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Because of the dearth of available partners, older women looking to date may have to relax their dating standards to find a dating partner, perhaps accepting a life situation that is not what they had hoped for. However older women may be reluctant to sacrifice an often recently-gained lifestyle free of caregiving obligations. Older men, on the other hand, have a large pool of potential dating partners and do not face the same dilemma. We compared Internet dating profiles for 100 older adults and 100 younger adults, and found that older adults (and especially older women) were more selective than younger adults when it came to the age, race, religion, income, and height of a prospective dating partner. However, older adults were willing to travel substantially farther than younger adults to meet the right partner. These findings paint a clear picture of older Internet daters as eager to meet the right person, but not desperate to meet just anyone.

The authors tested the hypothesis that beliefs in a just world are automatically activated and used in social perception. Under the guise of a perceptual vigilance task, the authors exposed 34 undergraduate women preconsciously to words that were either rape-related or neutral. Immediately after the exposure, participants read a date scenario that was ambiguous with respect to the man's aggressiveness and the extent to which the woman was responsible for the man's behavior. Afterwards, all participants evaluated the target man and woman on an impression task. The primary finding was that participants holding stronger beliefs in a just world perceived the target woman more negatively after experiencing the rape-related prime words than after experiencing the neutral words. This pattern is consistent with a research literature that shows that believers in a just world will often 'blame the victim' in cases of rape. The present findings are important because they provide evidence that general, orienting beliefs are automatically activated in a manner similar to that shown by stereotype beliefs. The authors discussed implications for social perception. Key words: automaticity, beliefs, just world, processing, THE JUST WORLD HYPOTHESIS (Lerner & Simmons, 1966) states that individuals believe that people have direct control over their fate and get what they deserve in life. This belief applies [...]

Focuses on a course in humanistic and transpersonal psychology for undergraduate students that addresses metaneeds, consciousness, altered states of consciousness, Eastern and Western meditative practices, mytho-poetic wisdom, and metaphoric epistemology. Describes the goals, content, and structure of the course and discusses the course evaluation. (CMK)

We examined depictions of alcohol use in 100 popular films spanning 5 decades. Drinkers were depicted as more attractive, more romantically/sexually active, more aggressive, and having a higher socioeconomic status than nondrinkers. No systematic changes were found across decades that might reflect the growing knowledge base regarding the adverse effects of alcohol use. We compared the depiction of alcohol use in movies to real-world demographics and found that alcohol use in movies is somewhat glamorized.

A study was conducted to examine how smokers were depicted in 100 popular films made in a five decade period. Data analysis revealed that smokers were shown to be more romantic and sexually active than nonsmokers and as marginally more intelligent than nonsmokers. However, smokers and nonsmokers did not differ in terms of attractiveness, goodness, friendliness, aggression, socioeconomic status or outcome at the end of the film. These findings indicate that smokers are depicted a little more positively than nonsmokers.

We blocked subjects on their tendency to link the attainment of lower order goals (e.g., being one's ideal weight) to the attainment of a higher-order goal (i.e., being happy). We then assessed the number of everyday hassles these subjects experienced, the amount of rumination they reported, their level of depression, and the extent to which they were bothered by a number of physical symptoms. These measures were taken at 2 time periods, 2 weeks apart. In the first session, subjects who tended dispositionally to link lower-order goals to higher order ones were more likely than were those who did not make this link to ruminate, experience depression, and complain of physical symptoms. At Session 2, linkers who had experienced a high number of hassles in Session 1 reported higher depression and more bother from physical symptoms than did any of the other groups. These results are consistent with the growing body of evidence indicating a relation between rumination and depression and suggest that one factor that determines rumination is the extent to which people link the attainment of lower-order goals to the attainment of higher-order goals.

A study predicted that during times of greater social and economic threat female film characters who joke about sex would be less physically attractive and male characters would be lower in socioeconomic status. The results support the hypothesis that during bad times people feel less optimistic, and therefore people's fantasy partners are less impressive.

The violent context of the top-grossing comedy films from 1951 to 2000 is examined where the message of comedic violence was not one of good triumphing over evil. It analyzes how victims and aggressors are depicted, and correlates the popularity of violent comedy to societal conditions to understand the function and impact of violent comedy.

Presents a forum to aid teachers in the selection of psychology reference textbooks in the United States. Examination for selecting cognitive psychology textbooks.

People who believe that their happiness is contingent on the attainment of important goals (i.e., linkers) have been found to be less happy than people who do not hold this belief (i.e., nonlinkers; McIntosh & Martin, 1992). We hypothesized that linkers' judgments of their long-term happiness would be influenced by thoughts of positive and negative life events to a greater extent than would the happiness judgments of nonlinkers. Linkers believe that objective life events are an important determinant of happiness, therefore they should consider salient life events when judging their happiness. Nonlinkers, who do not believe life events are an important determinant of happiness, should not weigh salient life events when constructing their happiness judgments. As predicted, linkers' happiness judgments were influenced by thinking about positive and negative life events, while nonlinkers' judgments were not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]