Increasing the Salience of Risky Sexual Behavior: Promoting Interest in HIV-Antibody Testing Among Heterosexually Active Young Adults1

The present study examines whether making the risk associated with unsafe sexual behavior more salient would increase interest in HIV testing. The HIV-related beliefs and behaviors reported by a sample of college students were assessed both before and after they had viewed a vulnerability-oriented film about HIV/AIDS. Viewing the film heightened sexually active participants' belief that they might currently be HIV seropositive. Among participants who were currently sexually active, heightened perceptions of risk and concern about sexual behavior predicted intentions to utilize HIV testing services (controlling for initial risk perceptions and behavior). Those who engaged in behaviors related to HIV testing during the 4-week period after the film had expressed stronger HIV intentions and more pronounced feelings of anxiety and concern about prior sexual behavior. These results suggest that risk-enhancing interventions can stimulate interest in HIV testing.     

Pushing the frontiers of multicultural training in community psychology

Suarez-Balcazar, Durlak, and Smith (1994) have provided the field with important baseline information regarding multicultural training practices in community psychology. This report can serve as a catalyst in our quest to place an understanding of human diversity, in particular, ethnic-cultural diversity, at the heart of community psychology. To do so, we need to move beyond the teaching of culturally sensitive research and practice to a reconceptualization of the knowledge base and methods of community psychology, to an examination of the conflicts engendered by the inclusion of multiple voices, and to the implementation of institutional arrangements that can support such a challenging task in constructive ways.     

The development of adolescent sexual intimacy: implications for counseling

This paper proposes a perspective for understanding the development of adolescent sexual intimacy. A "transitional stage" is described in which adolescents, driven by a variety of developmental needs influenced by external forces such as peers and family, experiment with sexual behaviors. The completion of the transitional stage results in the adolescent's ability to achieve "relational" sexual intimacy, which is also described. The problems and implications for counseling associated with the biophysiological and family dynamic influences on the development of adolescent sexual intimacy are discussed.     

Modeling the Role of Child Ethnicity and Gender in Children's Differential Response to Teacher Expectations1

This study examined the relationship between fall teacher expectations and year‐end achievement among 561 children in 1st, 3rd, and 5th grades. Specifically, we hypothesized that children from academically stigmatized groups (African Americans generally and girls in mathematics) are more likely to be responsive to negative teacher expectancies than are children from nonstigmatized groups. Controlling for prior achievement and class membership, moderator effects were tested with hierarchical linear models in the whole sample and with loglinear models in a subsample of children who were targets of extreme teacher over‐ and underestimates of ability. Among targets of extreme teacher over‐ and underestimates, in 3rd and 5th grade, ethnicity moderated expectancy effects in reading; and in 5th grade, gender moderated expectancy effects in math but not reading. Members of stigmatized groups were more susceptible to teacher underestimates of ability. Implications are discussed in terms of differential response to teacher expectations and in terms of how susceptibility to teacher expectations is conceptualized and inferred.     

Culture at work: Family therapy and the culture concept in post-World War II America

During the 1950s and 1960s, the concept of culture had currency beyond the disciplinary boundaries of anthropology and sociology. This article takes up a clinical example of the invocation of the culture concept by examining how early family therapists such as Nathan Ackerman, Murray Bowen, and Don Jackson used culture as a category of analysis during the formative years of their new field. The culture concept played an integral role in the processes by which family therapists simultaneously defined the object of their research and treatment, the family, and built their new field. Their varied uses of culture also contained tensions and contradictions, most notably between universal and relativist views of family and psychopathology and between views of family therapy as a conservative force for maintaining the nuclear family or a progressive force for overcoming social inequality.     

Are creativity and schizotypy products of a right hemisphere bias?

Prior research has shown associations between higher creativity (e.g., semantic association, verbal fluency), higher schizotypy (e.g., magical ideation), and relatively stronger right hemisphere laterality measures--when each of the three pairings has been studied individually. Our prior study related creativity and schizotypy to signal detection theory response criterion aspects of laterality. The present study attempted to integrate findings regarding these three constructs and to replicate the signal detection theory laterality results by providing measures of all three constructs in a within subjects design. Participants were 60 undergraduates who completed a test battery including two measures of creativity, three measures of schizotypy, a lateralized lexical decision task, and a dichotic listening task. Results are consistent with individual differences in creativity and schizotypy being partly related to a response criterion favoring right hemisphere, possibly nonconscious, processing. Dichotic listening results revealed a strong association of better right hemisphere (left ear) localization ability and creativity.     

Prevalence of Personality Disorders at Midlife in a Community Sample: Disorders and Symptoms Reflected in Interview,Self, and Informant Reports

This report is concerned with the prevalence of symptoms of specific personality disorders in a representative community sample and draws attention to the importance of different sources of diagnostic information. We recruited a sample of 1,630 people between the ages of 55 and 64 to participate in a study regarding personality and health. Using careful recruitment methods, our participation rate was 43 %. Participants completed the SIDP-IV interview as well as a questionnaire (self-report MAPP). Informants completed the same questionnaire (informant MAPP), describing the participant’s maladaptive personality characteristics. According to the diagnostic interview, 7 % of participants met criteria for exactly one PD, 1 % met criteria for 2 or 3 PDs, and 2 % met criteria for PD NOS (defined as 10 or more miscellaneous criteria). Avoidant and obsessive compulsive PDs were the most common types. Correlations between the three sources of information indicated significant agreement among these measurement methods, but they are not redundant. In comparison to interview and self-report data, informants reported more symptoms of personality pathology (except for avoidant PD). Symptoms of personality pathology are continuously distributed, and subthreshold features may have an important impact on health and social adjustment. In this community sample, rates of co-morbidity among PDs and the proportion of PDNOS diagnoses are substantially lower than reported from clinical samples. Future research must evaluate the validity of diagnostic thresholds and competing sources of diagnostic information in relation to important life outcomes.