Traffic Citations in Relation to Gender

The present study was designed to examine the possibility that traffic officers are more lenient in issuing citations to other gender drivers. Statistics on the traffic citations issued for a year were obtained from the highway patrols of two states. The information was classified by violation, officers' gender, and drivers' gender. For most categories of violation, men issued a greater percent of their citations to male drivers than women did and women issued a greater percent of their citations to female drivers than men did. The differences could have been due to leniency on the part of one gender or both genders of officers. Leniency on the part of both genders is more consistent with the literature on helping in situations with low cost and low threat to the helper. A possible interpretation is that gender identity includes norms for positive treatment of other gender persons.     

The Effects of Gender on Career Decision Problems in Young Adults

The authors investigated gender differences in psychological problems in the career decision making (CDM) process of young adults. Specifically, problems with decision anxiety, life-goal awareness, luck-fate orientation, authority orientation, and secondary gain motivation were investigated. Methodology involved administering the Career Decision Diagnostic Assessment (CDDA) instrument to 1,006 college students from four universities. Results indicated no gender differences in global levels of problems in CDM. Women reported more problems with life-goal awareness and authority orientation than did men. Men reported more problems with secondary gain motivations than did women. The results are discussed in terms of implications for gender-differentiated career counseling.     

Cotherapist modeling in group psychotherapy: Fact or fantasy?

This study examines ratings of cotherapist self-disclosure furnished by members in 20 outpatient groups. Clients completed a specially designed measure to assess three dimensions of therapist transparency: positive or negative valence, low or high risk, and the target of the disclosure, namely, the individual members, the group as a whole, the therapist her/himself, or the co-leader. Exploration of the frequency of therapist-to-therapist disclosure provided an evaluation of the modeling hypothesis that is so prevalent in the literature. The findings demonstrate that although the overall level of therapist self-disclosure was quite low, results were consistent with expectations showing that most of the personal comments were positive, low risk, and rarely directed to the cotherapist. The viability of the modeling concept in co-led groups is challenged.     

MMPI-2 Content Scale Validity Within a Sample of Chronic Pain Patients

The concurrent, criterion-related and discriminant validity of four of the MMPI-2 content scales were examined within a population of 309 patients being evaluated for the treatment of chronic pain. Utilizing both self-report and therapist-derived criteria, the MMPI-2 content scales designed to assess symptoms of anxiety (ANX), depression (DEP), low self-esteem (LSE), and anger (ANG) demonstrated the ability to provide valid information beyond that provided by the traditional MMPI-2 clinical and validity indices. Further, a multi-trait/multi-method analytic approach revealed; (1) strong discriminant validity for the ANG content scale and (2) substantial variance overlap among all the self-report measures of subjective distress, compromising our efforts to evaluate the discriminant validity of the ANX, DEP, and LSE content scales.