The present study explores the biasing effects of gangsta' rap lyrics on subject perceptions of a murder trial defendant's personality. The lyrics were those actually authored by a defendant in a murder trial on which the present author was a psychological consultant for the defense. Results strongly indicate that the defendant was seen as more likely to have committed a murder than had he not been presented as authoring such lyrics. Surprisingly, results also show that the writing of such rap lyrics was more damning in terms of adjudged personality characteristics than was the fact of being charged with murder.

Twenty-four neurotic depressive females and 24 female anxiety neurotics were compared on a 90-item questionnaire that concerned recall of parental behavior. Relative to anxiety neurotics, the neurotic depressives recalled fathers as unloving disciplinarians and recalled mothers as difficult to please, intrusive and controlling, and possibly more concerned with their own than with their children's needs. Previous findings that parents of depressives are recalled as depriving were supported, and a methodology for differentiating neurotic depressives from anxiety neurotics was described.

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Using 60 male psychiatric patients, the interaction between three levels of anxiety and note-taking as a reinforcer was explored within a verbal conditioning paradigm. Results showed a curvilinear relationship between anxiety and reinforcement with high-average anxiety subjects conditioning better than either high or low-average subjects This supported the authors' prediction and showed note-taking to be an effective reinforcer of verbal behavior in an interview situation. Unexpectedly, subjects of low-average anxiety who conditioned less well than those of high-average anxiety showed a larger drop in emission rate during extinction, dropping to a level significantly below initial baserate.

had it all: looks, brains, talent and a loving family. Her poetry could turn simple observations into compelling imagery, shaping one's senses to her own vivid perceptions of a second reality. Everyone knew that someday the young woman with the dark vision of a Sylvia Plath would achieve something special in life. Her future, woven through the imperative nature of the words she wrote, seemed assured. But there was something troubling about her too, a silence that cloaked her youth, a loneliness only fleetingly detected.