“Lights on at the end of the party”: Are lads’ mags mainstreaming dangerous sexism?

Research has suggested that some magazines targeted at young men –lads’ mags– are normalizing extreme sexist views by presenting those views in a mainstream context. Consistent with this view, young men in Study 1 (n = 90) identified more with derogatory quotes about women drawn from recent lads’ mags, and from interviews with convicted rapists, when those quotes were attributed to lads’ mags, than when they were attributed to convicted rapists. In Study 2, 40 young women and men could not reliably judge the source of those same quotes. While these participants sometimes voiced the belief that the content of lads’ mags was ‘normal’ while rapists’ talk was ‘extreme’, they categorized quotes from both sources as derogatory with equal frequency. Jointly, the two studies show an overlap in the content of convicted rapists’ talk and the contents of contemporary lads’ mags, and suggest that the framing of such content within lads’ mags may normalize it for young men.     

A Systematic Framework for Integrating Psychological Evaluations and Interventions

A systematic framework for an integrative approach to psychological evaluations and interventions is proposed based on the executive system model of intelligence, the transactional processes of stress and coping, and the field properties of the personal domain. The executive system of intelligence is a comprehensive model that helps to explain the active components of various types of psychotherapies. We are proposing that psychotherapies facilitate clients' uses of their executive functions to develop coping strategies in their transactions with the environment and the events in their life space. A clinical case is presented to illustrate our systematic approach to psychological evaluation and intervention.     

A simple transmitter mount for short-term telemetric measurement of heart rate in the rat

This article describes a simple technique, not involving surgery, for mounting a small telemetry transmitter on a laboratory rat. The method is useful for collecting heart-rate data in studies of 2 or 3 days’ duration.     

Tricking into the Position of the Outcast: A Case Study in the Emergency and Effects of Communist Power

This paper is an experiment in understanding the logic of communism from the perspective of political psychology. In Hungary, communism became a means for transforming the entire psychical make-up of a country in a moment of reduced intensity of consciousness, a transitory or liminal period, produced by the Second World War. In liminal conditions, unconscious impulses are set free that are channeled by the use of archetypical images. As an empirical case study, this paper discusses the speeches of the first post-war Hungarian Communist Party leader, Matyas Rakosi, delivered in the years immediately after the devastations of the war, in an effort to discern the techniques and mechanisms by which the Communist Party managed to capture the allegiance of a large segment of the population. The analysis of these speeches and their effects indicates that communism was not merely a consequence of Soviet occupation, and therefore the withdrawal of the troops did not eliminate the lasting, mostly hidden but still predominant, effects of communism on the countries that were in its grip.     

The Influence of Explanations for Selection Test Use, Outcome Favorability, and Self-Efficacy on Test-Taker Perceptions

Previous research has shown that an explanation for an event can affect reactions to that event. This study examined this effect within a selection context by varying the type of explanation (causal, ideological, referential) and outcome favorability. A sample of 202 undergraduates completed a selection test and reported their perceptions of that test both before and after the outcome was known. Both the type of explanation and outcome favorability interacted with participants' self-efficacy in determining perceptions of validity and fairness. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Smart Recovery®: Addiction Recovery Support from a Cognitive-Behavioral Perspective

Self Management And Recovery Training (SMART®), a free self-help discussion group that is largely a cognitive-behavioral extrapolation of research findings on treatment of addictive disorders, is described. Information regarding its organization and operation is provided, and predictions are made about its future development.     

Narcissistic defensiveness: Hypervigilance and avoidance of worthlessness

Clinical theories of narcissism postulate the paradoxical coexistence of explicit self-perceptions of grandiosity and covert fragility and worthlessness. To examine the operation and time course of the latter component at a very early stage of information processing, a sequential priming study was conducted. Consistent with predictions high narcissists appear to be hypervigilant for ego-threats; they initially activated worthlessness and then rapidly and automatically inhibited it. In contrast, low narcissists neither activated nor inhibited worthlessness after ego-threat. A second study showed that conscious suppression did not elicit parallel effects among narcissists, thus supporting the idea that the effects in the first study were the result of unconscious repression processes. Differences between intentional and automatic processes in self-regulation are discussed. The findings demonstrate the importance of worthlessness in narcissistic self-regulation and help clarify how narcissists protect and defend their grandiose self-views.     

Patient–Provider Communication About Sexual Health: The Relationship with Gender, Age, Gender-Stereotypical Beliefs, and Perceptions of Communication Inappropriateness

This investigation examined patient–provider communication about sexual health related to gender and age. Data were collected from 277 individuals, aged 18–60, via convenience and snowball sampling at a large university in southwestern United States. Results indicate women are more proactive about their sexual health than men and tested for STDs more frequently. Women, more than men, initiate discussions with their healthcare provider about sexual health matters and healthcare providers are more likely to initiate communication about such matters with women than men. Men hold stronger gender-stereotypical beliefs than women, are less likely to initiate conversations about sexual issues with their provider, and believe sexual discussions with their partner are inappropriate. Age relates to sexual activity initiation and perceived STD risk.