The association between intelligence level and brain volume measures: a negative finding

Ratings of pre-morbid intelligence level, derived from the hospital charts of 26 chronic schizophrenics, were correlated with the post-mortem brain volume measures of cortex, white matter, central grey matter, and ventricles. Contrary to hypothesis, no significant correlations were found.     

IES Arrow Dot performance and success in a cocaine detoxification program

The IES Arrow-Dot was administered to 41 cocaine detoxification patients. This group's scores indicated lower ego functioning and higher impulsivity and superego functioning than other clinical samples. No significant differences were noted between the Arrow-Dot scores of patients who successfully completed the program and those who did not.     

Font regularity constraints on the process of letter recognition

Strings of four unrelated letters were presented for subjects to identify, followed by a patterned mask and then a forced choice test of each letter position. In Experiment 1, the type style in the regular conditions was consistent--all of the letters were of a single type font--whereas in the mixed condition, each string contained letters from two type fonts. Compared with the mixed condition, accuracy in the regular conditions was higher overall and increased at a faster rate as a function of processing time. This held across four sessions. In Experiment 2, the font in the mixed condition was varied either between or within letter strings; sizeable advantages for the regular conditions were found with both mix-methods. The results are consistent with the idea of a schemalike perceptual system that becomes tuned to the regularities of a particular font in order to process visual information efficiently.     

Chronic sweet intake lowers pain thresholds without changing brain mu- or delta-opiate receptors

Sprague-Dawley rats drank sweetened (3% dextrose + 0.144% saccharin, w/v) or unflavored water for 18 days and subsequent pain reactivity was assessed using a hot plate. Compared to the rats that consumed unflavored water, the rats that consumed sweet water responded more quickly on the hot plate indicating that their threshold for pain was lowered. Another group of rats given identical exposure to the fluids had their brains prepared for measuring opiate receptor binding using the delta-receptor ligand [3H]D-Ala-D-Leu-enkephalin ([3H]DADLE) and the mu-receptor selective ligand [3H]Tyr-D-Ala-Gly-MePhe-Gly-ol ([ 3H]DAGO). Binding of these opiates to mu- and delta-receptors in the cerebral cortex, striatum, hippocampus, hypothalamus, brain stem, and remaining brain regions was the same for the rats that drank sweet fluids and those that drank unflavored water. These findings suggest that drinking sweet fluids lowers pain thresholds but does not alter mu- and delta-receptors.     

Effects of facial attractiveness and gender on causal attributions of managerial performance

The present study examined the effect of facial attractiveness and gender on raters' evaluations of and explanations for managerial performance. Results showed attractiveness to be a potential liability for both males and females. Good performance of attractive females was more likely than that of others to be attributed to luck or bias, while that of attractive males was viewed as occurring with little effort. In addition, the poor performance of attractive individuals was blamed on lack of effort (females) or lack of ability (males). Implications of these findings are discussed.An earlier version of this paper was published in the 1986 Proceedings of the Southern Management Association.     

Effect of social support on the stress-burnout relationship

Business organizations have become interested in recent years in the role of social support in reducing the negative effect of stress. The purpose of this research is to examine the effects of two types of social support (i.e., job and life support) on the relationships between job and life stress and burnout. Participants consisted of 270 males and 254 females. For both males and females job stress and life stress correlate positively with burnout, while job and life support were negatively correlated with burnout. The hypothesis that social support would moderate stress-burnout relationships was not supported. Neither job support nor life support moderated job stress or life stress-burnout relationships. Females exhibited significantly higher levels of burnout, job stress, and life stress than males; however, there was no difference between males and females in the amount of social support received.     

Attitudes toward older and younger adults: a meta-analysis

Attitudes toward the elderly have been examined in a number of empirical studies, yet the question of whether the elderly are viewed more negatively than younger persons has not been resolved. A meta-analysis of the literature was conducted to examine this question; results demonstrated that attitudes toward the elderly are more negative than attitudes toward younger people. However, smaller differences between the evaluations of elderly and younger targets were found when (a) the study used measures of personality traits (compared with measures of competence), (b) there were a larger number of dependent measures included in the effect size, (c) specific information was provided about the target person (compared with when a general target such as old person was used), and (d) a between-subjects design (compared with a within-subjects design) was used. These results support Lutsky's (1981) conclusion that age, in and of itself, seems to be less important in determining attitudes toward the elderly than other types of information. The methodological limitations within the literature and a need to consider multiple components of attitudes toward older individuals are discussed.