Preliminary examination of sex differences in depressive symptoms among adolescent psychiatric inpatients: the role of anxious symptoms and generalized negative affect.

Assessed the emerging view that generalized negative affect and anxious symptoms are important in understanding sex differences in depressive symptoms. Sixty-three adolescent psychiatric inpatients (32 boys, 31 girls), ages 12 to 16 (M = 13.87, SD = 1.36), completed measures of positive and negative affect and anxious and depressive symptoms. Results demonstrated, as predicted, that depressive and anxious symptoms were more highly associated in adolescent girls than boys. Furthermore, girls with depressive symptoms were more likely to have comorbid anxious symptoms than boys with depressive symptoms. Sex differences were not found for adolescents with specific depressive symptoms and specific anxious symptoms (i.e., the absence of comorbidity). Our findings supported the possibility that sex differences in pure forms of depression are overestimated and that comorbid internalizing conditions may be more prevalent in adolescent girls than boys.     

Psychosocial Correlates of Suicide Attempts Among Junior and Senior High School Youth

Three groups of junior and senior high schools students (total N = 1050) recruited in rural counties of a mid-Atlantic state–those who had made a prior suicide attempt, those reporting high levels of depressed mood or suicidal ideation, and those who were not depressed or suicidal – were compared with regard to their reports of a number of potential risk factors for suicidal behavior. Adolescents with a history of a suicide attempt reported more frequent stresses related to parents, lack of adult supports outside of the home, police, and sexuality (i.e., concerns about pregnancy, pressure to have sex, getting sexually transmitted diseases), compared with both depressed/suicide ideators and nondepressed adolescents. Suicide attempters were also more likely than the other adolescents to report that they were physically hurt by a parent, that they ran away from home, that they lived apart from both parents, and that they knew someone who had completed suicide. Results are discussed in the context of prior studies of adolescent suicidal behavior in community and clinical samples.     

Target-biting behavior of individually and group-housed mice and rats

The effects of housing conditions (individual or grouped) on the biting of an inanimate target by confined male mice and rats were measured. It was observed that, for both mice and rats, individual housing markedly increased the number of target bites per session. These results indicate that the target-biting paradigm is sensitive to those factors responsible for the increase in fighting behavior following individual housing.     

How Discrimination Impacts Sociopolitical Behavior: A Multidimensional Perspective

The conventional wisdom regarding the impact of discrimination on political behavior is that the perception of prejudiced treatment motivates individuals to take political action. This study challenges this common conception by demonstrating that the source of discrimination can play a significant role in whether perceived or experienced injustice leads to activism or withdrawal from sociopolitical life. Drawing from political science and social psychology literature, this study provides a new perspective on the potential effects of discrimination on a relatively new marginalized group in the United States. Specifically, an important distinction is drawn between political (systematic) and societal (interpersonal) discrimination in analyzing the sociopolitical behavior of American Muslims in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The results will hopefully encourage scholars to take a deeper look at the nexus between discrimination and democratic engagement, which is an important, complex, multidimensional, and understudied topic.     

Catching up with wonderful women: The women‐are‐wonderful effect is smaller in more gender egalitarian societies

Inequalities between men and women are common and well‐documented. Objective indexes show that men are better positioned than women in societal hierarchies—there is no single country in the world without a gender gap. In contrast, researchers have found that the women‐are‐wonderful effect—that women are evaluated more positively than men overall—is also common. Cross‐cultural studies on gender equality reveal that the more gender egalitarian the society is, the less prevalent explicit gender stereotypes are. Yet, because self‐reported gender stereotypes may differ from implicit attitudes towards each gender, we reanalysed data collected across 44 cultures, and (a) confirmed that societal gender egalitarianism reduces the women‐are‐wonderful effect when it is measured more implicitly (i.e. rating the personality of men and women presented in images) and (b) documented that the social perception of men benefits more from gender egalitarianism than that of women.     

Analyzing the kinematics of hand movements in catching tasks—An online correction analysis of movement toward the target’s trajectory

Free, 3-D interceptive movements are difficult to visualize and quantify. For ball catching, the endpoint of a movement can be anywhere along the target’s trajectory. Furthermore, the hand may already have begun to move before the subject has estimated the target’s trajectory, and the subject may alter the targeted position during the initial part of the movement. We introduce a method to deal with these difficulties and to quantify three movement phases involved in catching: the initial, non-goal-directed phase; the goal-directed phase, which is smoothly directed toward the target’s trajectory; and the final, interception phase. Therefore, the 3-D movement of the hand was decomposed into a component toward the target’s trajectory (the minimal distance of the hand to the target’s parabolic [MDHP] trajectory) and a component along this trajectory. To identify the goal-directed phase of the MDHP trajectory, we employed the empirical finding that goal-directed trajectories are minimally jerky. The second component, along the target’s trajectory, was used to analyze the interaction of the hand with the ball. The method was applied to two conditions of a ball-catching task. In the manipulated condition, the initial part of the ball’s flight was occluded, so the visibility of the ball was postponed. As expected, the onset of the smooth part of the movement shifted to a later time. This method can be used to quantify anticipatory behavior in interceptive tasks, allowing researchers to gain new insights into movement planning toward the target’s trajectory.