Failure to achieve a lean and muscular build, a prominent characteristic of masculinity for many men, may lead to body dissatisfaction. In four studies the authors used silhouette measures to assess men's satisfaction with their muscularity and body fat. Across studies, many U.S. men (51-71%) were not satisfied with their body fat level. Further, over 90% of U.S. undergraduate men wanted to be more muscular, as did many Ukrainian (69%) and Ghanaian (49%) men. In the United States, men's ratings of their current and ideal muscularity were associated with endorsement of the male role, and many men desired increased muscularity for reasons related to increased dominance and attractiveness to women. These results suggest widespread desire for increased muscularity among men.

No abstract

Psychological depression appears to be an important predictor of rehospitalization among persons who have been admitted with coronary artery disease.

In a series of four experiments with free-flying honeybees, individual foragers were trained with targets of two different colors that contained 5 or 20 ILl of 50% sucrose solution. The two targets were singly presented in quasi-random sequences on each visit, with the amount of reward to be found on each target perfectly predictable from its color. The number of training visits (4-32) was varied both within and between experiments, and so also was the relative frequency of trials with the 5-and 20-ILI targets (1:1,2:1, 3:1, and 9:1). At the conclusion of training under each condition, unrewarded responses to the targets were measured in a 10-min extinction test, with the targets presented either separately to two different groups of animals (Experiment 1) or as a pair (Experiments 2-4). When the number of training trials with each target was the same (Experiments 1 and 2), the animals responded more in extinction to the 20-ILI target than to the 5-ILI target, although there was a decline in the overall level of responding to both targets (an overlearning-extinction effect) as the number of training trials increased. After nine times as many, or only three times as many, training trials with the 5'ILI target as with the 20-ILI target, the animals responded more in extinction to the 5-ILI target (Experiment 3); after twice as many training trials with the 5-ILI target as with the 20-ILI target, there was equal responding to both (Experiment 4). The preferences shown in the choice tests of Experiments 2-4 could be simulated rather accurately on the assumptions of a model previously developed to deal with the discrete-trials choice behavior of honeybees and the further assumption that associative strength grows at a rate increasing with amount of reward to an asymptote independent ofamount of reward.In a continuing series of experiments on learning in honeybees as compared with learning in vertebrates (Bitterman, 1988), we tum now to the role of amount of reward, a powerful determinant of performance in appetitive conditioning experiments with vertebrates (Mackintosh, 1974). About quality of reward (concentration of sucrose solution in unlimited amount), we already have some interesting information from work with free-flying honeybees (Couvillon & Bitterman, 1984; Shinoda & Bitterman, 1987): (1) After training with 50% sucrose on one target and 20% sucrose on another, the 50% target is preferred in a choice test; (2) resistance to extinction increases at first and then decreases as a function of the number of training visits to 50% sucrose (the overleaming-extinction effect), but there is no hint of nonmonotonicity when the training concentation is 20%; and (3) 20% sucrose is accepted less readily on a target that has always before contained 50% sucrose than on a target that has always before contained 20% sucrose (successive negative incentive contrast). These results are perfectly familiar, of course, from the study of vertebrate learning, although the underlying mechanisms may well be different. Successive negat...