Interpersonal touch has been little studied empirically as an indicator of parent-and peer-child intimacy. Undergraduate students (n = 390) were studied using a questionnaire survey regarding the frequencies of interpersonal touch by father, mother, same-sex peers, and opposite-sex peers during preschool ages, grades 1-3, grades 4-6, and grades 7-9, as well as their current attachment style to a romantic partner and current depression. A path model indicated that current depression was influenced significantly by poorer self-and otherimages as well as by fewer parental interpersonal touches throughout childhood. Other-image was influenced by early (up to grade 3) parental interpersonal touch. Our findings suggest that a lower frequency of parental touching during childhood influences the development of depression and contributes to a poorer image of an individual's romantic partner during later adolescence and early adulthood.

Some people in Japan are still comfortable with the paternalistic role of doctors, but others wish that their own decisions would receive a greater amount of respect. A total of 747 students of universities and colleges and 114 parents of these students participated in a questionnaire survey. Most of the participants thought that autonomy should be respected in situations involving death with dignity and euthanasia, whereas it should not be respected in attempted suicide and involuntary admission of individuals with mental illness. A cluster analysis revealed that the participants could be divided into the following groups: aid in dying advocates (n=577), complete libertarians (n=109), protectors of the mentally ill (n=90), complete paternalists (n=29), and questionables (n=27). The assertion of independence score of the Scale for Independent and Interdependent Construal of the Self showed a significant difference among the 5 clusters. These findings suggest that the traditional paternalistic relationship between doctor and patient is undergoing a gradual transformation in Japan.

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Cloninger (1987) has hypothesized a tridimensional personality theory for two types of alcoholism, type 1 and type 2, that exhibit opposing clinical characteristics and personality traits. The Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire (TPQ) is designed to test this hypothesis on three independent dimensions--novelty seeking (NS), harm avoidance (HA), and reward dependence (RD)--to evaluate the personality trait. We examined the tridimensional personality hypothesis by comparing TPQ scores between two empirically derived multivariate types of alcoholism. The present study included 191 male subjects with alcoholism. A cluster analysis was conducted using clinical characteristics, and two empirical types, type A and type B, were identified. Type A is similar to Cloninger's type 1 and type B is similar to type 2. The TPQ scores given to these two empirical types were compared. Scores on the NS and RD scales were in good agreement with the hypothesis, whereas the HA score was discordant with the hypothesis. HA is highly correlated with the depression scale score that is elevated in type B. We discussed the possibility that type B, which may be called a familial early-onset alcoholism, is related to character spectrum disorder.