Sexual infidelity in a national survey of American women: differences in prevalence and correlates as a function of method of assessment.

The purposes of this study were (a) to estimate the annual prevalence of, and to identify the predictors of, sexual infidelity in a population-based sample of married women (N = 4,884); and (b) to evaluate whether the prevalence and predictors of infidelity varied as a function of whether the assessment of infidelity was based on a face-to-face interview versus a computer-assisted self-interview. Annual prevalence of infidelity was much smaller on the basis of the face-to-face interview (1.08%) than on the computer-assisted self-interview (6.13%). Although many of the predictor variables replicated results from previous studies (e.g., demographic variables, religiosity, sexual experience), findings also indicated that childhood sexual abuse (i.e., forced sex) predicted greater probability of infidelity. Finally, the magnitude of the association with infidelity for 4 of the 9 predictor variables differed between the 2 methods for assessing infidelity. This study's findings underscore the importance of assessing infidelity with methods such as computer-assisted self-interviews that minimize the influence of social desirability and impression management.     

Linkages between spouses' psychological distress and marital conflict in the home.

To elucidate the processes that underlie the established association between psychopathology and marital functioning, researchers have given attention to how symptomatic individuals manage their interpersonal contexts, particularly during the handling of disagreements. In the current study, the authors evaluate the role of marital conflict strategies in relation to wives' and husbands' psychological distress levels. A sample of 100 community-based couples completed assessments of psychological distress and diaries describing marital conflict that occurred at home during a 15-day reporting period. Findings from multilevel modeling of dyadic data revealed associations between both spouses' psychological distress and multiple behavioral and emotional conflict expressions in the home. Psychological symptoms uniquely predicted the occurrence of certain conflict expressions, even when accounting for global negative marital sentiments. The findings encourage subsequent consideration of marital conflict expressions and resolution strategies when studying processes involved in the marriage-psychological adjustment link.     

Contracting, prompting, and reinforcing substance use disorder continuing care: a randomized clinical trial.

Although continuing care is strongly related to positive treatment outcomes for substance use disorder (SUD), participation rates are low and few effective interventions are available. In a randomized clinical trial with 150 participants (97% men), 75 graduates of a residential Veterans Affairs Medical Center SUD program who received an aftercare contract, attendance prompts, and reinforcers (CPR) were compared to 75 graduates who received standard treatment (STX). Among CPR participants, 55% completed at least 3 months of aftercare, compared to 36% in STX. Similarly, CPR participants remained in treatment longer than those in STX (5.5 vs. 4.4 months). Additionally, CPR participants were more likely to be abstinent compared to STX (57% vs. 37%) after 1 year. The CPR intervention offers a practical means to improve adherence among individuals in SUD treatment.     

Children's emotional false memories

Eight- and 12-year-old children were presented with neutral and negative emotional Deese-Roediger-McDermott lists equated on familiarity and associative strength. Both recall and recognition (A') measures were obtained. Recall measures exhibited the usual age increments in true and false recollection. True neutral items were better recalled and recognized than true negative emotional items. Although the children showed more false recall for neutral than for negative emotional lists, false recognition was higher for negative emotional than for neutral items. A' analyses also showed that whereas true neutral information and false neutral information were easily discriminated by children regardless of age, the same was not the case for true and false negative emotional information. Together, these results suggest that although children may be able to censor negative emotional information at recall, such information promotes relational processing in children's memory, making true and false emotional information less discriminable overall.     

Gender differences in cooperation and competition: the male-warrior hypothesis

Evolutionary scientists argue that human cooperation is the product of a long history of competition among rival groups. There are various reasons to believe that this logic applies particularly to men. In three experiments, using a step-level public-goods task, we found that men contributed more to their group if their group was competing with other groups than if there was no intergroup competition. Female cooperation was relatively unaffected by intergroup competition. These findings suggest that men respond more strongly than women to intergroup threats. We speculate about the evolutionary origins of this gender difference and note some implications.     

Nonmentalizing States in Early-Childhood Survivors of the Holocaust: Developmental Considerations Regarding Treatment of Child Survivors of Genocidal Atrocities

This paper attempts to coalesce considerations of attachment processes, trauma, mentalization, and nonverbal behavior to underscore some of the developmental and therapeutic challenges demonstrated by older-adult child survivors of the Holocaust, and by implication, other child victims of similar genocidal and traumatic events. Young child survivors experienced not only their own traumatic exposure to violence, harm, and loss, but also the stress-transmission of the adult caregivers who raised them in the years that followed. For some, the horrendous losses, combined with impediments to organizing relationships, and to experiences of predictable and trusted continuities, negatively impact the development of the reflective function, and of interpretive skills basic to successful implicit relatedness and explicit exchanges. "Neutral flow" of bodily tension and shape often signals the freezing accompanying nonmentalizing states. Misalignments in individual personality structure and discordances in interpersonal exchange underscore the need to address fundamental building blocks of relatedness and mentalization in the therapeutic process.     

The relationship between body weight and perceived weight-related employment discrimination: The role of sex and race

This study provides unique empirical evidence regarding a growing concern internationally: weight discrimination in the workplace. Using survey data from a national sample of 2838 American adults, it responds to Puhl and Brownell’s [Puhl, R., & Brownell, K. D. (2001). Bias, discrimination, and obesity. Obesity Research, 9, 788-805] call for additional research investigating the prevalence of discriminatory experience among overweight employees, and to their more specific call for research that takes sex and race into account when examining weight discrimination. The results indicate that women are over 16 times more likely than men to perceive employment related discrimination and identify weight as the basis for their discriminatory experience. In addition, overweight respondents were 12 times more likely than normal weight respondents to report weight-related employment discrimination, obese 37 times more likely, and severely obese more than 100 times more likely. The implications of the study’s findings for organizations, policy makers, overweight employees, and career counselors are discussed, and future research directions suggested.     

Stress-response-dampening effects of alcohol: attention as a mediator and moderator

The present study sought to characterize alcohol's stress-response-dampening (SRD) effects on multiple measures of stress and whether these effects are mediated by reductions in sustained attention and, further, whether baseline levels of sustained attention moderate SRD. One hundred six men consumed either an alcohol (0.70 g/kg) or a placebo beverage prior to learning that they would deliver a self-disclosing speech. Structural equation models controlling for multiple baseline periods indicated that alcohol directly reduced self-reported anxiety and skin conductance levels in response to the stressor. Alcohol's effect on reducing heart rate response, in contrast, was indirect and mediated by effects on prestress baseline. As hypothesized, differences in sustained attention partially mediated the effects of alcohol on skin conductance (but not heart rate or self-reported anxiety) and served as a moderator of alcohol's effects on skin conductance response. Findings are discussed in terms of theoretical links among alcohol consumption, specific cognitive abilities, and stress reactivity.     

Marital distress and DSM-IV psychiatric disorders in a population-based national survey

The associations between marital distress and Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.; DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) Axis I psychiatric disorders were evaluated in a United States population-based survey of married individuals in which there was no upper age exclusionary criterion (N = 2,213). Marital distress was associated with (a) broad-band classifications of anxiety, mood, and substance use disorders and (b) all narrow-band classifications of specific disorders except for panic disorder, with the strongest associations obtained between marital distress and bipolar disorder, alcohol use disorders, and generalized anxiety disorder. The association between marital distress and major depressive disorder increased in magnitude with increasing age; there was no evidence that the association between marital distress and other psychiatric disorders was moderated by gender or age. Results support continued research on the association between couple functioning and mental health.     

The patient's experience of validation in psychoanalytic treatment

The importance of the patient's experience of validation is not a new one in psychoanalytic thinking, and can be traced throughout the literature. However, its role as an essential aspect of the psychoanalytic process, particularly in working with intrapsychic conflict, has traditionally been underappreciated. It is argued that validating interventions have an important role in psychoanalytic treatment, and that they often serve to open up, rather than foreclose, the analysis of transference. Marsha Linehan's conceptualization of the role of validation in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy provides a unifying framework for a more extensive psychoanalytic consideration of validation. After a review of the psychoanalytic literature, a number of conceptual issues are discussed that have complicated thinking about validation from a psychoanalytic perspective. Two clinical examples are presented, one from the author's psychoanalytic practice and one from his own analysis. Both illustrate how active validation by the analyst can play an essential facilitating role in the psychoanalytic process.