Why do people need self-esteem? Converging evidence that self-esteem serves an anxiety-buffering function.

Three studies were conducted to assess the proposition that self-esteem serves an anxiety-buffering function. In Study 1, it was hypothesized that raising self-esteem would reduce anxiety in response to vivid images of death. In support of this hypothesis, Ss who received positive personality feedback reported less anxiety in response to a video about death than did neutral feedback Ss. In Studies 2 and 3, it was hypothesized that increasing self-esteem would reduce anxiety among individuals anticipating painful shock. Consistent with this hypothesis, both success and positive personality feedback reduced Ss' physiological arousal in response to subsequent threat of shock. Thus, converging evidence of an anxiety-buffering function of self-esteem was obtained.     

Repression at encoding: discrete appraisals of emotional stimuli.

In previous research, the emotions associated with repressors' memorial representations were found to be more discrete than those associated with nonrepressors'. In each of the 3 experiments reported here, repressive discreteness was apparent in repressors' appraisals of emotional stimuli at the time they were encoded. In 1 experiment, Ss appraised individual facial expressions of emotion. Repressors judged the dominant emotions in these faces as no less intense than did nonrepressors, but they appraised the blend of nondominant emotions as less intense than did nonrepressors. In the remaining 2 experiments, Ss appraised crowds of emotional faces as well as crowds of geometric shapes. In both crowd experiments, the repressive discreteness was evident in appraisals of crowds of emotional faces but not in appraisals of crowds of geometric shapes. The repressive discreteness effect did not appear to reflect a general repressor-nonrepressor difference in the appraisal of stimulus features. Rather, the results suggested that repressive discreteness may be constrained to appraisals of emotions.     

Effects of reinforcement schedules on rats' choice behavior in extinction.

The effects of reinforcement schedules on rats' choice behavior in extinction were studied. In a free-operant chamber equipped with two retractable bars, the experimental animals were trained to press the bars separately for a food reward. One bar delivered the reward on a continuous reinforcement (CRF) schedule, and the other delivered the reward on a partial reinforcement (PRF) schedule. Control animals earned the reward from both bars with the same reinforcement schedule, either a CRF or a PRF. When both bars were simultaneously available during extinction, the experimental animals responded more frequently to the CRF than to the PRF alternative, demonstrating a reversed within-subjects partial reinforcement extinction effect (PREE). A conventional between-subjects PREE was replicated in the control subjects. The results of this study were inconsistent with both Amsel's (1962, 1967) frustration hypothesis and Capaldi's (1966, 1967) sequential hypotheses.     

Effects of real gender and labeled gender on adults' perceptions of infants.

Three experiments were conducted to discover factors mediating adults' perceptions of male and female infants. In the first experiment, college students were shown 30-s videotapes of four male and four female babies, each of whom was randomly labeled with a male or a female name. Infants labeled as male were perceived as significantly more masculine and stronger than those labeled as female. Discriminant analyses revealed that both rated masculinity and the combination of ratings on male stereotyped traits differentiated infants labeled as male or female. Analyses of real gender revealed that boys were rated as less sensitive and stronger than girls. Discriminant analyses suggested that the combination of less sensitive, more of a problem, more mature, and more playful best differentiated real males from real females. In Experiment 2, the findings of Experiment 1 were confirmed with a sample of mothers of young infants. In Experiment 3 college students' judgments of the sex of the eight babies were correctly predicted from the sensitivity ratings of these babies in Experiment 1. It appears that there is a complex of cues from which adults make judgments of infants' gender and inferences about their characteristics: Boys may appear stronger, more playful, and more of a problem, and girls seem to look more sensitive. Implications for further studies of gender labeling and for sex typing are discussed.     

Rorschach object relations of adolescents who committed homicide.

We investigated the object relations of adolescents who committed homicide. A clinical sample of 55 adolescents who committed homicide did not differ from a comparison group of nonviolent delinquents on Rorschach measures of object differentiation, mutuality of autonomy, and aggressive content. However, the subgroup of adolescents who committed homicides in the context of another crime (e.g., robbery or burglary) did manifest significantly lower object relations (poorer object differentiation and more victim responses) than the subgroup of adolescents whose homicides were committed in the context of an interpersonal conflict or dispute with the victim. These findings support the need for differentiated classification of violent individuals as urged by Megargee (1970) over 20 years ago.     

Early memories and the criminally dangerous.

We demonstrated the efficacy of using early memory (EM) data to distinguish postdictively criminally dangerous from nondangerous psychiatric patients. Dangerous patients (n = 30) had been adjudicated not criminally responsible (NCR) for felonies, whereas nondangerous psychiatric patients (n = 30) had no convictions for aggressive offenses. Groups were comparable in age, IQ, socioeconomic status (SES), marital status, and diagnoses. Group racial compositions, however, were significantly different. Statistical analyses were thus performed to clarify the potential effect of this racial confound. Overall, 73% of the dangerous and nondangerous patients were accurately classified via a newly developed EM scoring system, the Early Memory Aggressiveness Potential Score System (EMAPSS). Of those classified as dangerous, 15 of 16 (94%) were actually dangerous. The false-positive rate was an impressively low 6%, suggesting EM aggression is highly predictive of dangerousness postdictively.     

Effects of Pointing Rate and Availability of Visual Feedback on Visual and Proprioceptive Components of Prism Adaptation

While looking through laterally displacing prisms, subjects pointed 60 times straight ahead of their nose at a rate of one complete movement every 2 or 3 s, with visual feedback available early in the pointing movement or delayed until the end of the movement. Sagittal pointing was paced such that movement speed covaried with pointing rate. Aftereffect measures (obtained after every 10 pointing trials) showed that when the limb became visible early in a pointing movement, proprioceptive adaptation was greater than visual, but when visual feedback was delayed until the end of the movement, the reverse was true. This effect occurred only with the 3-s pointing rate, however. With the 2-s pointing rate, adaptation was predominately proprioceptive in nature, regardless of feedback availability. Independent of the availability of visual feedback, visual adaptation developed more quickly with 3-s pointing, whereas proprioceptive adaptation developed more rapidly with 2-s pointing. These results are discussed in terms of a model of perceptual-motor organization in which the direction of coordinative (guidance) linkage between eye-head (visual) and hand-head (proprioceptive) systems (and consequently the locus of discordance registration and adaptive recalibration) is determined jointly by pointing rate and feedback availability. An additional effect of pointing rate is to determine the rate of discordant inputs. Maximal adaptive recalibration occurs when the input (pointing) rate matches the time constant of the adaptive encoder in the guided system.     

Factors and Taxa, Traits and Types, Differences of Degree and Differences in Kind

ABSTRACT A taxon is a nonarbitrary class whose existence is conjectured as an empirical question, not a mere semantic convenience. Numerous taxa are known to exist in nature and society (chemical elements, biological species, organic diseases, geological strata, kinds of stars, elementary particles, races, cultures, Mendelizing mental deficiencies, major psychoses, vocations, ideologies, religions). What personality types, if any, occur in the nonpathological population remains to be researched by sophisticated methods, and cannot be settled by fiat or "dimensional" preference. The intuitive concept of taxonicity is to be explicated by a combination of formal-numerical and causal criteria. Taxometric methods should include consistency tests that provide Popperian risk of strong discorroboration. In social science, latent class methods are probably more useful than cluster algorithms.     

Classification of adult attachment: an integrative taxonomy from attachment and psychoanalytic theories.

Developmental and psychoanalytic theorists have focused increasingly on empirically determined early childhood antecedents of adult attachments, with several resulting taxonomic models. This article suggests a theoretically based and clinically based model of attachment consistent with both psychoanalytic and attachment theories, resulting in an integrative taxonomy of four adult attachment styles: dependent, avoidant, hostile, and resistant-ambivalent. These styles reflect behavioral manifestations of dependence and anger, as derived from the interaction of primitive relational drives, defenses, and interpersonal experience. In addition to theoretical construction, brief clinical examples are presented to facilitate discussion of the model.