that false negatives occurred more frequently with the BGT when individuals had mild neuropsychological impairment. Less frequent misclassifications occurred as the severity of impairment on HRB indices increased.     

Psychometric properties of Loevinger's Sentence Completion Test in an adult psychiatric outpatient sample

Little research has been conducted on Loevinger's Washington University Sentence Completion Test of Ego Development in adult psychiatric outpatients. The measure is a promising method of assessing a construct of personality and character functioning that should be useful in research on psychopathology and in choosing treatment modalities. The data presented in this study address the question of the psychometric adequacy of the measure in this segment of the subject population. Specifically, estimates of interrater reliability, internal consistency, and test-retest reliability are presented for a sample of 42 adult outpatients. In addition, the relationship between total protocol ratings and item sum scores is explored.     

Backward walking: a simple reversal of forward walking?

The purpose of this study was to determine whether backward walking represented a simple temporal reversal of forward walking and, hence, could be controlled by a reversed cycling of the same group of neurons. Electromyographic (EMG), joint angle, joint moment, and joint muscle power patterns were compared for forward and backward walking, in 6 subjects. The joint angle patterns with the time-base of the backward walking reversed were similar, with the exception of the ankle. The moment patterns were similar except for the knee, whereas the joint muscle powers were almost reversed-polarity images of each other. This suggests that somewhat similar muscle activation patterns could be used to produce both modes of locomotion, but the temporal cycling of muscle contraction would be reversed: Concentric muscle activity in forward walking would become eccentric activity in backward walking, and visa versa. The EMG results generally supported these findings.     

Hypnosis, suggestion, and placebo in the reduction of experimental pain

Two experiments compared placebo and hypnotic analgesia in high and low hypnotizable subjects. Experiment 1 demonstrated that hypnotic and placebo analgesia were equally ineffective in low hypnotizables, but that hypnotic analgesia was much more effective than placebo analgesia in high hypnotizables. Experiment 2 replicated these results, but also included low and high hypnotizables who were given a nonhypnotic suggestion for analgesia. Both the low and high hypnotizables in this group reported greater suggested than placebo analgesia and as much suggested analgesia as high hypnotizable hypnotic subjects. Both experiments found substantial discrepancies between the amount of pain reduction subjects expected from the various treatments and the amount of pain reduction they actually reported following exposure to those treatments. In Experiment 2, subjects in all treatments who reduced reported pain engaged in more cognitive coping and less catastrophizing than those who did not reduce pain. Theoretical implications are discussed.     

The effects of depression on structural aspects of the recall of prose

Investigated depressed patients' memory for stories. This indicated that although normal Ss showed particularly good recall for units central to the structure of the story, this did not hold for depressed Ss. In contrast, effects of centrality were comparable in high- and low-IQ Ss and effects of imageability of story units were comparable in both depressed and normal Ss. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that depressed patients do not use structure to organize stories when encoding them. A failure to identify central aspects of material and selectively recall them is likely to be a handicap to everyday functioning.