On the basis of the positions of behaviors relative to one another in the interpersonal circle, the principles of complementarity and anticomplementarity specify how people's behaviors influence one another in interpersonal interactions. Pairs of undergraduate women (1 subject, N = 80, and 1 confederate) collaborated for 16 min to create and agree on stories for two pictures. Confederates performed scripted roles that emphasized one of eight interpersonal behaviors. Behaviors were coded into eight categories, and the relative effect of each confederate behavior on each subject behavior was determined. Using the geometric properties of the interpersonal circle, vectors were calculated that identified the relative impact of each confederate stimulus behavior on the overall pattern of subject responses. Results were consistent with the dynamic relations among interpersonal behaviors that complementarity and anticomplementarity propose and demonstrated that how a person behaves toward another systematically and profoundly affects how the other behaves toward the person.

Women are diagnosed with depressive disorders twice as frequently as men, and yet evidence from differential rates of substance abuse, incarceration, and especially suicide calls into question the assumption that men are less susceptible than women to depression. It is possible that there is a ''masculine'' form of depression that is under-diagnosed and under-treated. Health professionals should work toward a greater understanding of cultural masculinity in the service of conceptualizing, diagnosing and treating male clients/patients who may be suffering from a disguised form of this common mental illness. Therapists who treat conventionally gendered male clients/patients should educate these men about masculinity as an important context of their problem, and should attend closely to issues of emotional expression, premature termination of therapy, and grief.

College males' overestimation of peers' sexism may result in reluctance to challenge these toxic attitudes. Researchers investigated the power of a brief intervention to correct these cognitive distortions in Southeastern U.S. undergraduate samples of unacquainted (N=65; 86.2% Caucasian) and acquainted males (N=63; 82% Caucasian). Participants first reported selfperceptions of attitudes toward women and then estimated the attitudes of other men present. Intervention participants attended brief presentations that included feedback on discrepancies between actual and perceived norms within their groups. At 3 week follow up, there was a significant decrease in perceptions of peers' sexism for intervention groups, indicating that a brief intervention may be useful in sexism reduction.

No abstract