Many stimuli are frightening,but some are more frightening than others: The contributions of preparedness,dangerousness, and unpredictability to making a stimulus fearful

The nonrandom distribution of situational fears has been explained by evolutionary survival relevance of specific fears. Thirty-eight stimuli were taken from the literature on preparedness and were scored on fearfulness, objective dangerousness, and spatiotemporal unpredictability by three separate groups of students. The same items were scored on survival relevance by 15 biologists. Fearfulness of cues significantly correlated not only with survival relevance but also, and even more strongly, with dangerousness and unpredictability. While the fear/survival relevance association virtually disappeared when the unpredictability contribution was partialed out, the fear/unpredictability correlation was only marginally affected when controlling for survival relevance. This suggests that nonrandomness of feared stimuli may result from the spatiotemporal unpredictability that is attributed to these stimuli. The current practice of using snakes and spiders as phobia-relevant, and flowers and mushrooms as neutral, cues was not justified by the ratings of the 15 independent experts.This study was supported in part by a grant from the Dutch Organization for Fundamental Research (ZWO/Psychon, 560-268-001).     

Gender differences in social consequences of perceived overweight in the United States and Australia

This study investigated attitudes about body weight and appearance in a group of young adults. Undergraduate psychology students at the Flinders University of South Australia and at the University of Vermont were asked about their weight and dieting, consciousness about their body, the degree to which their weight had interfered with social activities, their perceptions about the causes of obseity, and their stereotypes about fat and thin men and women. Although 20% of the sample was overweight, 50% of subjects perceived themselves to be overweight to some degree. As expected, weight was a much greater issue for women, who felt more overweight, dieted more, expressed more body consciousness, and reported that weight had interfered more with social activities than did men. Also as expected, Vermont students reported greater frequency of dieting, more concern about weight, and more body consciousness than did students in Australia. Finally, men and women in both cultures stereotyped obese targets significantly more negatively than they did nonobese targets. The results indicate excessive and maladaptive concerns with weight in general, and among women and U.S. students in particular.     

No counterregulation after breaking the external restraint of children.

At the present, it is unknown how restraint and binge eating/counterregulation are exactly related. Earlier studies on this relationship suffer from two main shortcomings: the studies are all correlational in nature or could not rule out the contribution of confounding variables such as weight loss. The present study investigated whether a break of restraint is a sufficient condition for the occurrence of counterregulation by studying a restrained sample which is not liable to dieting practices and weight loss. The externally imposed restraint on children with regard to eating sweets was broken. However, after breaking their external restraint the children did not counterregulate. It is discussed whether restraint of food intake is really as important for binge eating as it is claimed to be or whether it is merely a consequence or an epiphenomenon of binge eating.     

Cue-exposure vs self-control in the treatment of binge eating: a pilot study.

From a recent theory on the learned nature of craving responses and binge eating, it follows that craving will extinguish when the CS-US bond is broken by prolonged exposure to the cues predicting excessive food intake with response prevention. The present authors treated six obese bulimics with cue exposure and response prevention. Six other patients learned to avoid or escape the binge-related cues with the aid of self control techniques. Although both treatments appeared to be effective in reducing the binge frequency, a most remarkable finding of the present study is that all patients treated by cue exposure were abstinent, directly after treatment and during the 1 yr follow-up. In contrast to the 100% binge-free subjects treated by cue exposure, self control techniques and relapse prevention led to abstinence in merely 33% of the subjects.     

Restrained eaters are rapidly habituating sensation seekers

Several authors have pointed to similarities between eating disorders and addictive behaviors. In earlier studies, addicts were found to score high on the Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS) and to habituate rapidly to neutral stimuli. In this study, we found experimental support for an addiction model of eating disorders: restrained eaters also scored significantly higher on the Sensation Seeking Scale and also habituated significantly quicker to a series of neutral stimuli than unrestrained eaters. No clear evidence was found for the hypothesis that restrained eaters score lower on measurements of anxiety. It is hypothesized that rapid habituation promotes sensation seeking, which may be manifested in excessive consumption of either drugs or food. Restraint may be a strategy to prevent negative consequences of sensation seeking and excessive consumption. The model is related to earlier experimental findings.     

Latent trait models and dichotomization of graded responses

This paper discusses thecompatibility of the polychotomous Rasch model with dichotomization of the response continuum. It is argued that in the case of graded responses, the response categories presented to the subject are essentially an arbitrary polychotomization of the response continuum, ranging for example from total rejection or disagreement to total acceptance or agreement of an item or statement. Because of this arbitrariness, the measurement outcome should be independent of the specific polychotomization applied, for example, presenting a specific multicategory response format should not affect the measurement outcome. When such is the case, the original polychotomous model is called compatible with dichotomization.A distinction is made between polychotomization or dichotomization before the fact, that is, in constructing the response format, and polycho- or dichotomization after the fact, for example in dichotomizing existing graded response data.It is shown that, at least in case of dichotomization after-the-fact, the polychotomous Rasch model is not compatible with dichotomization, unless a rather special condition of the model parameters is met. Insofar as it may be argued that dichotomization before the fact is not essentially different from dichotomization after the fact, the value of the unidimensional polychotomous Rasch model is consequently questionable. The impact of our conclusion on related models is also discussed.     

ANSEC: A BASIC package for lag sequential analysis of observational data

Three BASIC programs for processing observational, nonconcurrent sequential data are presented. The programs follow Sackett’s lag sequential analysis method and have the innovations of running on interactional microcomputers and of providing plots of results. The outcome of the analysis is stored on a magnetic disk, facilitating a further application of probabilistic models to the transformed data. The Allison-Liker correction for the comparison test between expected and observed lag probabilities is included in the programs.     

Social Interactions of Obese and Nonobese Women

The stigma associated with obesity is likely to limit the opportunities obese women have to develop social skills. This hypothesis was tested by having obese (n = 15) and nonobese (n = 22) women converse on the telephone with college students who were unaware of the women's weights. Ratings made by judges who listened to the women's contributions to the conversations but who were unaware of their weights showed that obesity was negatively related to judgments about the women's likability, social skills, and physical attractiveness. The telephone partners of obese women rated the women and themselves more negatively than did the partners of nonobese women. Obese and nonobese women generally did not differ in their evaluations of their own and their telephone partners' behavior, and they also did not differ on a measure of social self-esteem. These findings suggest that there are real differences in the social behavior of obese and nonobese women and that these differences affect the impressions formed by those with whom they interact.     

A Gender-role Perspective of Coping and Burnout

Cette étude explore la relation entre la dépression, le stress professionnel et les réactions positives chez du personnel scolaire des deux sexes. Les résultats indiquent que les hommes présentent un score significativement plus élevé que celui des femmes à l'échelle de dépersonnalisation du "Mas-lach Burnout Inventory". Alors que les hommes sont plus que les femmes victimes de stress au travail et cela de façon significative, ils ont aussi une plus faible probabilité de faire appel à des techniques de compensation en particulier dans la qualité de Ieur vie quotidienne (les investissements dans les relations amicales et les activités culturelles). D'autres données suggèrent que les femmes sont plus que les hommes capables d'utiliser des stratégies susceptibles de contrecarrer l'effondrement. Chez les hommes, la dépression reléve à la fois du stress professionnel et des enfants: la présence d'enfants élève significativement le niveau de dépression d'un homme.
This study examines the relationship between burnout, work stress, and coping in female and male school personnel. Results indicated that men, compared to women, scored significantly higher on depersonalisation, one of the subscales of the Maslach Burnout Inventory. Men were experiencing significantly greater work stress than women, but were less likely than their female counterparts to employ coping techniques, particularly with regard to their quality of daily life, investment in friends, and cultural activities. Further results suggested that women were better able to use coping strategies to reduce burnout than men. In men, burnout appeared to be a joint function of work stress and children, with the presence of children significantly raising a man's level of burnout.