This study addressed 3 questions regarding empathic accuracy in a clinically relevant setting. First, does the empathic accuracy of a perceiver improve with increased exposure to a target individual? Second, can empathic accuracy be enhanced by providing the perceiver with feedback about the target's actual thoughts and feelings? Third, are there stable individual differences in empathic accuracy that generalize across different targets? The results indicated that although absolute performance levels varied from 1 target to another, empathic accuracy generally improved with increased exposure to the target. In addition, feedback concerning the target's actual thoughts and feelings accelerated the rate at which the perceivers' empathic accuracy improved. Finally, cross-target consistency in responding (a = .86) revealed stable individual differences in the perceivers' empathic ability. Implications of these findings for clinical training and practice are discussed. Can I see another's woe, And not be in sorrow too? Can I see another's grief, And not seek for kind relief?-William Blake Empathy has long been regarded as an important phenomenon by poets, playwrights, and philosophers. Like their counterparts in the literary world, psychologists from various research disciplines have focused attention on the role of empathy in mediating culturally valued social behaviors (e.g.

Illustrates how categorization spuriously influences apparent dimensionality inferred from (a) principal components (PC), (b) exploratory maximum likelihood (EML) analysis, and (c) I.ISREL. Simulated continuous, parallel, unifactor "scores," of differing reliability, were categorized in various ways to creat "items." All forms of categorization spuriously suggested multidimensionality. PCbased indices were more misleading with less reliable data; the reverse was true with inferential (EML and LISREL) indices. Varying item "splits" to create item distribution differences further enhanced these spurious effects. Likewise, multicategory (Likert-type) items were more likely to yield artifacts than dichotomous items using inferential criteria even though the multicategory data were more reliable. Criteria for dimensionality applicable to continuous (scale-level) data are therefore inappropriate for discrete (item-level) data.The authors are grateful to Calvin P. Carbin, James R. Erickson, and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.

The authors described a research paradigm for the study of naturalistic social cognition (i.e., the study of the thoughts and feelings of individuals engaged in spontaneous, unstructured dyadic interactions). This paradigm was created by incorporating the thought-listing technique developed by Brock (1967), Greenwald (1968), and Cacioppo and Petty (1981) into the unstructured dyadic interaction paradigm of Ickes (1982, 1983). Data from the first "expanded dyadic interaction paradigm" study provided evidence for the interrater reliability and the construct validity (i.e., face and content validity, concurrent validity, divergent and convergent validity) of the thought and feeling measures obtained by this procedure. The degree of subjects' behavioral involvement in their interactions was related to a number of thought-feeling indexes (e.g., total number of entries, percentage of positive partner entries), and its relations with the percentages of positive, neutral, and negative entries were further moderated by internal correspondence (Brickman, 1978) and private self-consciousness (Fenigstein, Scheier, & Buss, 1975). In addition, some interesting parallels in the behavioral and thought-feeling correlates of gender were noted. These findings suggest that the expanded dyadicinteraction paradigm will be particularly useful in exploring the relations between naturalistic social cognition and naturalistic social behavior. The authors would like to thank Tim Baltisberger; Guadalupe Barron, Scott Blackwood, Stanley Gaines, Diane Grim, and Chuck Overstreet for their assistance in coding the data. We would also like to thank Carol Marangoni for her comments during the planning stages of the research, Ira Bernstein, Calvin Garbin, and David Kenny for their advice regarding the data analyses, and Charles Carver for his endorsement of our hypotheses regarding the Self-Consciousness Scale factors.

Fenigstein, Scheier, and Buss (1975) developed a three subscale inventory designed to measure self-consciousness. Burnkrant and Page (1984) used confirmatory factor analysis to evaluate the scale and concluded that five items did not belong to their assigned scales and that one of the original subscales really measured two separable traits. Burnkrant and Page's conclusions may simply reflect incidental properties of the item statistics and could weaken the scale if adopted. Fenigstein et al.'s representation fits the data quite well in its original form. However, items on their social anxiety scale also tend to evoke relatively large variability over subjects and items on their public self-consciousness scale tend to evoke relatively little variability. In other words, items on their subscales differ nearly as much statistically as they do substantively.

Bernstein and Garbin (1985b) suggested that the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory's major clinical scales (excluding Scales ? and 5) can be approximated by an oblique three-component structure: (a) Profile Elevation, (b) Test-taking Attitudes, and (c) Optimism-Pessimism, collectively termed the salient weight model. In this study, we found that both this model and the MMPI's principal component structure remain invariant across race, sex, and, as previously noted, context of testing (job applicants vs. inmates in correctional institutions). We further noted that several alternative definitions of Profile Elevation provide equally satisfactory representation of the relations among the scales. This factor invariance is necessary, but not sufficient, for the MMPI to be viewed as unbiased.

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4,6-Dinitro-N,N'-di-n-octylbenzene-1,3-diamine, C(22)H(38)N(4)O(4), (I), 4,6-dinitro-N,N'-di-n-undecylbenzene-1,3-diamine, C(28)H(50)N(4)O(4), (II), and N,N'-bis(2,4-dinitrophenyl)octane-1,8-diamine, C(20)H(24)N(6)O(8), (III), are the first synthetic meta-dinitroarenes functionalized with long-chain aliphatic amine groups to be structurally characterized. The intra- and intermolecular interactions in these model compounds provide information that can be used to help understand the physical properties of corresponding polymers with similar functionalities. Compounds (I) and (II) possess near-mirror symmetry, with the octyl and undecyl chains adopting fully extended anti conformations in the same direction with respect to the ring. Compound (III) rests on a center of inversion that occupies the mid-point of the central C-C bond of the octyl chain. The middle six C atoms of the chain form an anti arrangement, while the remaining two C atoms take hard turns almost perpendicular to the rest of the chain. All three molecules display intramolecular N-H...O hydrogen bonds between the amine and nitro groups, with the same NH group forming a bifurcated intermolecular hydrogen bond to the nitro O atom of an adjacent molecule. In each case, these interactions link the molecules into one-dimensional molecular chains. In (I) and (II), these chains pack so that the pendant alkyl groups are interleaved parallel to one another, maximizing nonbonded C-H contacts. In (III), the alkyl groups are more isolated within the molecular chains and the primary nonbonded contacts between the chains appear to involve the nitro groups not involved in the hydrogen bonding.

Nabila (Nan) BouSaba is a faculty associate in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte. Nan Earned her BS in Electrical Engineering (1982), and a Master Degree in Electrical Engineering (1986) from North Carolina A&T State University. Prior to her current position at UNC-Charlotte, Nan worked for IBM (15 years) and Solectron (8 years) in the area of test development and management. She teaches the senior design course for the Electrical and computer sections and Basic Electrical Circuit course.