is argued that researchers' reliance on "objective" mental health scales and disregard for clinical judgment has led to many mistaken conclusions. Specifically, standard mental health scales appear unable to distinguish between genuine mental health and the facade or illusion of mental health created by psychological defenses. Evidence is presented indicating that (a) many people who look healthy on standard mental health scales are not psychologically healthy, and (b) illusory mental health (based on defensive denial of distress) has physiological costs and may be a risk factor for medical illness. Clinical judges could distinguish genuine from illusory mental health, whereas "objective" mental health scales could not. The findings call into question the conclusions of many previous studies that rest on standard mental health scales. They suggest new ways of understanding how psychological factors may influence health. Finally they suggest that clinical methods (which researchers often malign) may have an important role to play in meaningful mental health research.

Four studies tested a model of stereotype-based shifts in judgment standards developed by M. Biernat, M. Manis, and T. E. Nelson (1991). The model suggests that subjective judgments of target persons from different social groups may fail to reveal the stereotyped expectations of judges, because they invite the use of different evaluative standards; more "objective" or common rule indicators reduce such standard shifts. The stereotypes that men are more competent than women, women are more verbally able than men, Whites are more verbally able than Blacks, and Blacks are more athletic than Whites were successfully used to demonstrate the shifting standards phenomenon. Several individual-difference measures were also effective in predicting differential susceptibility to standard shifts, and direct evidence was provided that differing comparison standards account for substantial differences in target ratings.

People routinely adjust their subjective judgment standards as they evaluate members of stereotyped social groups. Such shifts are less likely to occur, however, when judgments are made on stable, "objective" response scales. In 3 studies, subjects judged a series of targets with respect to a number of gender-relevant attributes (e.g. t height, weight, and income), using either subjective (Likert-type) or objective response scales (e.g., inches, pounds, and dollars). Objective judgments were consistently influenced by sex stereotypes; subjective judgments were not. Results were also consistent with the expectation that when a judgment attribute is unrelated to gender, male and female targets evoke the same judgment standards. A schematic model of how stereotyped mental representations are expressed on subjectively defined rating scales is presented, and implications for the study of person perception are discussed. This research was supported by a grant from the Veterans Administration.We gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments of Chris Crandall, Barry Schlenker, Roger Blashfield, and several anonymous reviewers on an earlier draft.

Social interaction is a central feature of people's life and engages a variety of cognitive resources. Thus, social interaction should facilitate general cognitive functioning. Previous studies suggest such a link, but they used special populations (e.g., elderly with cognitive impairment), measured social interaction indirectly (e.g., via marital status), and only assessed effects of extended interaction in correlational designs. Here the relation between mental functioning and direct indicators of social interaction was examined in a younger and healthier population. Study 1 using survey methodology found a positive relationship between social interaction, assessed via amount of actual social contact, and cognitive functioning in people from three age groups including younger adults. Study 2 using an experimental design found that a small amount of social interaction (10 min) can facilitate cognitive performance. The findings are discussed in the context of the benefits social relationships have for so many aspects of people's lives.

In two studies we investigated the impact of vividly presented information on judgment. In one study, concrete and colorful language was found to influence judgments about a woman's fitness as a mother. In another study, the presence (vs. absence) of photographs affected judgments about the proportion of male and female students at different universities. Such effects have typically been attributed to the ready accessibility of vividly presented information in memory-that is, to the availability heuristic. In these two studies, vividness is found to affect both availability and judgment. However, causal modeling results indicate that the availability heuristic did not play a role in the judgment process. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.All statements are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of the Veterans Administration. We thank 1. E. Keith Smith for his generous help with statistical issues, and Richard Nisbett for his comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.