The California Family Health Project: III. Family emotion management and adult health.

This article explores the broad patterning of interrelationships between family Emotion Management and adult Health in a community-based sample of 225 families. Emotion Management refers to how emotion is expressed, acknowledged, and managed by the marital partners. Fifteen reliable-observer ratings of husband-wife behavior were made during each of three 10-minute Emotion Management Interaction Tasks (EMITs). Each of the three tasks "pulled" for the expression of a different emotional theme: loss, intimacy, or conflict. A principle components analysis of the 15 ratings yielded a poor solution. A nonmetric, multidimensional scaling analysis described a two-dimensional, bipolar display with ordering among the variables in each of two wings. One dimension reflected positive versus negative Emotion Management characteristics, and the second reflected active and overt versus passive or covert emotional expression. The pattern of relationships among the couple ratings was similar for each of the three tasks. Using canonical correlation, the couple ratings demonstrated significant associations with 14 adult Health scores for both husbands and wives for the intimacy and conflict tasks, but not for the loss task. Specific gender patterns also emerged. In general, couple overt emotional aversiveness was negatively associated with husbands' health, and couple emotional avoidance/distance was negatively associated with wives' health.     

The effects of social support on children's eyewitness testimony

Child witnesses often give only short accounts of witnessed events. Part of the reason for this failing centres on the stress present during an interview. The most obvious means of reducing stress in children, through the provision of social support, has typically been neglected in eyewitness research, presumably because of fears over children's excessive suggestibility. Social support is also believed to inhibit children during interviews. However, these fears appear to stem more from general suspicions about children's competencies rather than empirical findings. Studies are described which show that child witnesses express a strong desire for social support, and that support may be provided in a number of different ways, from peers as well as adults. It is argued that social support is one of the most unfairly neglected issues in eyewitness research, and the minimal evidence available suggests that allowing support may have a facilitative effect on task performance, including free-recall memory.     

Verbal hallucinations in normals,I: People who hear ‘voices’

Two studies are reported that describe the phenomena of verbal hallucinations in the general population and test two explanations of those reports. Subjects were 198 male and 387 female college students who completed a verbal hallucination questionnaire plus one or more additional questionnaires. We found that a large minority reported hallucinations and that nearly half reported having them at least once a month. The present data indicated that these reports were not related to four measures of social conformity. Neither were they related to measures of overt, or incipient, symptoms of psychopathology. We have concluded that the majority of these reports are generally veridical accounts of conscious experience in normal individuals.     

Gender and family therapy: Adding a bi-level belief systems component to assessment

This article proposes that most couples requesting therapy describe gender socialized patterns as part of their relationship issues. Adding a component to assessment derived from principles of strategic and systemic family therapies and post-modernist feminist psychology which examines the couple's gendered belief system context is described. The belief system context is identified as the family's epistemology about gendering at the family belief system and sociocultural belief system level contexts. Three dimensions of the gendered belief system and a method for assessing the functionality of the belief system are discussed.     

An inexpensive automated system for the measurement of rotational behavior in small animals

A reliable, low-cost automated system for the quantification of rotational behavior from up to 10 subjects simultaneously is described. The system resolves quarter and full turns to the left and right, and can relay data to another computer for statistical analysis. The system is easily constructed from simple and inexpensive components, including the computer, that total less than $1,000 and can be used with a variety of different test chambers.     

TESTING A HIERARCHICAL MODEL OF SELF-KNOWLEDGE

Abstract— A priming procedure (e g, Klein, Loftus Trafton, & Fuhrman, 1992) was used to lest a hierarchical model of self-knowledge. According lo this model, people simultaneously hold multiple representations of themselves that differ bath in their context specificity and in the type of knowledge of which they consist Specifically, context-independent self-knowledge is assumed to be represented abstractly without reference to any particular behaviors, whereas the representation of context-dependent self-knowledge includes knowledge of one's behavior in specific situations. Our results support a hierarchical model. Subjects accessed abstract knowledge when describing their context-independent personality characteristics, but accessed behavioral episodes when describing themselves in a specific context Possible implications of this research are discussed, as a the relation of a hierarchical model of self-knowledge to a mixed model of self-knowledge (e g, Klein & Loftus, 1993b).     

Relationship Between Intelligence and Occupational Adjustment and Functioning: A Literature Review

This article reviews 50 years of research investigating the relationship between intelligence and various aspects of occupational and vocational adjustment as they relate to both exceptional and nonexceptional individuals. Trends in this research are identified and summarized, and implications for counselors involved in vocational programming are discussed.     

Computer software and hardware to determine contrast sensitivity using three methods: Tracking,limits, and constant stimuli

The software and hardware to obtain contrast sensitivity functions in a single session with monkeys are described. The versatility of the software allows the program to be used in a variety of sensory systems with only minor programming modifications. It will permit absolute or difference threshold measurements with any one of three methods of threshold testing: (1) method of tracking, (2) method of limits, and (3) method of constant stimuli. Human and monkey contrast sensitivity functions measured with the software and hardware are provided.     

The Case Against Self-Esteem: Alternative Philosophies Toward Self That Would Raise the Probability of Pleasurable and Productive Living

This article discusses two major aspects of the self-esteem movement in public education and psychotherapy to make a strong case that trying to raise or enhance self-esteem in students (as a preventive) or clients (as a treatment) is an unproductive palliative/diversionary intervention that does not lead to emotional health or long-term enjoyment in one's existence. In order to build a case against self-esteem, the two major aspects that will be examined are the following:1.A clear and precise definition of the self-esteem construct, based on anexhaustive meta-analysis of self-esteem theory/literature in order to evaluateits core philosophical structure.2.A summary of the research data on self-esteem enhancement, which shows there is no scientific evidence to support even a correlation between higher self-esteem and mental health, productive behaviors, and pleasure inliving.This article proposes that a philosophy of unconditional self-acceptance (USA), a core construct found in many of the Eastern and Western traditions dealing with productive and pleasurable living, is a desirable philosophy for increasing long-term happiness in one's existence.     

Conformity as a function of the consistency of positive self-evaluation with being liked and being right

Insko, Sedlak, and Lipsitz (European Journal of Social Psychology, 1982, 13, 143–167) have presented evidence that agreement effects in p?o?x triads, or semicycles, are at least partially a function of the consistency of positive self-evaluation with being liked and the consistency of positive self-evaluation with being right. Consistent with the Insko et al. balance interpretation of agreement effects, results indicated that conformity in an Asch-type experiment is a joint function of the concern with being liked and the concern with being right. The judgment stimuli were sets of three colors, and the subjects' task was to indicate whether the middle color was more like the color on the left or the color on the right. In the main experiment, subjects conformed more with public than with private responding, and also when they were led to believe that the relationships among the colors were objectively determined rather than undetermined. The first of these two results (in conjunction with the lack of an interaction and the presence of a difference between the public condition and a private camera control condition) was taken as evidence for the concern with being liked. The second finding of a difference between the determined and undetermined conditions was taken as evidence both for the concern with being right and also as indicating that conformity can occur with objective stimuli. Although concepts similar to the concerns with being right and liked have been widely discussed, a review of the literature indicated that the previously presented evidence is not totally convincing.