Topless dancers: Managing stigma in a deviant occupation

This paper describes and analyzes how topless dancers manage the stigma related to their deviant occupation. It represents approximately nine months of limited participant observation and ethnographic interviewing at seven topless bars in a major metropolitan city in the Southwest with a population of approximately 1 million people. A structured interview schedule was utilized to obtain data from over 40 topless dancers in six different clubs. In addition, free‐flowing interviews were conducted with at least 20 other dancers, numerous waitresses in the clubs, one club manager, two assistant managers, and four former dancers still associated with the clubs (as bartenders, waitresses, or admission takers). This study indicates that two of the most common stigma management techniques used by topless dancers are dividing the social world as outlined by Goffman (1963) and techniques of neutralization described by Sykes and Matza (1957), especially denial of injury, condemnation of the condemners, and appeal to higher loyalties. Dancers further rationalize their participation in a deviant occupation on the basis that it is harmless, temporary, fun, good exercise, and easy money. Suggestions are made for future research on topless and nude dancing and stigma management.     

A personal reaction to freud's paper ‘on beginning the treatment’

Abstract

Sometimes, when reading Freud, I imagine I hear the sound of far-off warning bells tolling their alarm somewhere deep in my mind. I feel as if I am experiencing a great sense of danger, as if I am a child being led by the hand into a confusing, directionless, murky wood by an adult who appears to know the way, yet whom I do not quite trust to keep hold of my hand. It is as if, although I read the decrepit, over-grown sign at the edge as we advanced under the eaves: proceed with caution: at risk of losing touch with reality, I was hurried quickly past by the firm grip of the Omnipotent Adult who plunged straight in, and whose knowledge I do not altogether credit. So, for me, reading some of Freud's papers has a distinctly nightmarish quality, an atmosphere of being slightly out-of-control, an unnerving feeling of being in severe danger of being sucked in.     

Multiple Child Food Hypersensitivity Impacts Positive Adjustment in Parents

The physical impacts of food hypersensitivities (e.g. food allergy, food intolerance) encompass wide ranging but individually specific reactions. In contrast, the psychological impact of such illnesses extends beyond the individual who suffers the sensitivity. No Australian studies have examined the psychosocial impact of parenting a child with food hypersensitivities. The aim of this study was to ascertain differences in the psychosocial profile of parents raising a food hypersensitive child. Australian parents were targeted through three national support organisations and answered questions regarding their psychological health. Of a total of 990 respondents, 599 had children. These families comprised 1316 children aged 0–18 (M?=?7.63 years) and more than half (n?=?393) of these families were managing a child with a food hypersensitivity. Parents showed no differences in measured distress. In contrast, positive adjustment was higher for parents of food intolerant children and children with both food allergy and food intolerance, compared to those with non-food hypersensitive children. Moreover parents of children with combined food hypersensitivities reported a greater degree of positive change. The finding that parents of food hypersensitive children were not reporting higher levels of stress than parents without a food hypersensitive child is in stark contradiction to international studies examining both food hypersensitivity and parents of children with a chronic disease more generally. However, it appears that the complexity of the food hypersensitivity had a positive impact on adjustment with parents of children with multiple types of food hypersensitivity reporting greater positive adjustment outcomes.     

Validating presupposed versus focused text information

There is extensive evidence that readers continually validate discourse accuracy and congruence, but that they may also overlook conspicuous text contradictions. Validation may be thwarted when the inaccurate ideas are embedded sentence presuppositions. In four experiments, we examined readers’ validation of presupposed (“given”) versus new text information. Throughout, a critical concept, such as a truck versus a bus, was introduced early in a narrative. Later, a character stated or thought something about the truck, which therefore matched or mismatched its antecedent. Furthermore, truck was presented as either given or new information. Mismatch target reading times uniformly exceeded the matching ones by similar magnitudes for given and new concepts. We obtained this outcome using different grammatical constructions and with different antecedent–target distances. In Experiment 4, we examined only given critical ideas, but varied both their matching and the main verb’s factivity (e.g., factive know vs. nonfactive think). The Match × Factivity interaction closely resembled that previously observed for new target information (Singer, 2006). Thus, readers can successfully validate given target information. Although contemporary theories tend to emphasize either deficient or successful validation, both types of theory can accommodate the discourse and reader variables that may regulate validation.     

How do depressed and healthy adults interpret nuanced facial expressions?

This study investigates the discrimination accuracy of emotional stimuli in subjects with major depression compared with healthy controls using photographs of facial expressions of varying emotional intensities. The sample included 88 unmedicated male and female subjects, aged 18-56 years, with major depressive disorder (n = 44) or no psychiatric illness (n = 44), who judged the emotion of 200 facial pictures displaying an expression between 10% (90% neutral) and 80% (nuanced) emotion. Stimuli were presented in 10% increments to generate a range of intensities, each presented for a 500-ms duration. Compared with healthy volunteers, depressed subjects showed very good recognition accuracy for sad faces but impaired recognition accuracy for other emotions (e.g., harsh, surprise, and sad expressions) of subtle emotional intensity. Recognition accuracy improved for both groups as a function of increased intensity on all emotions. Finally, as depressive symptoms increased, recognition accuracy increased for sad faces, but decreased for surprised faces. Moreover, depressed subjects showed an impaired ability to accurately identify subtle facial expressions, indicating that depressive symptoms influence accuracy of emotional recognition.     

Gender Voices in Hong Kong English Textbooks—Some Past and Current Practices

This paper seeks to investigate whether recent improvements in the status of women in Hong Kong are reflected in patterns of gender representation in Hong Kong secondary English textbooks. A comparison of ten recently published books which are currently in use with ten published in the late 1980s/early 1990s and no longer in use revealed that women appeared more frequently in the former, and that greater use was made of gender-inclusive pronouns and the neutral address title Ms. Nevertheless some writers, it was found, continue to perpetuate the stereotyped image of women as weaker than men, and as operating primarily within domestic rather than social domains. The “male-first” phenomenon and the visual under-representation of women are still prevalent in recent textbooks.     

The influence of personality and anxiety on the oral performance of Japanese speakers of English

This study investigated the relationship between personality and anxiety characteristics of Japanese students and their oral performance in English. The participants were 73 native‐speakers of Japanese who were studying English at various language schools in New Zealand. They were administered the Maudsley Personality Inventory, the Spielberger State Anxiety Inventory, and a story‐retelling task which was scored in terms of oral fluency, accuracy, complexity, and global impression. Significant correlations were found between extraversion and global impression scores, and state anxiety and clause accuracy scores. These findings suggest that participants who were more extraverted produced better global impressions during their oral performance, and those who were experiencing higher levels of state anxiety made more errors in their spoken use of clauses. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A hierarchy of information sources for inferring emotional reactions

The ability of children and adults to infer emotional reactions from different sources of information was investigated. Preschoolers (mean age, 4–9), second graders (mean age, 4–9), and college students were asked to infer emotional reactions from verbally presented stories in which sources of information occurred either singly, in conflict, or in congruence. The sources investigated were situational (the protagonist's social or physical situation), normative (the dispositions of a group to which the protagonist belongs), and personal (the dispositions of the protagonist in particular). Subjects indicated the protagonist's emotional reaction to an event in the story by choosing one of three facial expressions, representing happy, upset, and afraid. A hierarchy of sources for making emotional inferences was found at all three grade levels: personal information was preferred over normative information, and both were dominant over situational information. The relevance of present methods and findings to the study of the development of “empathy” is discussed.     

The Beck Anxiety Inventory: Psychometric Properties with Older Adults

The assessment of anxiety disorders in late life is often hindered by the lack of measures specifically validated with older adults. Because anxiety manifestations may vary across age groups, it is important to design new instruments or validate existing measures with older adults. This study examined the psychometric properties of the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) in a sample of 281 older adults who were community-dwelling (82.6%) or living in residential care facilities (17.4%). The mean total BAI score was 6.5 (SD = 7.2), indicating minimal anxiety symptomatology in this older sample. There was a trend for older subjects to score higher. Females scored higher than males, and subjects living in a residential facility scored higher than did community dwellers. Item-total correlations were in the moderate range and the internal consistency of the BAI was adequate (alpha = 0.89). A factor analysis yielded a six-factor structure accounting for 64.6% of the variance, with a somatic factor accounting for the largest portion of the variance (32.2%). Because somatic symptoms are more prevalent with aging, such symptoms should not be weighed as heavily in the total BAI score as cognitive or behavioral symptoms. The findings indicate that the BAI is a useful self-report scale for assessing anxiety symptomatology among older adults.