Desirable but not smart: preference for smarter romantic partners impairs women's STEM outcomes

Although women today excel in many areas of society, they are often underrepresented in the traditionally male‐dominated fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). The present research examined whether traditional romantic partner preferences—specifically, a desire to date partners who are smarter than oneself—affects women's tendency to minimize their intelligence in STEM fields when pursuing romantic goals. Women (but not men) who preferred smarter romantic partners showed worse math performance (Studies 1–2), less identification with math (Study 2), and less interest in STEM careers (Study 3) when the goal to be romantically desirable was activated. A meta‐analysis across studies supported results. This research thus demonstrates that partner preferences influence women's STEM outcomes in response to romantic goal pursuit.     

The role of cue additivity in salience in taste aversion conditioning

In toxiphobia conditioning certain cues are more easily associated with malaise (i.e., more salient) than others. The present experiments show that cue additivity can account for previously found differences in salience of certain fluids. The relative salience of saccharin, saline and casein hydrolysate was tested in normal rats and in animals rendered anosmic by treatment of their nasal passages with zinc sulphate. The normally more salient casein was reduced in salience to the same level as saccharin and saline in the anosmic animals, while anosmia did not affect the relative salience of saccharin and saline. A second study tested the cue properties of vanilla, a fluid of very low salience. Anosmic animals could not show a conditioned aversion to vanilla. Normal animals readily learned the aversion but could not show it following a later anosmia treatment. Anosmia did not disrupt a saccharin aversion previously conditioned in normal animals. The data show that some of the “tastes” used in toxiphobia conditioning have olfactory components, and some are purely olfactory. Further, olfactory cues can summate with taste cues to form a more salient stimulus.     

Working with rage and anger—the establishment of a therapeutic setting in the homes of multiproblem families

This paper arises from a workshop which was devoted to the theoretical and clinical aspects of the therapeutic assessment of multi-problem families in crisis. It describes the creation of a therapeutic setting in the family's home and the techniques whereby the family may be engaged in a process which reaches beyond their anger.     

Intimacy-Anger and Insecure Attachment as Precursors of Abuse in Intimate Relationships1

One hundred and twenty men referred for treatment for wife assault and forty demographic controls completed self-report questionnaires assessing attachment patterns, anger, jealousy, Borderline Personality Organization, and trauma symptoms. This constellation, with the exception of attachment, has been found to represent a profile related significantly to the frequency of both verbal and physical abuse. In the present study, attachment was found to correlate significantly with these other measures. A measure of secure attachment correlated significantly, but negatively, with the constellation measures. A measure of fearful attachment correlated significantly and positively. A preoccupied attachment pattern correlated with the other measures less strongly than did the fearful measure. A dismissing measure was not correlated with any constellation measures. The role of attachment anger is discussed; it is suggested that fearful attachment could also be described as angry attachment. The concept of intimacy anger is introduced from early studies in attachment and applied to the explanation of assaultiveness in adult relationships.     

Difficulties in Interpersonal Emotion Regulation: Initial Development and Validation of a Self-Report Measure

Recent attention has focused on the role of interpersonal emotion regulation (IER) in the development and maintenance of a range of forms of psychopathology, including anxiety, depression, and borderline personality disorder (BPD). Despite the relevance of IER in psychopathology, few measures exist to characterize patterns of maladaptive IER. Our aim was to (1) develop a measure of maladaptive IER, (2) begin to explore the factor structure of this new measure, the difficulties in interpersonal regulation of emotions (DIRE), and (3) examine its association with symptoms of psychopathology. In Study 1, 853 Mechanical Turk workers completed the DIRE and measures of psychopathology symptoms. We identified two factors each in the IER and intrapersonal emotion regulation scales. In Study 2, 142 undergraduate students completed the DIRE and daily measures of emotion regulation and coping for 14 days. Preliminary findings suggest that the DIRE has adequate internal consistency and construct and predictive validity. This measure has the potential to supplement future efforts in assessing IER in psychopathology.     

“Intelligence and Civilisation”: A Ludwig Mond lecture delivered at the University of Manchester on 23rd October 1936 by Godfrey H. Thomson. A reprinting with background and commentary

Here we reprint, and provide background and a commentary on, a recently-rediscovered lecture by Godfrey H. Thomson entitled, “Intelligence and civilisation.” It was delivered at the University of Manchester, UK, on 23rd October, 1936, printed in 1937 in the short-lived Journal of the University of Manchester and as a pamphlet in Edinburgh. It was one in the series of lectures supported by the industrialist and philanthropist Ludwig Mond. The lecture is unusually valuable in that it places the theory, testing and practical application of intelligence against the background of the rise of fascism and its threat to civilisation. The lecture is a candid and accessible ‘confession and contemplation'; the frank thoughts of a person committed to, but critical of, intelligence testing and theory, but convinced of the power and place of intelligence differences in people's lives and in civilisation. It comes at an important time for Thomson, with regard to three of his major achievements: his Moray House Test series, the Scottish Mental Survey of 1932 (and the Northumbrian testing exercise that preceded it), and the preparation of his book The Factorial Analysis of Human Ability. The understanding of the lecture is enhanced by recently-discovered archive materials on Thomson and his circle. ([Thomson, G.H. (1937a). Intelligence and civilisation: A Ludwig Mond lecture delivered at the University of Manchester on October 23rd, 1936. Journal of the University of Manchester, 1, 18–38], from the Ludwig Mond lecture).     

School Violence and the Culture of Honor

ABSTRACT— We investigated the hypothesis that a sociocultural variable known as the culture of honor would be uniquely predictive of school-violence indicators. Controlling for demographic characteristics associated in previous studies with violent crime among adults, we found that high-school students in culture-of-honor states were significantly more likely than high-school students in non-culture-of-honor states to report having brought a weapon to school in the past month. Using data aggregated over a 20-year period, we also found that culture-of-honor states had more than twice as many school shootings per capita as non-culture-of-honor states. The data revealed important differences between school violence and general patterns of homicide and are consistent with the view that many acts of school violence reflect retaliatory aggression springing from intensely experienced social-identity threats.     

Aging and the perception of slant from optical texture, motion parallax, and binocular disparity

The ability of younger and older observers to perceive surface slant was investigated in four experiments. The surfaces possessed slants of 20°, 35°, 50°, and 65°, relative to the frontoparallel plane. The observers judged the slants using either a palm board (Experiments 1, 3, and 4) or magnitude estimation (Experiment 2). In Experiments 1–3, physically slanted surfaces were used (the surfaces possessed marble, granite, pebble, and circle textures), whereas computer-generated 3-D surfaces (defined by motion parallax and binocular disparity) were utilized in Experiment 4. The results showed that the younger and older observers' performance was essentially identical with regard to accuracy. The younger and older age groups, however, differed in terms of precision in Experiments 1 and 2: The judgments of the older observers were more variable across repeated trials. When taken as a whole, the results demonstrate that older observers (at least through the age of 83 years) can effectively extract information about slant in depth from optical patterns containing texture, motion parallax, or binocular disparity.     

A film set for the elicitation of emotion in research: A comprehensive catalog derived from four decades of investigation

Emotions are highly influential to many psychological processes. Indeed, research employing emotional stimuli is rapidly escalating across the field of psychology. However, challenges remain regarding discrete evocation of frequently co-elicited emotions such as amusement and happiness, or anger and disgust. Further, as much contemporary work in emotion employs college students, we sought to additionally evaluate the efficacy of film clips to discretely elicit these more challenging emotions in a young adult population using an online medium. The internet is an important tool for investigating responses to emotional stimuli, but validations of emotionally evocative film clips across laboratory and web-based settings are limited in the literature. An additional obstacle is identifying stimuli amidst the numerous film clip validation studies. During our investigation, we recognized the lack of a categorical database to facilitate rapid identification of useful film clips for individual researchers’ unique investigations. Consequently, here we also sought to produce the first compilation of such stimuli into an accessible and comprehensive catalog. We based our catalog upon prior work as well as our own, and identified 24 articles and 295 film clips from four decades of research. We present information on the validation of these clips in addition to our own research validating six clips using online administration settings. The results of our search in the literature and our own study are presented in tables designed to facilitate and improve a selection of highly valid film stimuli for future research.     

Forgiveness, feeling connected to others, and well-being: two longitudinal studies

In two studies, the authors investigated the associations between interpersonal forgiveness and psychological well-being. Cross-sectional and prospective multilevel analyses demonstrated that increases in forgiveness (measured as fluctuations in individuals' avoidance, revenge, and benevolence motivations toward their transgressors) were related to within-persons increases in psychological well-being (measured as more satisfaction with life, more positive mood, less negative mood, and fewer physical symptoms). Moreover, forgiveness was more strongly linked to well-being for people who reported being closer and more committed to their partners before the transgression and for people who reported that their partners apologized and made amends for the transgression. Evidence for the reverse causal model, that increases in well-being were related to increases in forgiveness, was also found. However, changes in feelings of closeness toward the partner appeared to account for the associations of forgiveness with well-being, but not vice versa.