Pupil response of hetero- and homosexual males to pictures of men and women: A pilot study.

The pupil response of each individual in a group of heterosexual males was greater when looking at pictures of women than when looking at pictures of men. Homosexual male Ss responded in the opposite direction. Measurement of changes in pupil size permitted clear-cut discrimination between the 2 groups. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Infants' intermodal knowledge about gender.

The aim of this study was to seek evidence of intermodal knowledge about gender in infants that would provide direct evidence of the existence of gender categories during the 1st yr of life. In Exp 1, 20 9- and 24 12-mo-olds were presented with pairs of male and female pictures with a female or male voice presented simultaneously. Ss spent significantly more time looking at the pictures matching the voices than at the same pictures paired with mismatching voices, but only in the case of female stimuli. Comparison to chance level performance suggested that the matching effect was more consistent in older Ss. In Exp 2, 20 9-mo-olds were tested with a set of highly stereotypical faces and distinctive male and female voices. Ss showed a preference for the faces matching the voices, but this effect was again restricted to female stimuli. Results of both studies suggest that intermodal knowledge about gender develops during the 2nd half of the 1st yr. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adult performance as a function of sex of experimenter and sex of subject.

8 male and 8 female Es each tested 8 male and 8 female Ss in a simple sorting task. During an initial 1.5 min. each S's base rate of response was ascertained; following this, the E delivered a supportive statement every 30 sec. for the next 5.5 min. Performance did not increase as a function of the introduction of the supportive statements. Significant differences in base rate and in performance after the base rate period were found as a function of sex of E and of the interaction between sex of E and sex of S. Highly reliable differences appeared in the performance of Ss tested by different Es. The rank-order correlations of men and women tested by men and by women were significant, indicating a similar hierarchy in level of performance of male and female Ss tested by the male Es and a similar hierarchy for Ss tested by female Es. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Unconscious anxiety": Phobic responses to masked stimuli.

Tested the hypothesis that an unconscious preattentive perceptual analysis of phobic stimuli is sufficient to elicit human fear responses. Selected snake- and spider-fearful Ss, as well as normal controls, were exposed to pictures of snakes, spiders, flowers, and mushrooms. A separate forced-choice recognition experiment established backward masking conditions that effectively precluded recognition of experimental stimuli both for fearful and nonfearful Ss. In the main experiment, these conditions were used to compare skin conductance responses (SCRs) to masked and nonmasked phobic and control pictures among fearful and nonfearful Ss. In support of the hypotheses, snake- and spider-fearful Ss showed elevated SCRs to snake and spider pictures as compared with neutral pictures and with responses of the nonfearful Ss under both masking conditions. Ratings of valence, arousal, and dominance indicated that the fearful Ss felt more negative, more aroused, and less dominant in relation to both masked and nonmasked phobic stimuli. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mediated stimulus generalization and words connoting mood.

90 words connoting mood were scaled for degree of elation or depression. 70 of the words were selected as the stimuli in a study of mediated stimulus generalization. For 2 groups of men and 2 groups of women the training stimuli were extremely elated words, and for 2 different groups of men and women, the training stimuli were extremely depressed words. In each of the 2 groups for both sexes, one group was reinforced for whispering and the other for shouting. After training all groups received a generalization series consisting of words varying in degree of elation or depression. Ss trained to shout elated and whisper depressed stimuli produced steeper mediated stimulus generalization gradients than Ss trained to whisper elated and shout depressed stimuli. The Shout-Depressed group produced partially inverted gradients. The results were consistent with an asymmetrical Matching Principle: with connotative stimuli there is a strong tendency to make an intense response to an intense stimulus and a moderate tendency to make a weak response to a weak stimulus. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Face-ism: Five studies of sex differences in facial prominence.

Conducted 5 studies on relative facial prominence in depictions of men and women. This hypothesized sex difference may be theoretically important because visual representations presumably contribute to generic conceptions of what is unique about each of the sexes. Three studies assessed the prevalence of "face-ism"—greater facial prominence in depictions of men—in 3 contexts: in American periodicals (1,750 published photographs in 5 magazines and newspapers were analyzed), in publications from 11 cultures (3,500 photographs and pictures were coded), and in artwork over 6 centuries (920 portraits and self-portraits were scored). A 4th study found experimental evidence that this difference also occurs in amateur drawings of men and women; Ss were 40 male and 40 female undergraduates. A final study varied facial prominence experimentally in photographs and found consequent changes in rated intelligence and other characteristics; Ss were 60 university students. Implications for sex differences, particularly for the perceived intellectual qualities of women, are discussed. (9 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of film violence on inhibitions against subsequent aggression.

As a test of the possibility that recently-angered people can "purge" their anger through viewing filmed scenes of aggression, 160 college men and women were shown a 7-minute prize fight scene after having been either deliberately insulted or treated in a neutral fashion by a male graduate student. Just before the Ss saw the movie, E, a female graduate student, provided them with 1 or 2 synopses of the movie plot. In ? of the cases E told the Ss the film protagonist (who took a bad beating in the flight) was a downright scoundrel. The fantasy aggression witnessed by this group was presumably regarded as justified. The remaining Ss were told that the protagonist was not really bad, and they presumably came to regard the filmed aggression as less justified. All Ss rated the male graduate student after seeing the movie. In opposition to the thesis of vicarious hostility reduction, the authors had predicted that the justified fantasy aggression would produce heightened overt hostility toward the insulting male graduate student by lowering inhibitions against aggression. The questionnaire ratings support the prediction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Weight differences in emotional responsiveness to proprioceptive and pictorial stimuli.

In 2 studies, 70 overweight and 76 normal-weight undergraduates were administered the Sadness and Elation components of the Nowlis Mood Adjective Check List to investigate weight differences in emotional responsiveness to proprioceptive and pictorial stimuli. Contrary to past evidence that overweight Ss are more emotional than normals, the emotional state of normal-weight Ss fluctuated with manipulations of their facial expression, whereas that of overweight Ss did not respond to these proprioceptive cues. Although research employing affectively loaded pictures found overweight Ss to be more emotionally responsive than normals to these external stimuli, no such weight differences were obtained when less polarized pictures were used in the present studies. It is concluded that even though overweight Ss were more emotionally responsive to extremely polarized external stimuli that demand perception, they were less responsive to proprioceptive stimuli derived from facial expressions and equally responsive to moderately polarized pictorial stimuli. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Response to cutaneous pain in mental hospital patients.

Conducted an experiment to determine how warmth detection thresholds (WDTs), pain thresholds (PTs), and pain tolerance thresholds (PTOs) to radiant heat differed between groups of process schizophrenics (G2), reactive schizophrenics (G3), nonschizophrenic (G4), and normal (G1) S groups. 15 males from each of these categories served as Ss. The manipulated independent variable was skin temperature. The dependent variables were verbal reports of WDT, PT, PTO, and pupillary response. G1 and G3 Ss had significantly lower mean PTs and PTOs than G2 Ss. Significantly fewer G2 and G3 Ss than G1 and G4 Ss reported PT and PTO. The mean pupillary responses of G2 Ss were significantly smaller than those of G1 and G3 Ss at WDT, PT, and PTO. It is concluded that (a) chronic institutionalized psychiatric patients display weaker reactions to potentially harmful stimuli, and (b) a dissociation between autonomic and verbal responses may occur in process schizophrenics at higher than moderate levels of noxious stimulation. (43 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the automatic nature of phobic fear: Conditioned electrodermal responses to masked fear-relevant stimuli.

Normal Ss (n?=?64) were exposed either to pictures of snakes and spiders or to pictures of flowers and mushrooms in a differential conditioning paradigm in which one of the pictures signaled an electric shock. In a subsequent extinction series, these stimuli were presented backwardly masked by another stimulus for half of the Ss, whereas the other half received nonmasked extinction. In support of a hypothesis that suggests that nonconscious information-processing mechanisms are sufficient to activate responses to fear-relevant stimuli, differential skin conductance response to masked conditioning and control stimuli was obvious only for Ss conditioned to fear-relevant stimuli. These results were replicated in a 2nd experiment (n?=?32), which also demonstrated that the effect was unaffected by which visual half-field was used for stimulus presentation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conceptual behavior in pigeons: Categories, subcategories, and pseudocategories.

In 3 experiments with a total of 16 Ss, we explored how pigeons learn to classify diverse pictures of cats, flowers, cars, and chairs and later how they accurately categorize brand-new pictures from these classes. Using a 4-key forced-choice procedure, Ss in Exp 1 discriminated individual examples within each of the categories from one another (subcategory training); nevertheless, errors were disproportionately conceptual in nature, with Ss more likely to confuse examples within a given category than between different categories. Ss in Exp 2 trained to classify pictures into human language categories (category training) learned far faster and more completely than Ss trained to sort the same pictures into totally arbitrary groupings (pseudocategory training). Finally, in Exp 3, category-trained and subcategory-trained Ss were tested on normally oriented pictures, on left–right reversals, and on top–bottom reversals. Subcategory-trained Ss responded less accurately on both kinds of reversed pictures and less accurately on top–bottom than on left–right reversals; category-trained Ss were less affected by both types of picture reversals, only top–bottom reversals decrementing their performance. Results suggest that many words in our language denote clusters of related visual stimuli, which pigeons also see as highly similar. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social reinforcement with children as a function of CA, sex of E, and sex of S.

The interactive effect of sex on the performance of Ss at varying ages was investigated. The performance (in a game) of Ss at 3 age levels (3-4, 6-7, 9-10) was reviewed after exposure to male or female E. Sex of E had a statistically significant effect at the 3-4 level only, women being more effective in stimulating performance than men. From Psyc Abstracts 36:04:4FC47S. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Clinical patterns of defense as revealed in visual recognition thresholds.

To test the relationship between characteristic mode of cognitive reactivity to conflict-arousing stimuli in a laboratory situation as compared with life in general, Ss (adult male hospitalized psychiatric patients between 21 and 45) were placed in one of 3 categories, which reflected characteristic modes of dealing with conflictual ideas and feelings (externalizers, internalizers, acting-outers). Ss were then presented with visual stimuli (words and pictures) geared to heighten conflict arousal; capacity for recognition was measured by the level of illumination required for identification of the stimulus. The results indicated that externalizers and acter-outer demonstrated lower thresholds of recognition for conflictarousing (sexual, aggressive, dependent) stimuli than for neutral ones, and internalizers revealed higher thresholds. No relationship was found between specific conflict area or psychiatric diagnosis and perceptual mode. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sex differences in intensity of emotional experience: A social role interpretation.

According to gender role theory, women's greater emotional intensity than men's stems from normative expectations for sex differences that arise as a result of men's and women's social roles. In Exp 1, endorsement of normative expectations for sex differences was associated with sex differences in Ss' own emotions: To the extent that they endorsed stereotypical differences between men and women, female Ss reported personally experiencing emotions of greater intensity and male Ss reported experiencing emotions of lesser intensity. The 2nd study manipulated expectations for responsiveness while Ss viewed a series of emotion-inducing slides. When instructions rendered normative expectations comparable for men and women, no sex differences were obtained in emotion self-reports. Furthermore, women evidenced more extreme electromyograph physiological responding than men, suggesting general sex differences in emotion that are not limited to self-report. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sex differences in the time course of emotion.

Conventional wisdom holds that women are more "emotional" than men. However, research evidence suggests that sex differences in emotion are considerably more complex. The authors tested hypotheses about sex differences in the engagement of the approach and avoidance motivational systems thought to underpin emotional responses. The authors measured reported emotional experience and startle response magnitude both during the presentation and after the offset of emotional stimuli that engage these motivational systems to assess whether men and women differ in their patterns of immediate response to emotional stimuli and in their patterns of recovery from these responses. Our findings indicated that women were more experientially reactive to negative, but not positive, emotional pictures compared to men, and that women scored higher than men on measure of aversive motivational system sensitivity. Although both men and women exhibited potentiation of the startle response during the presentation of negative pictures relative to neutral pictures, only women continued to show this relative potentiation during the recovery period, indicating that women were continuing to engage the aversive motivational system after the offset of negative emotional pictures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The affiliation motive and perceptual sensitivity to faces.

An attempt was made to predict from imaginative measures of the affiliation motive the frequency with which S selects human faces from similar but nonhuman figures in a perceptual task. The Ss were 93 male undergraduates who responded to pictures with imaginative stories scored for n Affiliation. A month later they were introduced to the perceptual task which required that they state which of 4 figures flashed on a screen was clearest, all stimuli being below the recognition threshold. On each trial 1 of the 4 stimuli was a face and the others were similar but affiliation-neutral. Ss high in n Affiliation recognized faces significantly more frequently than those low in n Affiliation. Thus, the predicted relationship between motivation and the perceptual selection of motive-relevant stimuli was supported. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Facial expressions as conditioned stimuli for electrodermal responses: A case of "preparedness"?

Converging data suggest that human facial behavior has an evolutionary basis. Combining these data with M. E. Seligman's (1970) preparedness theory, it was predicted that facial expressions of anger should be more readily associated with aversive events than should expressions of happiness. Two experiments involving differential electrodermal conditioning to pictures of faces, with electric shock as the unconditioned stimulus, were performed. In the 1st experiment, 32 undergraduates were exposed to 2 pictures of the same person, 1 with an angry and 1 with a happy expression. For half of the Ss, the shock followed the angry face, and for the other half, it followed the happy face. In the 2nd experiment, 3 groups of 48 undergraduates differentiated between pictures of male and female faces, both showing angry, neutral, and happy expressions. Responses to angry CSs showed significant resistance to extinction in both experiments, with a larger effect in Exp II. Responses to happy or neutral CSs, on the other hand, extinguished immediately when the shock was withheld. Results are related to conditioning to phobic stimuli and to the preparedness theory. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relation between conceptual development and visual exploration of incongruity.

Investigated the relationship between conceptual development and visual exploratory behavior in 84 3-, 4-, and 8-yr-olds. All Ss were engaged in a picture-sorting task to determine whether they would spontaneously and readily discriminate between animate and inanimate objects. Only the 3-yr-olds failed to use this distinction. Three levels of incongruous stimuli were then constructed by combining elements from (a) 2 conceptually distant objects (Level 3: animate and inanimate), (b) 2 conceptually similar objects (Level 2: 2 animate or 2 inanimate), and by using normal, banal objects (Level 1). Patterns of visual selection were subsequently recorded as the Ss viewed pictures representing the 3 levels of incongruity. Results indicate that 3-yr-olds visually explored all incongruous pictures (Levels 2 and 3) longer than those that were banal, whereas 4-yr-olds viewed pictures of intermediate incongruity (Level 2) the longest. Older Ss displayed greater visual preference for progressively incongruous pictures. Findings are discussed in terms of the development of classificatory behavior and with reference to the schema-discrepancy and the informational-conflict-resolution models of visual selection. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aggression-inhibiting influence of sexual humor.

48 undergraduate males participated in an experiment designed to investigate the hypothesis that prior exposure to sexual humor would reduce the level of aggression directed by angry individuals against the person who had previously provoked them. Ss were first angered or not angered by a male confederate; next, exposed to either neutral, nonhumorous pictures or to 1 of 2 types of sexual humor (nonexploitative, exploitative); and finally, provided with an opportunity to aggress against this individual by means of electric shock. Results indicate that exposure to exploitative sexual humor, but not exposure to nonexploitative sexual humor, significantly reduced the strength of Ss' later attacks against the victim. Findings are discussed in terms of the results of a follow-up study in which 2 groups of male Ss examined the exploitative or nonexploitative sexual cartoons and rated the extent to which they would fantasize about these stimuli, following their removal. Results of this study suggest that individuals are more likely to think or fantasize about exploitative than nonexploitative sexual humor following the removal of such stimuli. (24 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sexual standards and reactions to pornography: Enhancing behavioral consistency through self-focused attention.

Reports 3 studies which tested the hypothesis, derived from self-awareness theory, that behavior would be more consistent with personal attitudes or standards when attention was self-focused. In the 1st study, 52 male undergraduates' attitudes toward erotica were measured, and 1 mo later the Ss were asked to rate pictures of nude women, while either self-focused (in front of a mirror) or not. There was little relationship between pretested attitudes and reactions toward the pictures for the non-self-focused group; however, the same relationship was very strong for the group that rated pictures in front of a mirror. In the 2nd and 3rd studies, female Ss (51 and 48 undergraduates, respectively) were first pretested on the Mosher Sex-Guilt Scale. Two weeks later they read and rated pornographic passages, again, while either self-focused or not. The relationship between pretested standards (sex guilt) and reactions to sexual literature was weak in the non-self-aware condition, but considerably stronger for the self-focused Ss. Results suggest that focusing attention upon the self tends to inhibit behaviors that are inconsistent with personal attitudes or standards. (35 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)