Two studies examined whether the type of emotional change experienced by individuals is influenced by the magnitude and accessibility of the different types of self-discrepancies they possess. In both studies, subjects filled out a measure of self-discrepancy a few weeks prior to the experimental session. Subjects were asked to list up to 10 attributes each for different self-states--their actual self, their ideal self (their own or others' hopes and goals for them), and their ought self (their own or others' beliefs about their duty and obligations). Magnitude of self-discrepancy was calculated by comparing the attributes in the actual self to the attributes in either the ideal self or the ought self, with the total number of attribute pairs that matched being subtracted from the total number of attribute pairs that mismatched. In Study 1, subjects were asked to imagine either a positive event or a negative event and were then given a mood measure and a writing-speed task. Subjects with a predominant actual:ideal discrepancy felt more dejected (e.g., sad) and wrote more slowly in the negative event condition than in the positive event condition, whereas subjects with a predominant actual:ought discrepancy, if anything, felt more agitated (e.g., afraid) and wrote more quickly in the negative event condition. In Study 2, subjects were selected who were either high in both kinds of discrepancies or low in both. Half of the subjects in each group were asked to discuss their own and their parents' hopes and goals for them (ideal priming), and the other half were asked to discuss their own and their parents' beliefs concerning their duty and obligations (ought priming). For high-discrepancy subjects, but not low-discrepancy subjects, ideal priming increased their dejection whereas ought priming increased their agitation. The implications of these findings for identifying cognitive-motivational factors that may serve as vulnerability markers for emotional problems is discussed.

Both temporary and long-term sources of construct accessibility have been found to play an important role in person perception and memory. Yet the two effects heretofore have been studied in isolation from each other. We examined the joint influence of long-and short-term sources of accessibility on impression formation. Subjects with or without a long-term, chronically accessible construct for either kindness or shyness were exposed subliminally to either 0 or 80 trait-related words in a first task. Next, subjects read a behavioral description that was ambiguously relevant to the primed trait dimension, and they then rated the target on several trait scales. For both the kind and the shy trait conditions, both chronic accessibility and subliminal priming reliably and independently increased the extremity of the impression ratings. The results supported a model in which long-and short-term sources of accessibility combine additively to increase the likelihood of the construct's use. Moreover; the subliminal priming effect appeared to be a quite general and pervasive phenomenon, insofar as it occurred for both an evaluatively positive and an evaluatively neutral trait dimension and for subjects without as well as with a chronically accessible construct for the primes. Implications of these findings for the nature of construct accessibility and the generality of automatic influences on social perception are discussed.A mainstream of social cognition research has focused on the nature of the mechanism by which people interpret social stimuli. In their seminal works, Kelly (1955) andBruner (1957) argued that people develop mental constructs, or categories, out of the necessity to cope effectively and adaptively with an overabundance of complex information. An important difference between Kelly's and Bruner's conceptualizations of social categories is the duration of category influences with which they mainly were concerned. Bruner (1957) focused on temporary differences in the likelihood that a specific category would be used: what he termed its accessibility. Categories that were used recently, or that were relevant to current goals or needs, were said to be more likely than others to "capture" an input as an instance of the construct. Given the ambiguity and multiple implications of most social information, Bruner argued, an accessible category may well be used to interpret behaviors or events that are actually more relevant for other, but less accessible, categories (see also Bruner, 1951;Postman, 1951).

The present study presents a new, unit-weight scoring system for the Depressive Experiences Questionnaire (DEQ). One hundred thirty-one college students completed the DEQ, the Bem Sex-Role Inventory (BSRI), and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). The revised DEQ scales were shown to have substantial levels of internal consistency. The three subscales of the revised DEQ were significantly correlated with the BSRI masculinity and femininity scales but not with gender. Significant correlations were also obtained between DEQ anaclitic, DEQ introjective scales and the BDI.

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The study was designed to examine the possibility that vocal frequency and vocal intensity influence the perception of speech rate. One 30-second segment of spontaneous speech was used to produce nine stimulus segments that factorially varied three levels of vocal frequency and three levels of vocal intensity but were identical in speech rate. The segments were recorded backwards in pairs such that the first member of each pair was the original segment and the second was the altered segment. Eighty-eight judges were then asked to compare the speech rate of the second member of each pair with that of the first in terms of a seven-point scale that varied from "much slower" to "much faster." The results indicate that vocal frequency and intensity both separately and jointly influenced the perception of speech rate.