Task-related arousal of type A and type B persons: level of challenge and response specificity

To determine whether different levels of challenge had differential effects on the arousal levels of Type A and Type B persons, 30 Type A and 30 Type B male subjects worked on an intelligence test task (digits backwards recall) that was easy, moderately difficult, or extremely difficult. Arousal was measured in terms of systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, pulse rate, pulse volume, skin resistance, and subjective arousal. Results indicated that while working on the extremely difficult task, the Type A subjects evidenced reliably higher systolic blood pressure than did the Type B subjects (p = 0.1; difference = 7.52 mm of Hg) and that there were not reliable differences between the subjects in systolic blood pressure at other levels of challenge or on other measures of arousal.     

Depressive attributions: selection of different causes or assignment of dimensional meanings?

Attributional models of depression suggest that depression is associated with internal, stable, and global causal explanations of events. However, the models do not specify whether the depressive attributional process involves the selection of certain causes, the assignment of dimensional meanings to those causes, or both. A distinction between these two processes was suggested by the findings that the choice of causes does not reliably indicate the perceived dimensions and that there is poor convergence between existing methods that assess causes and those that assess dimensions. When causes and dimensions were each measured in a manner that avoided confounding by the other, each made a unique contribution to the prediction of depression scores. Cause ratings alone were significantly associated with depression scores, but the optimal prediction of depression included both causes and dimensions. The implications of the distinction between these two processes for experimental manipulations of attributions and for reattribution training programs are discussed.     

One last response to the Rorschach test: a second chance to reveal oneself

This paper explores a technical procedure, that of asking for one more response after the patient has given response(s) to Card X of the Rorschach. This "one last response" in the context of "ending" is discussed. Endings have many meanings but the ending of the Rorschach can be more than just a relief to the weary patient and/or tester who may have been experiencing the disquieting inner workings of the patient's unconscious. The ending of the Rorschach with the additional "one last response" can be the source of valuable clinical questions and inferences applicable to treatment.     

Understanding and Counseling Narcissistic Clients

This article is intended to provide counselors with an overview of narcissism and its treatment. In the first section, dysfunctional narcissism is described, drawing on the diagnostic indicators presented in the DSM-III and the contemporary object relations theories of Heinz Kohut and Otto Kernberg. The second section focuses on counseling narcissistic clients.     

Assertiveness and cognitive processing in interpersonal situations

This study examined social skills components that precede the delivery of a skilled overt interpersonal response. Using a cognitive-behavioral systems approach to assertiveness, a task analysis of how women receive and process information in interpersonal situations requiring an assertive response to men was performed. Forty women were assigned to high- or low-assertive groups based on their Rathus Assertiveness Schedule scores. In small group sessions, each woman viewed four videotaped problem situations requiring an assertive response to both pleasant and angry males. After viewing each scene, each woman completed three questionnaires: (a) receiving information, (b) processing-generation of alternatives and decision making, and (c) processing-generation of consequences. High- and low-assertive participants were found to differ in their evaluation of consequences, for response options, particularly how a male would likely to behave to them. High-assertive participants were judged to evaluate more correctly than low-assertive participants the likely behavior of males if response options were implemented. All participants generated more complex alternatives and more assertive responses to situations involving an angry male as compared to a pleasant male. No differences were found between groups in their ability to receive information accurately. Correlational results were supportive of a cognitive-behavioral systems approach of assertion, that is, the emission of a skilled response depends on a chain of preceding responses.Thanks are due to Vida Dyson and Lenard Jason for their comments on an early draft of this paper.     

Beliefs about and experiences with battering: Women and men in two populations

A questionnaire was developed to measure beliefs about and experiences with violence in the family. Two groups of persons in two different states who had attended conferences on battered women participated in this research. Of the 177 subjects (84% women, 16% men), none of the men had been battered, yet over one-third of the women had been; more older women reported having been adult battering victims than did younger women; the women had less formal education than the men; the women in the lower educational groups were more likely to have been battered and to report fear of becoming victims; and the social service workers reported little fear of battering.     

Sexism and beautyism in women's evaluations of peer performance

The purpose of this study was to investigate independent and interactive effects of physical attractiveness (PA), sex, and task sex-typing on performance evaluations. Subjects were 216 college women who read poorquality essays written on masculine, feminine, or neutral topics. Essays supposedly were written by a male or a female student who was either attractive, unattractive, or physically unidentified. Results indicated that PA enhanced evaluations of both male and female essayists, except for the predicted effect that female attractiveness is less beneficial for masculine than feminine task performances. Women did not evaluate the sexes differently, and sexism was largely restricted to the interactive effects of PA. PA stereotypes also affected causal attributions of performers' outcomes in a manner consistent with attribution theory. These data are considered in the context of the existing literature and the directions for further research on sexism and beautyism.     

Attitudes toward women,personality rigidity,and idealized physique preferences in males

The idealized physique preferences of a group of 94 male college students were measured and correlated with scales measuring attitudes toward women and personality rigidity. Three hypotheses, derived from sex-role research, were tested and confirmed: (1) Males who have negative attitudes toward women would like most to have a tapering V physique. (2) Males who have a rigid personality structure have stronger preference for an idealized muscular physique than males with more flexible personalities. (3) Males have a generally greater preference for a tapering V physique than women. It was concluded, from the results of this and other studies, that body preference is related to certain aspects of sex-role attitudes.     

Perceived variability and symbol use: a common language-cognition interface in children and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

Analysis of two chimpanzees' conversations with their teacher during a tool-use training task demonstrated that chimps use lexigrams, a humanly devised visual symbol system, selectively to encode perceived variability; that is, they generally used their symbols to differentiate alternative possibilities or to represent change or novelty in a situation. In contrast, they tended to leave unsaid what was unchanging, repetitive, or the unique possibility in a situation. Perceived variability influenced not only which symbols were selected but also utterance length: A single dimension of variability in a situation leads to single-lexigram utterances; multiple dimensions are associated with multi-lexigram utterances. This pattern of results indicates that the absence of formal grammatical structure in chimp language does not imply that utterances beyond one word in length are either rote strings or imitations. The chimps' tendency to mention the variable while leaving the constant or redundant unsaid is, moreover, strong support for the position that their use of a humanly devised symbol system is more than a series of conditioned responses.