Sex differences in the nature,realism, and correlates of body image

The present study examined sex differences in the nature and realism of body-image satisfaction, and the extent to which sex and sex role ideology moderated the relationships of body image to other indices of self-esteem and well-being. Accordingly, scales assessing body cathexis, self-esteem, depression proneness, and sex role ideology, as well as a questionnaire assessing perceptions of weight and dieting activities, were completed by 135 college women and 129 college men. As expected, women indicated significantly greater dissatisfaction with their bodies than did men. Women were likely to perceive themselves as overweight or slightly overweight, regardless of their actual weight, and most wanted to lose weight. Men who were dissatisfied tended to perceive themselves as underweight and wanted to gain rather than to lose weight. For both sexes, less positive attitudes to ward one's body were related to lower levels of self-esteem, although the relationship was significantly stronger for women than for men. The relationship between body attitudes and self-esteem was of approximately equal magnitude among traditional vs feminist women. For both sexes, more negative attitudes towards one's body were related to greater proneness to depression. Implications for further research are discussed.     

The impact of defibrillator discharges on psychological functioning of implantable cardioverter defibrillator recipients

A lag exists with respect to our understanding of the psychological demands and rehabilitation needs of individuals who have undergone implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) implantation. The ICD is designed to transmit an electric shock to the heart to treat a potentially life-threatening arrhythmia. This study specifically examined the impact of defibrillator discharges on the psychological functioning of ICD recipients. A questionnaire was self-administered to 33 individuals who have been living with the ICD for at least 6 months. Results revealed that levels of anger and depression were significantly higher in those subjects who reported a lower discharge rate, while sense of well-being was significantly higher in those subjects who reported a greater discharge rate. Possible explanations for our findings were proposed as well as implications for clinical intervention were discussed.     

Activity, Passivity, Self-Denigration, and Self-Promotion: Toward an Interactionist Model of Interpersonal Dependency

ABSTRACT Although dependency in adults is inextricably linked with passivity and submissiveness in the minds of many theoreticians, clinicians, and researchers, evidence has accumulated which suggests that in certain situations, dependency is actually associated with high levels of activity and assertiveness. Three experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis that when a dependent person is concerned primarily with getting along with a peer, he or she will “self-denigrate” (i.e., will utilize strategies that ensure that a peer will be evaluated more positively than he or she is on a laboratory task), but when a dependent person is concerned primarily with pleasing an authority figure, he or she will “self-promote” (i.e., will adopt strategies that increase the likelihood that he or she will be evaluated more positively than a peer on a laboratory task). This hypothesis was supported in all three experiments. Theoretical implications of these findings are discussed, and an interactionist model of interpersonal dependency is briefly described.     

Personality factors and cervical premalignancy

The purpose of the study was to attempt a discrimination between stages of cervical premalignancy in terms of the four Eysenckian dimensions. It consisted of a quasi-prospective design applied to the presumed continuum of cervical premalignancy. The Ss were 88 women addressed by a physician or self-addressed for Pap smear examinations. Prior to the Pap smear they completed a demographic questionnaire and the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire providing scores of extraversion (E), neuroticism (N), psychoticism (P) and lie (L). By the Pap smear results there were four groups of women: healthy, suffering from vaginal or cervical inflammations, suffering from human papillomaviruses (HPV), and suffering from dysplasias or cervical intraepithelial neoplasms (CIN). ANOVA and discriminant analyses showed that the Eysenckian dimensions discriminated correctly with above chance significance between the groups, mainly between the healthy and inflammatory, on the one hand, and the HPV and CIN, on the other hand (on the basis of N and E scores), and less well between the healthy and inflammatory (on the basis of L scores), and least between the HPV and CIN (on the basis of P scores). As expected, in the healthy and inflammatory groups as compared with the HPV and CIN groups, N and P scores were higher whereas E and L scores were lower. The results indicate the correspondence between physiological and psychological characteristics and suggest especially the alternating relation between neuroticism and physical pathology.     

Infant information-processing performance and maternal education

Relations between maternal education and indices of infant information-processing performance were examined. A sample of 93 3-month olds whose mothers' completed education level was adequately distributed were seen in an infant control habituation procedure. Eighteen infants failed to complete the procedure, and 76 reached a conventional habituation criterion. No significant differences in habituation performance by maternal education level emerged. This finding suggests that information-processing indices obtained in the first 6 months are useful as predictive measures of mental development that are uncorrelated with important markers of infants' environmental rearing conditions.     

Clients Helping Therapists Find Solutions to their Therapy

This paper is offered as a beginning toward including client perspectives on treatment and client participation in supervision. Rather than see therapists as technical experts who do things to people, many of us now see therapists as nonexperts who create conversations with people (Goolishian & Anderson, 1992). This new shift challenges the traditional training positions of supervisor and supervisee, respectively. Including clients' voices the supervisor participate from a nonexpert position.     

The family-of-origin framework: A model for clinical training

Family-of-origin work is defined as a person's attempt to examine and/or change the patterns of interaction that occur in the family in which s/he was raised. This article outlines a model of family-of-origin work that is used in the clinical psychology training program at St. Louis University. The family therapy literature, particularly the work of Bowen, provides its theoretical underpinnings. An integral part of family-of-origin presentations is the genogram, or visual depiction of a family tree. Many ethical issues arise from the use of family-of-origin work within the context of clinical training, including confidentiality, responsibility, informed consent, values, and the boundaries of the supervisory relationship.     

GENDER COMPARISONS OF MATHEMATICS ATTITUDES AND AFFECT

This article reports the complex results of meta-analyses of gender differences in attitudes and affect specific to mathematics. Overall, effect sizes were small and were similar in size to gender differences in mathematics performance. When differences exist, the pattern is for females to hold more negative attitudes. Gender differences in self-confidence and general mathematics attitudes are larger among high school and college students than among younger students. Effect sizes for mathematics anxiety differ depending upon the sample (highly selected or general). One exception to the general pattern is in stereotyping mathematics as a male domain, where males hold much more stereotyped attitudes ( d = -.90). While affect and attitudes toward mathematics are not the only influences on the development of gender differences in mathematics performance, they are important, and both male and female affect and attitudes should be considered in conjunction with other social and political influences as explanations.     

Qualities of color vision in infancy.

Four-month-old infants attended differentially to eight equally bright, monochromatic spectral lights; that is, they discriminated colors. Moreover, infants showed the same pattern of differential attention regardless of experimental group (different groups of infants saw different subsets of all possible pairings of colors) or experimental method (paired comparisons or single stimulus). In general, the differential attention of infants to colors parallels the ratings of the pleasantness of those same colors by adults. Finally, infants looked significantly longer at color category centers than at color category boundaries. These results suggest that looking at this early stage of infancy can better be understood in terms of preference rather than in terms of stimulus categorization. The results also provide further evidence for a neural excitation model of early visual attention.