Gender, sexuality, and the authoritarian personality

The political correlates of the authoritarian personality have been well established by researchers, but important linkages to other major constructs in psychology need fuller elaboration. We present new data and review old data from our laboratories that show the myriad ways in which authoritarianism is implicated in the important domain of gender roles. We show that women and men high in authoritarianism live in rigidly gendered worlds where male and female roles are narrowly defined, attractiveness is based on traditional conceptions of masculinity and femininity, and conventional sexual mores are prescribed. As a construct, authoritarianism is not just relevant for understanding people's politics, but it also affects the most personal of domains--romantic partnerships, lifestyle goals, and basic attitudes about male and female relationships.     

The Parents Matter! Program: Practical, Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives

We provide a commentary on the Parents Matter! intervention program. Our commentary is organized around core issues confronting those who design prevention programs, namely (1) making the program practical, feasible and economical, (2) reaching a broad base of target individuals, (3) making the intervention effective in changing the behavior or outcome for those who participate in it, and (4) ensuring that the intervention is sustainable for future generations. Parents Matter! is a thoughtful and impressive program that addresses each of these issues.     

Reading without phonology?

Responses to items such as brane are slower and/or more error prone than responses to items such as slint in lexical decision (is this string spelt like a real word?). The received view is that this “pseudohomophone” effect is attributable to phonological receding. Taft (1982) has challenged this view, offering instead a grapheme-grapheme account which assumes that graphemes that map onto a common phoneme develop the ability to activate each other without reference to phonological mediation.

Taft's grapheme-grapheme account is tested in two experiments. Experiment 1 shows that the presentation of a pseudohomophone facilitates the response to a subsequently presented word (e.g., groce-gross). Experiment 2 shows that nonword letter strings that are translatable into words by the application of putative grapheme-grapheme rules (e.g., gloce-gloss) produce no facilitation. These results are consistent with the notion of a phonological influence but inconsistent with the grapheme-grapheme account. Loci for this pseudohomophone priming effect are discussed.     

CRITERIA USED TO DEFINE AND EVALUATE SOCIALLY COMPETENT BEHAVIOR AMONG WOMEN

Criteria used to evaluate socially competent behavier of women are described and critiqued. Many definitions of social competence do not employ a process view of social behavier in which individual goals and values as well as specific verbal and nonverbal behaviers are considered. This may result in the imposition of artificial goals on consumers of assertion and social skills training programs and the neglect of individual goals. The relationship between the definition of competence used and the assessment methods relied on is discussed. The advantages of focusing on specific goals are noted and a checklist that consumers can use to review the content of training programs is provided.     

THE TOTALITARIAN STATE OF MIND

The paper describes the development of Dynamic Interpersonal Therapy for use with complex depression (DITCC), and a pilot study testing DITCC’s effectiveness. The pilot found large pre-post improvements in well-being and distress; moderate rates of reliable improvement and clinically significant change; and curvilinear declines in depression and anxiety. Treatment completers and near-completers (N= 19) showed a significant curvilinear decline in symptoms of depression (PHQ-9) and anxiety (GAD-7). The results provide preliminary evidence that DITCC can be used as an effective treatment approach for complex depression. However, further research is needed to test its effectiveness in different settings with a larger sample size, using appropriate comparison groups under controlled conditions to further elaborate the short-term and long-term effects.     

Who is Afraid of Flexitime: Correlates of Personal Choice of a Flexitime Schedule

L'étude examina les facteurs influençant la volonté d'entrer dans un système d'horaires fiexibles. Les facteurs observés comprenaient des variables de travail c.a.d. la satisfaction au travail, le niveau de la profession et la centralité du travail, et des variables hors travail c.a.d. le temps de trajet, le stress du trajet et les activités de loisirs, et des variables de personnalité, c.a.d. le besoin de développement. Des questionnaires furent administrés à 125 employés examinant les propositions de leur entreprise d'adopter des horaires variables. Une analyse discriminante indiqua que le choix des horaires variables était d'abord liéà des besoins personnels de développement. Un rôle plus secondaire était joué par la perception des horaires variables comme moyens d'éviter, réduire ou compenser les aspects indésirables de la vie de travail ou hors travail d'un individu.
This study examined factors influencing die willingness to enter into a flexitime schedule. Factors surveyed included: Work variables such as work satisfaction, job level, and work centrality; non-work variables such as commuting time, commuting strain, and leisure activities; and personality variables such as need for growth. Questionnaires were administered to 125 employees contemplating a work-site proposal to move to a flexitime schedule. Discriminant analysis indicated that flexitime choice was primarily related to personal growth needs. A more secondary role was played by perceptions of flexitime as a means to avoid, reduce, or compensate for undesirable aspects of a person's working or non-working life.     

THE OUTCOME OF SHORT‐TERM PSYCHODYNAMIC ART THERAPY COMPARED TO SHORT‐TERM PSYCHODYNAMIC VERBAL THERAPY FOR DEPRESSED WOMEN

The primary aim of this randomized controlled clinical trial was to compare the outcome from two types of short‐term psychodynamic psychotherapy. The participants were thirty‐nine women with depression. Half of the participants (n = 18) received art psychotherapy and the other half received verbal psychotherapy (n = 21). Data was collected before and after psychotherapy, and at a 3‐month follow‐up using self‐rating scales and interviewer‐based ratings. Results showed that art and verbal psychotherapies were comparable, and at follow‐up, the average participant in both groups had few depressive symptoms and stress‐related symptoms. The conclusion was that short‐term psychodynamic art therapy could be a valuable treatment for depressed women.