Fluctuations in body satisfaction across situations.

Although the variable nature of body image was underscored by Schilder (The image and appearance of the human body. New York: International Universities Press, 1950), few investigators have addressed the stability of body image or its sensitivity to variation in environmental or situational conditions. Most researchers have assumed that body image is a stable characteristic. The present study was designed to investigate the situational specificity of body satisfaction, one facet of body image. One hundred forty-four undergraduate women indicated their degree of body satisfaction in general and in the following four situations: (a) walking by a group of attractive men and women at the beach in a bathing suit, (b) having a conversation with a close female friend over lunch, (c) getting dressed to go to school in privacy, and (d) trying on bathing suits in the dressing room of a department store. Body satisfaction varied significantly across the four situations for all body parts except the face, hair, and hands. Additionally, body satisfaction scores were found to reflect how subjects felt about their bodies when they were being especially self-critical, rather than how they felt in "everyday" situations.

Demography of handedness in two samples of randomly selected adults (N = 2083).

Handedness was examined in relation to sex, race, age, education, occupation, marital status, and religious preferences for two random samples of adults drawn from an urban population. There were statistically significant differences on each variable for the total of 2083 respondents as well as for many subgroups based on combinations of sex, race, and age. The results are compared to previous findings.

Some comments on Shettel-Neuber and O'Reilly's "handedness and career choice: another look at supposed left/right differences" (1983).

A property of attitudes, namely, the fact that attitudes select facts, is used to comment upon a paper on handedness and career choice.

Figure reversals and creativity: a research note.

In a series of studies, Bergum and Bergum (1979a, 1979b) noted a positive relationship between college students' self-perceptions of creativity and their passive rates of ambiguous figure reversal. While these authors suggest that a relationship may also exist between figure-reversal rate and creativity, as assessed by external measures, their research does not support this claim. Indeed, other research has not substantiated a relationship between rate of figure reversal and objective tests of creativity (Bloomberg, 1971; Bergum & Flamm, 1975). It may also be the case that students' perceptions of their own creative ability differ markedly from externally-derived measures of such ability. As part of a larger study relating figure-reversal rate, creativity, and handedness, the present authors attempted to replicate and extend the work of Bergum and Bergum through the use of professors' judgments of students' creativity. The subjects were 48 senior students of architecture (40 males, 8 females). Each student initially read a description of six factors commonly associated with creativity in the psychological literature and then rated himself in creative ability in comparison to his classmates. In accordance with Bergum and Bergum (1979a, 1979b), the students passively viewed (and recorded) figure reversals of six ambiguous figures. The six figures were presented for 60 sec. each, with 10-sec. intervals, in two random orders. Students' creative ability was also determined from rankings by two architecture professors who were familiar with the students' work. To guide their rankings, the professors used the same description of creativity as was given to the students.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Left-handedness among architects: partial replication and some new data.

As predicted, over a 6-yr. period, more left-handed proportionately than right-handed architecture students successfully completed their 6-yr. program. Contrary to expectation, the entering class in 1976 had 21% left-handed males, 12 of 57. Lastly these left-handed men had high factor scores in a group of academic predictors, design scores, and grade point averages during the first quarter. The 45 right-handed men in the entering class had almost zero mean scores on the predictors and negative mean scores on performance. The 19 right-handed women in the class had negative scores on the academic predictors and positive ones on performance.