Book Reviews

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

Sex-role stereotypes of feminists and nonfeminists

In light of recent attempts by feminists to upgrade the status of women by stressing the positive aspects of femininity, a comparison of sex-role stereotyping by women who endorse women's liberation with those who do not was made. Feminists showed a more positive perception of women; both groups stressed positive feminine traits in describing an ideal woman, but feminists would like to see more dominance in women. Two negative stereotypes, not previously documented, emerged from this analysis: the depiction of men as cooler, more boastful, awkward, and insensitive by the feminists and women's liberationists as more boastful, excitable, and unattractive by the nonfeminists.     

Multiple family therapy for Chinese families of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): treatment efficacy from the children’s perspective and their subjective experiences

This paper reports the results of our study that assessed the treatment efficacy of multiple family therapy (MFT) from the perspective of participating Chinese children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and identified their subjective experiences. Forty‐three children with ADHD in the experimental group (EG) completed a forty‐two‐hour MFT, whilst forty‐five children with ADHD in the control group (CG) had attended two writing classes scheduled three months apart that were similar to those of the MFT. Data from the outcome study were gathered using standardized questionnaires and data from the qualitative study were drawn from thirteen children with ADHD who had completed the MFT and attended the focus group interviews (n = 5) or individual interviews (n = 8) conducted in the post‐treatment phase. The results of the Paired sample t‐test and MANOVA indicated no significant changes on the scores for the four measures adopted (perception of competence, hopefulness, parent‐child relationship and perceived social support) in the pre‐ and post‐treatment for the EG and the CG. Five themes emerged from the narratives of children with ADHD, which revealed the children’s subjective experiences with the MFT: (a) full of fun; (b) building friendships through common experiences; (c) a happy family time; (d) safe space; and (e) positive parental responses and communications.     

Incremental theories of weight and healthy eating behavior

We examined whether a belief in weight as malleable (an incremental theory) leads to healthier eating than a belief that weight is fixed (an entity theory). Participants with incremental theories of weight consumed fewer calories from high‐calorie foods in a lab‐based taste‐test than did those with more entity theories of weight. This pattern held correlationally, with naturally occurring theories of weight (Study 1), and when we experimentally manipulated participants’ theories of weight (Study 2). A third study provided evidence that differences in self‐efficacy regarding food mediate the relationship between theories of weight and eating behavior (Study 3). One way to encourage healthy eating might be to develop interventions that encourage more incremental views of weight.     

The Effects of Alcohol Intoxication on Accuracy and the Confidence–Accuracy Relationship in Photographic Simultaneous Line‐ups

Acute alcohol intoxication during encoding can impair subsequent identification accuracy, but results across studies have been inconsistent, with studies often finding no effect. Little is also known about how alcohol intoxication affects the identification confidence–accuracy relationship. We randomly assigned women (N = 153) to consume alcohol (dosed to achieve a 0.08% blood alcohol content) or tonic water, controlling for alcohol expectancy. Women then participated in an interactive hypothetical sexual assault scenario and, 24 hours or 7 days later, attempted to identify the assailant from a perpetrator present or a perpetrator absent simultaneous line‐up and reported their decision confidence. Overall, levels of identification accuracy were similar across the alcohol and tonic water groups. However, women who had consumed tonic water as opposed to alcohol identified the assailant with higher confidence on average. Further, calibration analyses suggested that confidence is predictive of accuracy regardless of alcohol consumption. The theoretical and applied implications of our results are discussed.© 2017 The Authors Applied Cognitive Psychology Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.     

The diagnostic and therapeutic uses of family conflicts in a Chinese context: the case of anorexia nervosa

There are two untested cultural beliefs commonly held among family therapists in Hong Kong: (1) Chinese families are reserved in disclosing their conflicts to an 'outsider'; and (2) it would be culturally inappropriate to elicit family conflicts in treatment. In this article, an attempt is made to examine these cultural beliefs based on the results of a qualitative study of thirty-five Chinese patients suffering from anorexia nervosa. These patients and their families have participated in a pre-treatment family interview prior to the commencement of family treatment. The results of the study have shown that the afflicted Chinese families are very willing to disclose their difficulties to the researcher. The onset of the disorder has led to different types of family conflicts including: (1) overt family conflicts related to food refusal; (2) covert family conflicts; (3) increased sibling rivalry; (4) increased parent–child conflict; and (5) marital tension and distress. The clinical implications of this study are discussed at the end of the article.     

Evidence and a computational explanation of cultural differences in facial expression recognition

Facial expressions are crucial to human social communication, but the extent to which they are innate and universal versus learned and culture dependent is a subject of debate. Two studies explored the effect of culture and learning on facial expression understanding. In Experiment 1, Japanese and U.S. participants interpreted facial expressions of emotion. Each group was better than the other at classifying facial expressions posed by members of the same culture. In Experiment 2, this reciprocal in-group advantage was reproduced by a neurocomputational model trained in either a Japanese cultural context or an American cultural context. The model demonstrates how each of us, interacting with others in a particular cultural context, learns to recognize a culture-specific facial expression dialect.