Beauty Is More than "Name" Deep: The Effect of Women's First Names on Ratings of Physical Attractiveness and Personality Attributes

This study investigated the effects of first names on ratings of physical attractiveness and personality attributes. Pictures of female targets varying in physical attractiveness (low, medium, high) were assigned a desirable, neutral, or undesirable first name. In a control group, targets were presented without a first name. Both physical attractiveness ratings and ratings of personality attributes were influenced by targets' physical attractiveness irrespective of the assigned first name.     

The control of social desirability in personality inventories: A study using the principal-factor deletion technique

The present study sought to investigate Paulhus' (1981) principal-factor deletion technique (PFDT), a factor analytic method for controlling for socially desirable responding. Adult subjects (N = 330) responded to both forms of the Eysenck Personality Inventory and a 32-item lie scale. Peer ratings of extraversion and neuroticism served as criterion measures. The factor deleted by PFDT more closely reflected neuroticism than impression management. Factors resulting from PFDT were considerably less valid and less content saturated than those emerging from an ordinary factor solution. The implications of these results are discussed from the perspectives of predictive and construct validity.     

Individual,social group and intergroup behaviour. Some conceptual remarks on the social identity theory

An investigation of the group concept proposed by Tqjfel and Turner shows that group formation and intergroup behaviour cannot be explained by the similarity of group members. Taking into account only similarity of elements leads to conceptual contaminations concerning group and class, group and collective, personal and social identity, and finally interpersonal and intergroup behaviour. It is claimed that only the consideration of group structure and the differentiation of partially individual and partially structural attributes of the group members results in a conceptually adequate theory of group formation and intergroup behaviour of its members.     

Psychoses in epilepsy

The heterogenous psychoses in epilepsies, caused by well known conditions, are not rare but associated with regularly a few of seizure-types not with the nature and development of attacks. Polar transitional ranks and converging courses of schizophrenic (accentuated) syndromes in epilepsies and idiopathic schizophrenias are rather frequent. Also (sub-)acute schizophrenic psychoses are corresponding to the complete palette of first and second rank symptoms (K. Schneider) of idiopathic schizophrenias. After manifestations of epilepsy these syndromes can appear at any time. It is given a profile of risks. Progressive avoidance of a. phenylaceturea, b. mixtures of antiepileptics did not put an end to psychotic syndromes: Long-term therapies with 1. Polytherapy, 2. Primidone and Phenytoin (dosedependant) as well as 3. Ethosuximide (-monotherapy) cause a disorder of feed back mechanisms, especially a disturbed regulation of vigilance and sleeping-waking-cycle and their psychological correlates. Carbamazepine and Sodium Valproate are, plasma-level-controlled of preventive antipsychotic effect. Selected neuroleptics of rather slight epileptogenic potency are of going down importance. Benzodiazepines are required mostly in prepsychotic syndromes, Lithium compounds in selected cases. There is no more alternative seizures or psychosis.     

Knowing,interconnecting, and fulfilling the four faces and the source of our being

This essay is part of a work in progress concerned with trying to discover, explain and evaluate the most crucial choices of our life and how to free ourselves to make fundamentally better choices. Our theoretical analysis focuses on the practice of the core drama of life, the archetypal drama of transformation. Why is that our core drama? Because by moving through its three Acts again and again, we free our capacity to participate with the deepest source of our being and with our neighbors in creating fundamentally new and better solutions to concrete problems. The living underlying pattern of this drama is always the same; its concrete experience, always different. It is also the core drama of life because we have only four fundamentally different choices for organizing a way of life in the service of which we live the stories of our lives, a way of life which provides us with ultimate meaning and purpose in life. And three of these four ways of life are only fragments of the core drama of transformation.     

The formation of reference systems in visual motion perception

Summary In visual perception complex movements are usually split up into components — e.g., in such a way that a moving reference system is applied, to which partial movements can be related. In the following experiment a perceptual vector analysis of this kind was investigated. It was shown that 1) a radial translatory movement (relative component) can be isolated perceptually from a rotatory movement (global component) and that 2) the precision of this decomposition of the complex movement is dependent on the strength at which the rotating reference system is anchored perceptually.The authors wish to thank M. Rauterberg for collecting the experimental data     

Ego function assessment of nonclinical individuals

Ego Function Assessment was adapted into a self-report inventory yielding 12 operationalized function measures. 426 respondents from a stratified sample completed the inventory. In addition, 42 respondents completed the inventory twice within a 20-day period. A hierarchical algorithm was used to revise the 12 scales to maximize internal consistencies. Their stabilities were assessed by analyzing the retest scores. Standardization, reliability, and stability data are presented for the original and revised scales. Results show adequate reliability, suggesting that the tool may be useful to measure ego functioning in nonclinical populations.