Sex differences: A study of the ear of the beholder

Male and female adult Ss, while performing an unrelated task, heard a single infant awakening. The infant was labeled a girl or a boy. The dependent variable was how quickly Ss responded to the crying infant. Females responded more quickly to the girl than to the boy. Males responded equally slowly to boy and girl. A questionnaire on sex differences in fragility showed that females and males tend to disagree with the proposition that girls are more fragile than boys. Thus, the females' faster response to a crying girl cannot be accounted for by a belief in sex-differential fragility. Correlations between fragility beliefs and response times to an infant indicate that sex-differential belief-behavior relationships are not the same for males and females.     

Orgasm Frequency Predicts Desire and Expectation for Orgasm: Assessing the Orgasm Gap within Mixed-Sex Couples

While previous research has established the existence of an orgasm gap between men and women, research exploring this phenomenon within dyadic samples of mixed-sex couples has been limited. The current study aims to investigate the impact of this orgasm disparity on novel sexual outcomes for couples, including desire and expectation for orgasm. We conducted secondary data analyses on a sample of 104 sexually active mixed-sex couples using an online Qualtrics panel (M_age?=?43.9 years; 94.2% heterosexual; 79.3% White). Cisgender men and women within the couple reported on their sexual satisfaction, orgasm frequency, desired orgasm frequency, expectation for how often people should orgasm (“orgasm expectation”), and perceptions of their partner’s orgasm frequency. An orgasm gap emerged, and men significantly underreported the size of the orgasm gap in their relationships. In a dyadic path model, men’s and women’s own orgasm frequency positively predicted their desire and expectation for orgasm. Additionally, women’s orgasm frequency predicted men’s orgasm expectation. This relationship between orgasm frequencies and expectancies may partially explain women’s lower orgasm importance compared to men. A cycle of orgasm inequality within relationships may be perpetuated when women who experience less frequent orgasms lower their desire and expectation for orgasm. Sex educators, activists, and therapists should work to improve entitlement to sexual pleasure and orgasm, particularly for women who wish to increase their orgasm frequency.

     

Some Thoughts on The Anachronism in Forgiveness

Consider that forgiveness is always given ahead of time. Set within a moral context, this claim is apt to sound suspect, as it seems to invite transgression and all manner of immoral indulgence. When the context shifts to one of religious possibility, however, the claim can be read to entertain a redemptive anachronism: a memory of future innocence. The author examines forgiveness in both contexts and makes a case for the religious possibility.     

The color-vision approach to emotional space: Cortical evoked potential data

A framework for accounting for emotional phenomena proposed by Sokolov and Boucsein (2000) employs conceptual dimensions that parallel those of hue, brightness, and saturation in color vision. The approach that employs the concepts of emotional quality, intensity, and saturation has been supported by psychophysical emotional scaling data gathered from a few trained observers. We report cortical evoked potential data obtained during the change between different emotions expressed in schematic faces. Twenty-five subjects (13 male, 12 female) were presented with a positive, a negative, and a neutral computer-generated face with random interstimulus intervals in a within-subjects design, together with four meaningful and four meaningless control stimuli made up from the same elements. Frontal, central, parietal, and temporal ERPs were recorded from each hemisphere. Statistically significant outcomes in the P300 and N200 range support the potential fruitfulness of the proposed color-vision-model-based approach to human emotional space.     

Psychological test differentiation of neurotic and organically induced performance disorders

Current methods of diagnosing psychological performance, which are primarily status-oriented, are inadequate to permit satisfactory differentiation between brain-organically and neurotically induced performance disturbances. We therefore attempted to contribute to the solution of this problem by adopting a new psychodiagnostic approach (measurement of intraindividual variability) and using multi-point measurements with the aid of attentiveness tests. The fact that 80 to 90% of 254 neurotic and brain-damaged subjects could be correctly diagnosed in the way indicates that the new approach to performance diagnosis is suitable for clinical use.     

Priming trait inferences through pictures and moving pictures: the impact of open and closed mindsets

A newly developed paradigm for studying spontaneous trait inferences (STI) was applied in 3 experiments. The authors primed dyadic stimulus behaviors involving a subject (S) and an object (O) person through degraded pictures or movies. An encoding task called for the verification of either a graphical feature or a semantic interpretation, which either fit or did not fit the primed behavior. Next, participants had to identify a trait word that appeared gradually behind a mask and that either matched or did not match the primed behavior. STI effects, defined as shorter identification latencies for matching than nonmatching traits, were stronger for S than for O traits, after graphical rather than semantic encoding decisions and after encoding failures. These findings can be explained by assuming that trait inferences are facilitated by open versus closed mindsets supposed to result from distracting (graphical) encoding tasks or encoding failures (involving nonfitting interpretations).     

Preventing mental illness through existential principles

A case is made for the dysfunctional attributes of traditional marital relationships conceptually based upon the material principle of scarcity. The application of the existential principle of abundance is put forth for the purpose of developing genuine mutual support, personal awareness, and authenticity leading to the prevention of mental illness.     

Smoking Behavior Development and Modification: An Empirical Application of Three Social Psychological Theories1

Three major social psychological theories were applied to data obtained in interviews with a random sample of 50 exsmokers and 50 smokers. The objective was to test the utility of these theories with respect to smoking behavior development and change. The results provided strong support for the hypotheses derived from reference group theory and partial support for the cognitive dissonance and psychoanalytic hypotheses.     

The similarity-attraction relationship: Is there an ideal one?

It is proposed that we are attracted to similar individuals because: (1) such individuals are similar to our ideals and (2) such individuals are similar to ourselves. Previous studies have employed a similarity manipulation which has confounded these two components. When the components are separated, similarity to the ideal was expected to exert a major influence and similarity to the self a minor influence on attraction. A series of experiments orthogonally manipulated similarity to self and similarity to ideal with a new technique involving content-free dimensions. The results indicated a consistent main effect for ideal similarity on liking and no consistent main effect for similarity to the self. Finally, the results also indicated that given any two of the three variables—similarity to self, similarity to ideal, and own self to own ideal discrepancy—subjects seemed able to infer the other or third variable in a fairly logical fashion.     

Anti-Realist Semantics

I argue that the implementation of theDummettian program of an ``anti-realist' semanticsrequires quite different conceptions of the technicalmeaning-theoretic terms used than those presupposed byDummett. Starting from obvious incoherences in anattempt to conceive truth conditions as assertibilityconditions, I argue that for anti-realist purposesnon-epistemic semantic notions are more usefully kept apart from epistemic ones rather than beingreduced to them. Embedding an anti-realist theory ofmeaning in Martin-Löf's Intuitionistic Type Theory(ITT) takes care, however, of many notorious problemsthat have arisen in trying to specify suitableintuitionistic notions of semantic value,truth-conditions, and validity, taking into accountthe so-called ``defeasibility of evidence' forassertions in empirical discourses.