A standardized, scmiaulomated, behavior rehearsal treatment procedure was developed, and two variations of this procedure, one with performance feedback and one without, were compared with two control procedures, a placebo therapy, and a no-treatment condition, in training 42 5s to be more assertive. Behavorial, selfreport, and psychophysiological laboratory measures, as well as an unobtrusive in vivo assertive test, revealed that the two behavior rehearsal procedures resulted in significantly greater improvements in assertive performance than did the control conditions. There was a nonsignificant tendency for behavior rehearsal coupled with performance feedback to show the strongest treatment effects.

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Male college students who reported anxiety in social situations involving females were seen in 1 of 3 therapy conditions. The experimental therapy (SR) involved increasing Ss' rate and accuracy of positive self-reinforcement using a hierarchy of situations which 5s sought out between sessions. One control treatment (NS) used nondirective techniques. The 2nd control (NT) involved instructions to Ss to work on their own and report weekly. Pretesting and posttesting difference scores yielded greatest improvement for the SR group on (a) self-reports of anxiety and overt behavior; (6) verbal output in a test simulating social interaction; and (c) generalization to scores on the Manifest Anxiety Scale and Adjective Check List.

Social and personality correlates of crying relevant to clinical application were examined in the laboratory. The effects of gender and of gender-pairing on emo tional expression of film-induced sadness were evaluated. College students served in pairs as experimental subjects. Results indicated that men retrospectively report ed less crying than women, and that both male and female subjects reported more appropriate sex-stereotypic behavior (i.e., males cried less, females cried more) when in opposite-sex pairings. Correlational analyses indicated that females, un like males, showed clear concordances between sadness and crying. Males, unlike females, evidenced negative correlations between reported anger and crying. Per sonality variables (including empathy, extraversion, femininity, ego strength, and prior levels of stress) were found to be associated with crying and sadness, al though markedly different correlation patterns were seen for men and women. The findings collectively suggest that crying is associated with a complex interaction among gender, personality, and context variables.Because crying has become increasingly recognized as serving an adaptive function of stress relief, research on the factors related to the disinhibition of crying should provide valuable information for clinical application of cathartic techniques, particularly for individuals prone to suppression of such affect.

The Expressed Emotion Index (EE) has been used with a high degree of success in predicting relapse of psychiatric patients in Great Britain. The present study examined the usefulness of EE as a predictor of weight loss maintenance in women in the United States. In a sample of 28, with a relapse rate of 50 per cent, EE correctly predicted maintenance for 78.5 per cent of the cases. A more economical, paper-and-pencil test of marital relationship (Relationship Style Inventory) correlated significantly with EE (r = 0.64) but did not successfully predict weight maintenance (r = 0.29).