Judgments of men's and women's feelings during hypothetical social interactions

We studied college students' perceptions of how good/bad and how powerful/powerless men and women feel during hypothetical social interactions. Stimuli were constructed by combining each of 16 behaviors that fell into four categories (negative, low power, sexual, and help) with each of four dyads (male-male, male-female, female-male, female-female). Subjects made judgments about the likelihood of each behavior occurring, and about how actors and recipients felt when engaging in each of 16 behaviors. Three themes pervaded the results. First, subjects perceived men to feel more powerful than women whether behaving as actors or recipients—especially during interactions with women. Second, subjects perceived behaviors to be more likely, and actors and recipients to feel better and more powerful when the interaction pattern was consistent with gender role norms. Third, subjects perceived recipients' affective responses as being more polarized in opposite-sex than in same-sex dyads. Results from this research show that subjects' perceptions about feelings are largely consistent with the literature on social interaction and sex role stereotypes, and are similar for male and female subjects. In addition, our results provide a rich set of hypotheses concerning whether perceptions of feelings reflect actual feelings and are related to interaction participants' actual behavior.     

Early Traumatic Stress Responses in Parents Following a Serious Illness in Their Child: A Systematic Review

A systematic review of the literature investigating the early traumatic stress responses in parents of children diagnosed with a serious illness/injury. A literature review was conducted (September 2013) using Medline, PsycINFO, and CINAHL databases. Twenty-four studies related to parents of children hospitalized due to diagnosis of cancer, type 1 diabetes, meningococcal disease, trauma or serious injury, preterm birth and other serious illnesses requiring admission to intensive care were included. Parents were assessed for early traumatic stress symptoms within 3 months of their child’s diagnosis/hospitalization. Prevalence rates of acute stress disorder in parents ranged from 12 to 63 %. Prevalence of posttraumatic stress disorder ranged from 8 to 68 %. Variability was related to methodological factors including differences in study design, timing of assessments, measurement tools, and scoring protocols. Psychosocial factors rather than medical factors predicted parent distress. This review integrates and compares early traumatic reactions in parents with children suffering a range of serious illnesses. Findings suggest a high prevalence of acute and posttraumatic stress symptoms in parents. Methodological inconsistencies made comparison of early traumatic stress prevalence rates difficult. Risk factors associated with traumatic stress symptoms were identified.     

Preference organization in anxiety/phobia counselling: Preserving social solidarity

In this study attention is focused on how participants construct their talk in ways which maintain social solidarity: thereby maximizing the likelihood of affiliative actions and minimizing the likelihood of disaffiliative actions in the context of anxiety/phobia counselling. The first part of the study considers previous work and concludes that although such analysis is important, relatively few studies have directed attention to the actual structure of counselling interactions. The study concludes by suggesting that analyses which begin with detailed attention to the intricacies of data and then broaden out to focus on wider issues can be both analytically and practically impressive.     

The effects of perceptual condition on proofreading for misspellings

In two experiments, subjects proofread text in which misspelled words were created by replacing a single letter with another one. The following perceptual conditions were included: clear-cut photocopies of typewritten text, clear-cut text presented on a CRT screen, ditto copies that varied in legibility, and text that included extraneous noise characters superimposed on some letters. In all conditions, subjects adopted a hierarchical feature test that gave first priority to resolving letter envelope and second priority to discriminating other letter features. When clear-cut text with no extraneous noise was proofread, subjects used a sophisticated-guessing decision rule that tolerated misspellings involving missing letter features (as when c replaced e) but not added ones (as when e replaced c). This asymmetrical rule was modified, however, when subjects were exposed to text that included extraneous noise that was confusable with the letter features. In those circumstances, subjects adopted a decision rule that tolerated misspellings involving missing features or any added features that resembled the noise.     

Values disparity and academic achievement among Ugandan adolescents

A century ago, Christian missionaries founded Uganda’s earliest schools. Many of these schools continue to espouse values inculcation as a stated goal. In this study of 502 Ugandan children completing primary school (P7), students’ personal values and their perception of their school’s values were measured using adaptations of the Rokeach Values Survey (RVS). A disparity score was computed for each respondent to determine the degree of similarity between personal and school values. The relationship between the disparity score and performance on the Primary Leaving Examination (PLE) was then computed. Results reveal a small but significant correlation between values disparity and academic achievement (r = .35, p < .001).     

The eyes or the mouth? Feature salience and unfamiliar face processing in Williams syndrome and autism

Using traditional face perception paradigms the current study explores unfamiliar face processing in two neurodevelopmental disorders. Previous research indicates that autism and Williams syndrome (WS) are both associated with atypical face processing strategies. The current research involves these groups in an exploration of feature salience for processing the eye and mouth regions of unfamiliar faces. The tasks specifically probe unfamiliar face matching by using (a) upper or lower face features, (b) the Thatcher illusion, and (c) featural and configural face modifications to the eye and mouth regions. Across tasks, individuals with WS mirror the typical pattern of performance, with greater accuracy for matching faces using the upper than using the lower features, susceptibility to the Thatcher illusion, and greater detection of eye than mouth modifications. Participants with autism show a generalized performance decrement alongside atypicalities, deficits for utilizing the eye region, and configural face cues to match unfamiliar faces. The results are discussed in terms of feature salience, structural encoding, and the phenotypes typically associated with these neurodevelopmental disorders.     

Obsessive-compulsive disorder symptoms and correlates in community exercisers

ObjectivesThe purpose of this study was to examine the potential relationship between OCD symptoms and the constructs of depression, anxiety, self-esteem, and commitment to exercise in community-based exercisers.Design and methodA mixed-methods approach was utilized. A sample of 64 female and 21 male participants (M age = 52.1 years) completed a series of online or written questionnaires related to the noted variables, while a subset of 10 participants participated in a qualitative interview to explain their OCD symptoms and exercise behavior.ResultsPearson correlations indicated all psychological constructs were significantly correlated with each other (absolute r's ranged from .27 to .78, all p's < .001), while a canonical correlation analysis revealed one significant function (Wilk's λ = .360, R_c = .80, p < .001). Set 1 (OCD symptoms) explained 36% of the variance in Set 2 (anxiety, depression, self-esteem and commitment to exercise), while Set 2 explained 64% of the variance in Set 1. Four primary themes were established from the qualitative data, including: 1) being involved in sport or physical activity from a young age, 2) high benefits versus low consequences of regular participation in exercise, 3) involvement in detail-oriented jobs, and 4) easy adjustments to unplanned deviations from an exercise schedule.ConclusionsOverall, this research suggests that community-based exercisers with elevated OCD symptoms simply display a healthy attention to the frequency and detail of their physical activity, which facilitates them staying active across a variety of conditions.     

Sex and power in the academy: modeling sexual harassment in the lives of college women

The authors build an integrated model of the process by which academic sexual harassment undermines women's well-being; also examined is harasser power as a potential moderator of this process. Data from 1,455 college women suggest that sexual harassment experiences are associated with increased psychological distress, which then relates to lower academic satisfaction, greater physical illness, and greater disordered eating. The cumulative effect is greater disengagement from the academic environment, which in turn relates to performance decline (i.e., lower grades). Regardless of how frequently the harassment occurred, academic satisfaction was lower when the harassment came from higher-status individuals (i.e., faculty, staff, or administrators). At the same time, harassment was equally detrimental to mental health, regardless of who perpetrated it. The article concludes with implications for theory, research, and intervention.     

The role of dynamic information in the recognition of unfamiliar faces

The effects of movement on unfamiliar face recognition were investigated. In an incidental learning task, faces were studied either as computer-animated (moving) displays or as a series of static images, with identical numbers of frames shown for each. The movements were either nonrigid transformations (changes in expression) or rigid rotations in depth (nodding or shaking). At test, participants saw either single, static images or moving sequences. Only one experiment showed a significant effect of study type, in favor of static instances. There was no additional advantage from studying faces in motion in these experiments, in which both study types showed the same amounts of information. Recognition memory was relatively unaffected by changes in expression between study and test. Effects of viewpoint change were large when expressive transformations had been studied but much smaller when rigid rotations in depth had been studied. The series of experiments did reveal a slight advantage for testing memory with moving compared with static faces, consistent with recent findings using familiar faces. Future work will need to examine whether such effects may also be due to the additional information provided by an animated sequence.