Faces of politicians: Babyfacedness predicts inferred competence but not electoral success

Recent research has documented that competent-looking political candidates do better in US elections and that babyfaced individuals are generally perceived to be less competent than maturefaced individuals. Taken together, this suggests that babyfaced political candidates are perceived as less competent and therefore fare worse in elections. We test this hypothesis, making use of photograph-based judgments by 2772 respondents of the facial appearance of 1785 Finnish political candidates. Our results confirm that babyfacedness is negatively related to inferred competence in politics. Despite this, babyfacedness is either unrelated or positively related to electoral success, depending on the sample of candidates.     

Social support as a mediator in the relation between sensation seeking (need for stimulation) and psychological adjustment in older adults

This article investigates the potential role of social support as a mediator between sensation seeking (in the sense of a basal need for stimulation) and psychological adjustment in older adults. A sample of 325 individuals aged between 65 and 95 years were tested using questionnaires, which assess social support, sensation seeking, global self-worth, sense of coherence, and satisfaction with life. Path analyses provided support for a mediator model in which the relationship between sensation seeking and psychological adjustment was fully mediated by social support (the path coefficient between sensation seeking and psychosocial adjustment declines from β = .27 to β = .02, when adding an indirect path mediated by social support). Findings further suggest that this mediation effect was independent of sex and age. The study demonstrates the relevance of measuring sensation seeking as a personality trait in older adults.     

Common Genetic but Specific Environmental Influences for Aggressive and Deceitful Behaviors in Preadolescent Males

Although both aggressive (AGG) and deceitful behaviors (DEC) are symptoms of childhood conduct problems, few studies have examined common vs. specific etiological influences. Early intervention is encouraged for conduct problems and findings from genetically informative studies can suggest whether interventions should focus on conduct problems in general or groupings of conduct problems more specifically. Twin model-fitting analyses were conducted on same and different teacher ratings of AGG and DEC for 872 9-year old male twin pairs. Common genetic influences were found to underlie the susceptibility for both AGG and DEC. The same teacher ratings resulted in somewhat higher heritability estimates than different teacher ratings. Results also indicated stronger environmental effects for DEC as compared with AGG, with a significant shared environmental component for same teachers and a substantial non-shared environmental component for different teachers. Our data suggest that AGG and DEC share risk genes and environmental factors may differentiate these two types of conduct problems. Characterizing these specific environmental factors may be useful when developing interventions.     

Philosophy of medicine — From a medical perspective

In this commentary on the article by Arthur L. Caplan [1] the philosophy of medicine is viewed from a medical perspective. Philosophical studies have a long tradition in medicine, especially during periods of paradigmatic unrest, and they serve the same goal as other medical activities: the prevention and treatment of disease. The medical profession needs the help of professional philosophers in much the same way as it needs the cooperation of basic scientists. Philosophy of medicine may not deserve the status of a philosophical subspecialty or field, but it so closely linked to the main trends of contemporary medical thinking that it must be regarded as an emerging (or reemerging) medical subdiscipline.     

The effect of context on the structure of categories

Three experiments examined the effect of context on the representativeness ordering of exemplars of a category. Experiments 1 and 2 employed an online reading time paradigm to examine the effect of context on the time it takes to establish an anaphoric reference between an exemplar and a category term. Experiment 1 demonstrated that context can change the relation between a category term and an exemplar at the time of comprehension. Experiment 2 showed that category terms presented in context generate graded goodness-of-example distributions of exemplars that are different from the distributions generated in the absence of explicit context. These distributions cannot be derived by assuming that the exemplar most strongly suggested by the context serves as the category representation. Experiment 3 employed a membership verification paradigm. Response time was found to be a function of degree of relatedness to the contextdependent category representation. Typicality, as determined in the absence of explicit context, had no effect on decision time. Several models, including some extensions of current semantic memory theories, are developed to account for the results of these experiments.     

Countertransference and the group therapist's state of mind

In this paper countertransference is discussed as an interference in the psychotherapists' state of mind. For the group psychotherapist the interferences have multiple origins. Oscillating demands for closeness to the group or distance from patients are indicators of complex dynamics. Inherent in group psychotherapy is the requirement of multiple identification with objects covering a developmental range for the therapist. A schematic model for the therapist's state-of-mind is offered in the hope that there can be greater clarity when countertransference is discussed.Paper presented at EGPS annual conference, Nov. 1, 1980.