Social Status and Relational System of Elderly Suicides: A Reexamination of the Henry-Short Thesis*

ABSTRACT: The relationship between status and suicide has not been clearly established. Henry and Short suggested a direct relationship, but subsequent research has proposed an inverse association. The present study of elderly males uses information obtained from two sources: (a) a random sample of the aged population studied in Pinellas County, Florida, in 1959; and (b) persons aged 65 and over who committed suicide in that county between 1955 and 1963. The major findings are: (a) the highest suicide rate is found at the lowest class level, suggesting an inverse relationship; (b) class differential in suicide is explained by a direct relationship between class and the relational system; and (c) controlling on the relational system results in a direct association between class and suicide. Thus, both status and the relational system operate independently and jointly to affect suicide rates of these elderly males. Findings suggest that both Henry and Short and later investigators are partially correct. The relationship between status and suicide may be clarified by taking into account other factors which are class related but which perhaps are more significant than measures of class alone.     

Making the ineffable explicit: estimating the information employed for face classifications

When we look at a face, we readily perceive that person’s gender, expression, identity, age, and attractiveness. Perceivers as well as scientists have hitherto had little success in articulating just what information we are employing to achieve these subjectively immediate and effortless classifications. We describe here a method that estimates that information. Observers classified faces in high levels of visual noise as male or female (in a gender task), happy/unhappy (in an expression task), or Tom Cruise/John Travolta (in an individuation task). They were unaware that the underlying face (which was midway between each of the classes) was identical throughout a task, with only the noise rendering it more like one category value or the other. The difference between the average of noise patterns for each classification decision provided a linear estimate of the information mediating these classifications. When the noise was combined with the underlying face, the resultant images appeared to be excellent prototypes of their respective classes. Other methods of estimating the information employed in complex classification have relied on judgments of exemplars of a class or tests of experimenter-defined hypotheses about the class information. Our method allows an estimate, however subtle, of what is in the subject’s (rather than the experimenter’s) head.     

What Does “Mind-Wandering” Mean to the Folk? An Empirical Investigation

Although mind-wandering research is rapidly progressing, stark disagreements are emerging about what the term “mind-wandering” means. Four prominent views define mind-wandering as (a) task-unrelated thought, (b) stimulus-independent thought, (c) unintentional thought, or (d) dynamically unguided thought. Although theorists claim to capture the ordinary understanding of mind-wandering, no systematic studies have assessed these claims. Two large factorial studies present participants (N = 545) with vignettes that describe someone's thoughts and ask whether her mind was wandering, while systematically manipulating features relevant to the four major accounts of mind-wandering. Dynamics explains between four and 40 times more variance in participants' mind-wandering judgments than other features. Our third study (N = 153) tests and supports a unique prediction of the dynamic framework—obsessive rumination contrasts with mind-wandering. Our final study (N = 277) used vignettes that resemble mind-wandering experiments. Dynamics had significant and large effects, while task-unrelatedness was nonsignificant. These results strongly suggest that the central feature of mind-wandering is its dynamics.     

A Cross-Cultural Note on Durkheim's Theory of Suicide

ABSTRACT: A formulation of Durkheim's theory of suicide is tested using data from a sample of 55 societies covered by the Human Relations Area Files. The model predicts suicide rates in five “pure” conditions but only in one “mixed” condition. In addition, the rates differ in each of the four pure extreme conditions. It is concluded that “integration” may be more important than “regulation” in determining the suicide rate of societies, groups, or social conditions.