On average, homosexual people are more gender nonconforming than heterosexual people. They also show increased distress, possibly due to their stigmatized minority status. Not surprisingly, gender nonconformity and psychological distress may be related, particularly in homosexual men (e.g., Skidmore, Linsenmeier, & Bailey, 2006), although the mechanisms explaining this relationship have...
In the same way that a sculptor shapes a block of stone to reveal the ideal form within, one's relationship partner can help one to become more like one's ideal self (Drigotas, Rusbult, Wieselquist, & Whitton, 1999). This interpersonal process is called "the Michelangelo phenomenon." The current research examines whether...
A striking aspect of human cognition is our capacity for acquiring and using complex knowledge structures, from learning the rules of algebra, to understanding the causal workings of a combustion engine or the structure and processes of the U.S. Congress. These structured representations underlie our ability to generate new inferences,...
Child maltreatment and violence are two major public health concerns in the United States. The relationship between maltreatment and subsequent violent behavior, also referred to as the "cycle of violence", is not well understood. The present study examines whether a history of maltreatment predicts violent behavior in a sample of...
Behavioral activation (BA) trains depressed clients to engage in more positive activities in order to increase their experience of pleasure and accomplishment, thereby reducing depression. Recent research suggested that BA might be as effective in treating depression as current leading treatments, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and antidepressant medication (Jacobson,...
The present studies aimed at developing a lie detection paradigm immune to countermeasures, while the theoretical issues of top-down influence of task requirement on subliminal semantic priming were investigated. In Experiment 1, subjects were presented supraliminal acquaintance and non-acquaintance names, which were subliminally primed by another acquaintance or non-acquaintance names....
"Anosognosia" or lack of insight into one's own illness is not uncommon in central nervous system disease. Neurodegenerative diseases of the brain that cause dementia are often associated with anosognosia. A lot is known about anosognosia in Alzheimer's disease but relatively little is known about lack of insight into illness...
Why would someone's judgments and choices disregard the consequences he or she cares about most? Considerable research appears to show that in many contexts, people show precisely this paradoxical tendency. Researchers interpret these results as showing that people sometimes make choices on the basis of moral factors -- factors that...
The current research tested the principles of role congruity theory of prejudice, which states that prejudice arises from an incongruity between a group stereotype and social role characteristics (i.e., the attributes and behaviors prescribed by the social role), such that prejudice occurs when members of a group enter or attempt...
The aim of the present investigation was to examine the nature of individuals' parasocial relationships (one-sided attachments to media figures, Horton & Wohl, 1956). Five studies were designed to assess the prevalence and strength of individuals' attachments to their favorite television characters, manipulate exposure to the character or control targets,...