An MMPI typology of cocaine abusers.

Three types were found in a cluster analysis of scores on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) of 100 men voluntarily presenting for treatment of cocaine abuse. Type 1 (n = 59) had a mean MMPI profile consistent with the hypothesized grouping of persons who self-medicate with cocaine as a means of overcoming depression. The relatively normal mean MMPI profile obtained by Type 2 (n = 37) suggested little indication of significant psychopathology. Type 3's (n = 4) mean MMPI profile suggested either severe disturbance or profile invalidity. Types were found to differ in the nature of drug use, reactions to cocaine, education level, and social class, but not on the scales of the Adjective Check List.     

Sex differences in the eyes of expert personality assessors: unwarranted conclusions.

In a recent paper, Haan and Livson reported sex differences between male and female psychologists in their evaluations of adult men and adult women. Their conclusions have implication for the validity of clinical assessments and were interpreted in terms of stereotypic sex role perceptions. However, their statistical analysis was in fundamental error. When the data they employed were reanalyzed, no reliable sex differences between men and women psychologists were found, a finding in accord with a number of previous investigations of this problem.     

Discrepancy in Personality Perceptions Is Related to Relationship Satisfaction: Findings from Dyadic Latent Discrepancy Analyses

The current study investigated discrepancies in self‐, partner‐, and meta‐perceptions of the Big Five traits and their associations with relationship satisfaction in intimate couples. The study was based on a subsample of the Swiss study “Co‐Development in Personality: Longitudinal Approaches to Personality Development in Dyads Across the Life Span” (CoDiP) including cross‐sectional data of 216 heterosexual couples. We adapted the Latent Congruence Model (LCM) for the study of discrepancies in personality perceptions in dyads. Beyond personality trait levels, the discrepancies between self‐ and partner‐perceptions and between partner‐ and meta‐perceptions of the Big Five traits were related to relationship satisfaction as actor and partner effects. In general, flattering and favorable partner‐perceptions in relation to self‐ and meta‐perceptions seem to positively contribute to relationship satisfaction. The present study implies that not only personality trait levels but also discrepancies between personality perceptions are important for understanding relationship satisfaction.     

Counterintuitive Religious Ideas and Metaphoric Thinking: An Event‐Related Brain Potential Study

It has been shown that counterintuitive ideas from mythological and religious texts are more acceptable than other (non‐religious) world knowledge violations. In the present experiment we explored whether this relates to the way they are interpreted (literal vs. metaphorical). Participants were presented with verification questions that referred to either the literal or a metaphorical meaning of the sentence previously read (counterintuitive religious, counterintuitive non‐religious and intuitive), in a block‐wise design. Both behavioral and electrophysiological results converged. At variance to the literal interpretation of the sentences, the induced metaphorical interpretation specifically facilitated the integration (N400 amplitude decrease) of religious counterintuitions, whereas the semantic processing of non‐religious counterintuitions was not affected by the interpretation mode. We suggest that religious ideas tend to operate like other instances of figurative language, such as metaphors, facilitating their acceptability despite their counterintuitive nature.     

Modeling geometric–optical illusions: A variational approach

Visual distortions of perceived lengths, angles, or forms, are generally known as “geometric–optical illusions” (goi). In the present paper we focus on a class of gois where the distortion of a straight line segment (the “target” stimulus) is induced by an array of non-intersecting curvilinear elements (“context” stimulus). Assuming local target–context interactions in a vector field representation of the context, we propose to model the perceptual distortion of the target as the solution to a minimization problem in the calculus of variations. We discuss properties of the solutions and reproduction of the respective form of the perceptual distortion for several types of contexts. Moreover, we draw a connection between the interactionist model of gois and Riemannian geometry: the context stimulus is understood as perturbing the geometry of the visual field from which the illusory distortion naturally arises. The approach is illustrated by data from a psychophysical experiment with nine subjects and six different contexts.     

Die Möglichkeit einer objektiven Messung der Stärke von Gefühlen

Zusammenfassung Es war das Ziel, ein Maß für die Stärke von Gefühlen aus einem ihrer physischen Korrelate, der sog. psychogalvanischen Reaktion, zu gewinnen. Zu diesem Zweck wurden Vergleichsurteile über die Gefühlsbetonung von Reizwortpaaren den durch die Darbietung der Wörter ausgelösten Hautreaktionen zugeordnet. Mit den Maßzahlen wurden eine logarithmische Transformation und eine Quadratwurzeltransformation vorgenommen. Die Auswertung erfolgte jeweils gemäß dem Skalierungsverfahren für Vergleichsurteile. Es zeigte sich, daß die auf Grund der Quadratwurzeltransformation erhaltenen Skalenwerte für die Gefühlsstärke in voll befriedigender Weise durch eine Gerade angenähert werden können, während dies mit der logarithmischen Transformation weniger gut gelingt.Um aus der gefundenen Intervallskala der Gefühlsstärke eine Verhältnisskala zu erhalten, wurde die Gefühlsschwelle der galvanischen Hautreaktion zu bestimmen versucht. Es ergab sich, daß der Schwellenwert der emotionalen Veränderung bei der Größe 0 der Hautwiderstandsänderung liegt. Es folgt daraus, daß die Stärke eines Gefühls als der Quadratwurzel der relativen Widerstandsänderung proportional anzunehmen ist.Dieses Ergebnis wird durch ein Anwendungsbeispiel veranschaulicht.     

Implicit and explicit memory without awareness

Summary Three experiments are reported which investigate the conscious status of subjects during an implicit-memory test. In all experiments the subjects either named each visually presented target item or generated each item from an anagram in a first phase of incidental learning. In a second phase, they were either given a visual word-stem completion task as an implicit-memory test or given a recognition task (Experiment 1), or a cued-recall task (Experiments 2 and 3) as explicit-memory tests. Finally, in a third phase the subjects were required to make decisions about the input status (i. e., they had to decide whether the item was present in the first phase) as well as about the output status of information (i. e., they had to decide whether the item had been completed, recognized or recalled in the second phase). A generation effect (i. e., generated items were remembered better than named items) was evident in the recognition and recall data, but only for items whose recognition or recall was accompanied by conscious recollection of their previous occurrence in the study list. Judgments about the input status were more precise, given that items had been consciously recognized or recalled rather than completed. The same pattern of findings was observed for judgments about the output status. The results are interpreted as evidence that subjects in implicit-memory tests are less aware of the fact that some of their productions are relevant to prior experiences. In addition, they are less aware of the fact that they are retrieving information from their memories. However, the same state of nonawareness may be present in explicit-memory tests, as was revealed by the performance of subjects on those items whose recognition or recall was not accompanied by conscious recollection.