Gender jeopardy: The effects of gender, assessed femininity and masculinity, and false success/failure feedback on performance in an experimental quiz game.

61 female and 62 male undergraduates assessed on the Femininity and Masculinity scales of the Bem Sex-Role Inventory answered multiple-choice questions in a 3-trial computerized quiz game. Ss could modify the experimental situation by choosing the questions' difficulty levels and, on Trials 2 and 3, choosing among stereotypically "feminine," "masculine," and "gender-neutral" question topic areas. Between Trials 2 and 3, Ss were given false success/failure feedback. Results indicate that females chose less-difficult questions and estimated their performance lower than did males even in trials in which they could choose feminine questions. In Trials 2 and 3, Ss' gender strongly influenced choices of feminine or masculine question topics. High-masculine males showed a greater preference for masculine questions, whereas high-masculine females showed a greater preference for neutral questions. Assessed masculinity also influenced topic choices in interaction with the success/failure manipulation. The effects of gender and assessed femininity and masculinity may best be understood in interaction with situational variables. The current paradigm is proposed as a means of carrying out more interactive kinds of research on personality–situation interactions. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hand function related to age and sex

After adapting Jebssen's Test of Hand Function to Australian conditions, this study investigated his claim of no significant difference in hand performance among participants younger than 60 years, and determined whether age might be a factor when associated with sex. The method was to test 383 subjects of both sexes in 6 age groups. A 2-factor analysis with age and sex as factors yielded significant differences (p less than 0.01) for "grip strength" "manipulating small objects," and "moving large heavy objects," and indications of significance (p less than 0.05) for "card turning" and "moving large light objects." The sex factor showed males to be significantly better "grip strength," in "moving large heavy objects," and "large light objects," except in the 66-99 age interval where females were significantly better on teh last 2 variables. Females performed better on "writing" and were generally better in "manipulating small objects." These results suggest that the one set of norms given by Jebsen for 60 years and less for each sex, should be replaced by 5 or more, even though the differences were quite small when standard deviations were considered.     

More "touching" observations: New insights on men, women, and interpersonal touch.

To describe sex differences in interpersonal touch, observation was made of 4,500 dyads in their teens and older in public places. The principal analyses addressed the issue of asymmetry in the initiation of touch in mixed sex dyads. Over all ages and initiating body parts, males touched females (MF touch) with the same frequency that females touched males (FM touch). However, among younger dyads, MF touch prevailed, whereas the reverse was true for older dyads. Though there was a tendency for MF touch with the hand to exceed FM touch with the hand, significant sex differences appeared only for "arm around," in which MF touch prevailed, and "arms linked," in which FM touch was more common. Analyses also addressed main effects of toucher sex and recipient sex, male–male vs female–female touch, and same- vs opposite-sex touch. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sex differences in audiovisual discrimination learning by Bengalese Finches (Lonchura striata var. domestica).

Both visual and auditory information are important for songbirds, especially in developmental and sexual contexts. To investigate bimodal cognition in songbirds, the authors conducted audiovisual discrimination training in Bengalese finches. The authors used two types of stimulus: an "artificial stimulus," which is a combination of simple figures and sound, and a "biological stimulus," consisting of video images of singing males along with their songs. The authors found that while both sexes predominantly used visual cues in the discrimination tasks, males tended to be more dependent on auditory information for the biological stimulus. Female responses were always dependent on the visual stimulus for both stimulus types. Only males changed their discrimination strategy according to stimulus type. Although males used both visual and auditory cues for the biological stimulus, they responded to the artificial stimulus depending only on visual information, as the females did. These findings suggest a sex difference in innate auditory sensitivity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sex differences in subclinical depression: Administration of the Beck Depression Inventory in public and private disclosure situations.

To test the idea that the preponderance of female depressives is due to a masculine tendency to avoid negative social consequences by reporting fewer depressive symptoms, the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) was administered to 106 male and 104 female undergraduates under conditions of public and private disclosure. It was hypothesized that males would score lower on the BDI than females in the public disclosure condition but not males in the private disclosure condition. Results of both studies fail to support the experimental hypothesis. However, ANOVA revealed a significant interaction between sex of S and sex of examiner. Results are discussed in terms of a willingness to admit more symptoms to a same-sex person due to fear of rejection by the opposite sex and in terms of gender-specific patterns of self-disclosure in first-encounter heterosexual situations. Results also suggest that BDI scores of college students can be interpreted without regard to type of administration. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cerebral plurality and the unity of self.

Recent findings from studies of commissurotomized human patients have revived controversies regarding the unity of consciousness and the "unicity of self." The issue is older and deeper than contemporary commentators generally acknowledge. Examination of historical versions of the dispute reveals a number of insights and confusions quite similar to those now filling the pages of contemporary journals. Because they fail to make necessary distinctions among such concepts as "self," "self-identity," and "personal identity," both the old and the new literatures are punctuated with logical incoherence. Once such key terms are analyzed, it becomes clear that the traditional notion of unified consciousness is largely unaffected by "split-brain" data. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The rise of qualitative research in psychology.

A study is presented on the rise of qualitative research in psychology over the 20th century. The incidence of qualitative research as indicated by several search terms (i.e., "qualitative research," "grounded theory," "discourse analy*," "empirical phenomenological," and "phenomenological psychology") was traced through the PsycINFO and Dissertation Abstracts International databases. It was found that, with the exception of the search terms having to do with phenomenology, records containing these search terms were basically non-existent until the 1980s, when there was a sharp rise that intensified in the 1990s. The PsycINFO records were sorted according to (1) whether they came from psychology or other social and health science disciplines; (2) region of origin; (3) the types of document to which they referred; and (4) whether they focused on the methodology or the application of qualitative research. A number of interesting differences emerged from this comparative analysis. Implications of the findings for the supposition that a paradigm shift may be underway are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Personal construal of life tasks: Those who struggle for independence.

Life tasks serve as an avenue for individuals to give personal meaning to their lives and to organize personal effort and activities. The present data, from a longitudinal study of the transition to college life, demonstrate how construals of life tasks can help to illuminate individuals' activity choices and affective experience of daily life activities. Ss who were absorbed in the task of "being on my own, away from family," also invested their academic activities with special significance. They experienced more stress and less satisfaction from their (considerable) academic accomplishments than did those who framed their tasks in more concrete terms. Experience-sampling data showed that activity choices followed from life task concerns, even when such activities were particularly anxiety-provoking. Discussion considers how similar life task themes may be enacted differently in other contexts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Neither Fish nor Flesh": Commentary on Jon Mills (2005).

Mills (see record 2005-04819-001) offers a wide-ranging critique of relational psychoanalysis, seeking to point out its theoretical shortcomings and its clinical hazards. Although he declares an evenhanded and nonpolemic approach, promotes "accurate scholarship," and decries "illegitimate attacks" on psychoanalytic literature, Mills' thesis is rife with rhetorical excesses, unsubstantiated allegations, and misrepresentations of clinical moments unlinked from their contexts. This commentary highlights where Mills supports his opinions through evocative and mystifying rhetoric rather than scholarly and substantiating evidence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The mind at AI: Horseless carriage, card trick, mousetrap, clock.

Artificial Intelligence is not about building artificial intelligences. Nor is it about understanding the human mind or any other kind of mind. These are the occasions upon which a more fundamental human urge is playing out, that of seeking new expressive power through new expressive means. AI research exhibits a profound gravity that continuously attracts even the best planned technical efforts back toward tweaking and playing around with representational facility. What deserves emphasis here is that as a culture, we are not yet conceiving of these new representational techniques in terms of their proper powers and limits but rather in familiar terms wholly inadequate, even misleading, for the task of perceiving and then leveraging their lasting significance. In this sense, the phrase "artificial intelligence" is a pristechnolocution, i.e., "earlier technology phrase," such as "horseless carriage," or "wireless telegraph," or "iron horse," or "glass teletype" a phrase that describes a new technology wrongly in terms of an old familiar one, a phrase that directs attention toward unimportant resemblances and decades later sounds anachronistically naive. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sample description, reporting, an analysis of sex in psychological research: A look at APA and APA division journals in 1990.

Extends a study by L. Gannon et al (see record 1992-23274-001) by examining the sex of Ss in American Psychological Association (APA) journals publishing original human studies research and by sampling all APA division journals publishing such research. Two issues of each APA and APA division journal published in 1990 were examined, yielding a sample of 504 articles from 26 journals. 79 cases (9.86%) clearly indicated using Ss of only 1 sex, 440 cases (54.93%) used both male and female Ss and reported sex fully, and 44 cases (5.49%) indicated using Ss of each sex without reporting exact numbers. The evidence suggests that there remains a significant tendency to consider male Ss as "normative," and results obtained from them generally applicable, whereas female Ss are somehow "different," and results obtained from them are specific to female Ss. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The psychological foundations of the affective lexicon.

Subjects rated their confidence that each word from a set of 585 words referred to an emotion. As a strategy for discriminating words that refer to genuine emotions from words that refer to other kinds of conditions, ratings were collected in two different linguistic contexts: first, in the context of feeling something and second, in the context of being something. We hypothesized that words that referred to genuine emotions would be judged as such when presented in the context of feeling or being (e.g., feeling angry and being angry should both be rated as emotions). Words not referring to genuine emotions, however, were expected to show one of several other patterns. For example, words such as abandoned, which refer to objective states of the world, were expected to be rated as emotions in the feeling context but not in the being context. A discriminant analysis showed that such patterns could be used to distinguish the categories of a taxonomy of psychological conditions that Ortony, Clore, and Foss (1987) have proposed. The most discriminable categories were the four classes of affective, cognitive, external, and bodily conditions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dysmentia.

Comments on the calling of certain types of retardation dysmentia. The author states that emotional deprivation in early childhood is a well known cause of simulated retardation. At the present time the idea of functional retardation (as shown by psychological testing) with better or normal inherent capacities is expressed by such terms as "pseudoretardation," "apparent feeblemindedness," or "mental deficiency," or other similar combinations. The author suggests that these cases be called dysmentia to indicate disturbance in mental functioning as it applies to the intellectual spheres, and which may be temporary. This would give a more hopeful attitude towards such patients and ipso facto call for further follow-up and/or testing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age-associated testosterone decline in men: clinical issues for psychiatry

OBJECTIVE: The author summarizes current knowledge about the diagnosis and treatment of testosterone decline in healthy aging men and the associated clinical issues for psychiatry. METHOD: A MEDLINE search was conducted in which the search terms "male climacteric," "male menopause," "andropause," "viropause," "low-testosterone syndrome," and "testosterone replacement therapy" were used. Literature published before 1966 was identified by reviewing the reference lists of later publications. RESULTS: Manifestations of testosterone deficiency have included depression, anxiety, irritability, insomnia, weakness, diminished libido, impotence, poor memory, reduced muscle and bone mass, and diminished sexual body hair. Although testosterone levels decline with age, there is great interindividual variability, and the connection between serum testosterone levels and clinical psychiatric signs and symptoms is not clear-cut, since other hormonal changes are implicated as well. Testosterone replacement therapy may offer hypogonadal men benefit, but long-term studies on its efficacy and safety are lacking. Comprehensive biopsychosocial assessment should be a routine part of the evaluation of complaints of low-testosterone syndrome in men. CONCLUSIONS: Testosterone decline/deficiency is not a state strictly analogous to female menopause and may exhibit considerable overlap with primary and other secondary psychiatric disorders.     

What men want: The role of reflective opposite-sex normative preferences in alcohol use among college women.

Misperceptions of peer drinking norms have been found to be strongly associated with individual drinking behavior, especially for proximal reference groups such as same-sex friends. Less studied are the effects of perceived preferences from the opposite sex on alcohol use; that is, the behaviors an individual believes the opposite sex prefers from them. Research suggests that these perceived “reflective” normative preferences may be particularly salient among college women, who may drink in pursuit of intimate relationships and positive attention from male peers. Heterosexual undergraduate students from two universities participated in this project. Females answered questions regarding the amount of alcohol they believe a typical male would like his female friends, dates, or romantic partners to drink. Males answered the same questions, stating their actual preferences. Results showed that females overestimate the amount of alcohol males want their female friends, dating partners, and sexual partners to drink, and that this misperception was associated with their drinking behavior, even after controlling for perceived same-sex norms. These results suggest that reflective normative feedback may offer a powerful new tool for female-targeted interventions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intersubjectivity in Wittgenstein and Freud: other minds and the foundations of psychiatry

Intersubjectivity, the cooperation of two or more minds, is basic to human behavior, yet eludes the grasp of psychiatry. This paper traces the dilemma to the "problem of other minds" assumed with the epistemologies of modern science. It presents the solution of Wittgenstein's later philosophy, known for his treatment of other minds in terms of "human agreement in language." Unlike recent studies of "Wittgenstein's psychology," this one reviews the Philosophical Investigations' "private language argument," the crux of his mature views on mind. It reads that argument as recording his shift from the modern egocentric paradigm of mind to an intersubjective one. The paper contrasts the merits of Wittgenstein's reduction of subject and object to grammar with the problems of Freud's metapsychological reduction. It shows how Wittgenstein's intersubjective method avoids the excesses of behaviorism and phenomenology, offering a specifically human way to adapt mechanistic and interpretive means to the communicative ends of psychiatry.     

Idols of the psychologist: Johannes Linschoten and the demise of phenomenological psychology in the Netherlands.

Before and after World War II, a loose movement within Dutch psychology solidified as a nascent phenomenological psychology. Dutch phenomenological psychologists attempted to generate an understanding of psychology that was based on Husserlian interpretations of phenomenological philosophy. This movement came to a halt in the 1960s, even though it had been exported to North America and elsewhere as "phenomenological psychology." Frequently referred to as the "Utrecht school," most of the activity of the group was centered at Utrecht University. In this article, the authors examine the role played by Johannes Linschoten in both aspects of the development of a phenomenological psychology: its rise in North America and Europe, and its institutional demise. By the time of his early death in 1964, Linschoten had cast considerable doubt on the possibilities of a purely phenomenological psychology. Nonetheless, his own empirical work, especially his 1956 dissertation published in German, can be seen to be a form of empiricism inspired by phenomenology but that clearly distanced itself from the more elitist and esoteric aspects of Dutch phenomenological psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reflections on the death drive.

Freud's thesis on the death drive is one of the most original theories in the history of ideas that potentially provides a viable explanation to the conundrums that beset the problems of human civilization, subjective suffering, collective aggressivity, and self-destructiveness. Contemporary psychoanalytic theorists tend to view the death drive as fanciful nonsense, an artifact of imagination, but I wish to argue otherwise. Freud accounts for an internally derived motivation, impulse, or activity that is impelled toward a determinate teleology of destruction that may be directed toward self and others, the details of which are multifaceted and contingent upon the unique contexts that influence psychic structure and unconsciously mediated behavior. Although Freud largely believed that his ideas on the death drive were "left to future investigation," he was committed to the notion that mind seeks "a return to an earlier state," a notion that is verifiable through clinical observation. Despite the psyche's inherently evolutionary nature, death becomes the fulcrum of psychic progression and decay. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)