Men as success objects and women as sex objects: A study of personal advertisements

A study was made of 328 personal advertisements sampled from a major daily Canadian newspaper. It was found that gender differences for desired companion attributes were consistent with traditional sex role stereotypes. Relative to the opposite sex, women emphasized employment, financial, and intellectual status, as well as commitment, while men emphasized physical characteristics. Physical characteristics were the most desired, regardless of sex. Secondary findings were that, for this sample, considerably more men than women placed ads, and that the mean age for both sexes was relatively high. The main findings were similar to those from earlier studies.The author was formerly a psychiatric social worker employed by the Greater Vancouver Mental Health Service in Vancouver, B.C., Canada. He is presently a doctoral candidate at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. The author would like to thank Dr. Ted Palys for his comments.     

The termination phase of combined therapy

Three different kinds of termination are described and discussed. In combined therapy the group can help to resolve and clarify the meanings of moves to terminate therapy. The role of the therapist's countertransferences in this stage of the work is important to consider, and here, too, the group is an important part of the work. The author sees termination as an important part of the treatment process. In combined therapy it may be more complex but it also allows for a fuller exploration of the relevant issues.     

BEHAVIORAL THERAPY DEVELOPMENT AND PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE:

Abstract— An abundance of research from diverse areas of psychological science is potentially relevant to behavioral therapy development research. The National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health convened a workshop to reinforce the connection between basic behavioral and therapy development research. The articles in this Special Section are the product of this workshop. Several lines of basic behavioral research are described, and implications for the development of behavioral therapies are discussed. This Special Section highlights the notion that strengthening the bond between behavioral therapy development research and basic behavioral science will accelerate the advancement of knowledge about behavior, behavioral change and therapeutic interventions.     

Controlled attention sharing influences time estimation

A seminal attentional model of time estimation predicts that subjective duration will be positively correlated to the amount of attention given to temporal processing. This prediction holds under prospective conditions, in which one is forewarned that judgments of time will be asked, in contrast to retrospective conditions, in which such judgments are required after the relevant period without any prior warning. In three experiments, an attention-sharing method was used. Subjects were asked to control the amount of attention that they devoted to one or the other component of a dual-task paradigm. The first experiment involved word categorization and reproduction of duration. The following experiments, based on signal detection theory, required discrimination of both the duration and the intensity of a single stimulus, in the visual (Experiment 2) or the auditory (Experiment 3) modality. The results indicate that when the attention is directly controlled by the subject, the subjective duration shortens as the amount of attention devoted to the temporal task diminishes. The implications of these results for the possible existence of an internal timer are considered.     

Attentional bias to threat: Roles of trait anxiety, stressful events, and awareness

Attentional biases for threat stimuli were assessed in high and low trait anxious subjects (n = 66) using a probe detection task. To examine the effects of trait anxiety and situational stressors, each subject was tested three times: Under no stress, laboratory-induced stress, and examination-induced stress. To evaluate the role of awareness, half the word stimuli were presented very briefly (14 msec) and masked, and the other half were presented for 500 msec without a mask. Results showed that high trait anxious subjects under exam stress showed an attentional bias towards unmasked threat stimuli compared with low trait subjects. This effect was not found under lab-induced stress, suggesting that the attentional bias for unmasked threat in high trait subjects may be a function of a prolonged stressor, rather than a transient increase in state anxiety. The results from the masked exposure condition were not predicted; high trait anxious subjects shifted attention towards the spatial location of threat words despite lack of awareness of their lexical content, but this bias was only apparent in the no-stress condition. The results are discussed in relation to recent cognitive theories of anxiety.     

Professional ethics of psychologists and physicians: morality, confidentiality, and sexuality in Israel

Clinical psychologists' and nonpsychiatric physicians' attitudes and behaviors in sexual and confidentiality boundary violations were examined. The 171 participants' responses were analyzed by profession, sex, and status (student, resident, professional) on semantic differential, boundary violation vignettes, and a version of Pope, Tabachnick, and Keith-Spiegel's (1987) ethical scale. Psychologists rated sexual boundary violation as more unethical than did physicians (p less than .001). Rationale (p less than .01) and timing (p less than .0001) influenced ratings. Psychologists reported fewer sexualized behaviors than physicians (p less than .05). Professional experience (p less than .01) and sex (p less than .05) were associated with confidence-violating behavior. Overall, 78% of the sample reported attitudes or behaviors associated with boundary violations. The behavior violations were correlated (r = .49). Actual violators rated vignette violators more leniently than did nonviolators (p less than .01).