Sex differences in attraction to infants: When do they occur?

Harlow (1971) observed that all-female college audiences responded to a pictured infant rhesus monkey with an “ecstasy response,” while males were “completely unresponsive,” and females in coeducational audiences “inhibited the ecstasy response,” explaining these differences in terms of innate sex differences. The present study compared college students' self-reported attraction to pictures of 15 infant and adult nonhuman primates under several conditions. Infant pictures were of two types: infants which were engaged in typical infant behaviors (Infant Behavior), and those which were not (Infant). Subjects made judgments in same- or mixed-sex groups and reported degree of attraction publicly or privately. Ratio scores were used to represent each subject's attraction to infant or infant-behavior pictures compared with his or her attraction to pictures of adults. There were no significant sex differences in attraction to infant or infant-behavior pictures, and sex did not interact with any other variable. However, situational variables significantly affected the response. Males as well as females reported greater attraction to infant and infant-behavior pictures when they viewed the pictures in same-sex compared with mixed-sex groups. Both sexes reported greater attraction to infant and infant-behavior pictures privately than publicly.     

Emotional arousal and persuasion effects in flooding

The effects of a single session of imaginal flooding were studied in female students unable to touch a harmless spider. All combinations of continuous vs. discontinuous presentation and highly arousing vs. less arousing material were used in a factorial design, to test the hypothesis that highly arousing material is beneficial only when presented under massed conditions. Results were clearly against prediction and suggested that immediate attitude change was maximal following less arousing material, irrespective of method of presentation; while behaviour change was greatest when less arousing material was presented continuously.

In a second experiment, subjects were exposed to both types of theme material in either a low-high or a high-low order. Some evidence was found for the postulated attitude changes and contrast effects, which favoured the use of a high-low order. Possible explanations for earlier contradictory evidence, and implications for clinical treatment are discussed.     

Effects of musically evoked affect on women's interpersonal attraction toward and perceptual judgments of physical attractiveness of men

In a between-subjects design, female subjects evaluated photographs of attractive and unattractive stimulus males while listening to positive affect-evoking rock music, negative affect-evoking avant-garde music, or no music at all. Consistent with previous research, subjects evaluated attractive stimulus males more positively than unattractive males on a variety of interpersonal judgment dimensions. Furthermore, subjects responded with more positive evaluations of personal character of, and attraction toward, stimulus persons in the rock music as compared to the avant-garde music condition. Finally, assessments of physical attractiveness were influenced by the music conditions, with stimulus persons judged of greater physical attractiveness in the rock as compared with the avant-garde music condition. The results are discussed in terms of extending the Byrne-Clore reinforcement-affect model of interpersonal attraction.     

Information available In brief tactile presentations

Two experiments investigated characteristics of Immediate recall for brief tactile stimuli applied to the 24 interjoint regions of the fingers of both hands (thumbs excluded) The obtained Immediate-memory span varied from 35 to 7,5 stimulus positions correct after correction for guessing, similar to the results In analogous visual studies, Properties of any hypothetical tactile short-term memory were studied by requiring subjects to report only a specified portion of the stimuli presented, and by varying the time of occurrence of the marker specifying which portion of the stimuli to report, In this partial-report condition, subjects had more stimulus information available at the time of reporting than their immediate memory spans indicated, provided that the stimulus marker occurred within 0.8 sec after stimulus termination, The data suggest that at least for the amount of training employed here, any tactile short-term memory has much less capacity than an analogous visual short-term memory.     

Gender and family factors as predictors of late adolescent emotional expressiveness and adjustment: A longitudinal study

This study examined the longterm effects of the socialization of emotion in a sample of European American families. Late adolescents, whose families had been more emotionally expressive and accepting of emotions when they were in fifth grade, were more likely to report showing emotions not traditionally associated with their gender roles—specifically, males reported a greater propensity for crying, and females reported a greater tendency to express anger. In addition, in late adolescence, greater frequency of showing fear and showing warmth or affection were associated with higher levels of social and psychological adjustment—whereas crying was associated with better adjustment for males and poorer adjustment for females. Overall, adolescent females tended to report a higher level of emotional expressiveness and a higher level of family support of emotions than did adolescent males.     

Multiple trajectories of physical aggression among adolescent boys and girls

Latent growth mixture modeling was used to identify discrete patterns of physical aggression from Grades 7 to 11 among a sample of 1,877 youth. Four trajectory classes adequately explained the development of physical aggression in both boys and girls: Low/No Aggression; Persistent High Aggression; Desisting Aggression, characterized by decreasing risk throughout adolescence; and Adolescent Aggression, characterized by low early risk that increases until Grade 9, levels out, and then declines in late adolescence. Girls were less likely than boys were to be in any trajectory besides the Low/No Aggression trajectory. Parental supervision, deviant peer association, academic orientation, impulsivity, and emotional distress at Grade 7 were all strongly associated with trajectory class membership. These associations did not differ by gender. These findings strongly suggest that the processes involved in the development of physical aggression in adolescence operate similarly in boys and girls.     

Contrasting jail diversion and in-jail services for mental illness and substance abuse: do they serve the same clients?

Baseline data from a study of jail diversion services and in-jail behavioral health services were used to examine the differences in clients served by these two models of responding to people with co-occurring mental health and substance abuse problems in the criminal justice system. Clients of the diversion service had more acute psychiatric symptoms and were more likely to have a diagnosis of psychosis NOS. Clients of the in-jail service were more likely to have been on probation or parole in the past and to have received substance abuse treatment. Different service models may attract and serve different populations of clients. Diversion services may cast a wider net that includes clients who may not have otherwise been involved in forensic services.