
Brett SilversteinCity College of New York | CCNY · Department of Psychology
Brett Silverstein
Ph. D.
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55
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Introduction
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September 1985 - present
Publications
Publications (55)
The higher prevalence of depression among women compared to men, beginning at adolescence, has been widely reported. Several studies reviewed here suggest that much of this difference results because women exhibit a much higher prevalence than men beginning in adolescence of a disorder involving depression combined with many somatic symptoms. Also...
In The Cost of Competence Brett Silverstein and Deborah Perlick argue that rather than simply labelling individual women as, say, anorexic or depressed, it is time to look harder at the widespread prejudices within our society and child-rearing practices that lead thousands of young women to equate thinness with competence and success, and feminini...
Much has been written about the possibility that multiple distinct phenotypes are currently classified as the single disorder major depression and about the gender difference in depressive prevalence. Here, research on the evolution of depression, on historical changes influencing women, and on the epidemiology of depression is reviewed. Much evide...
Background:
Given that several studies have found the gender difference in depression to be rooted in psychosocial forces and others have shown the difference to be due to a gender difference in somatic depression, we compared the gender difference in somatic depression among respondents who reported no relative depressed with that of all other de...
Objective
. Arguing that additional symptoms should be added to the criteria for atypical depression.
Method
. Published research articles on atypical depression are reviewed.
Results
. (1) The original studies upon which the criteria for atypical depression were based cited fatigue, insomnia, pain, and loss of weight as characteristic symptoms. (2...
Depression accompanied by somatic symptoms ("somatic" depression) has been found to differ from depression without the additional symptoms ("pure" depression) in their gender ratio, their association with measures of perceived gender inequality taken from both respondents and their parents, and in their response to pharmacological treatment. Furthe...
Several lines of research suggest that the gender difference in depressive prevalence is due to the higher prevalence among women of a distinct depressive phenotype comprised of depression, disordered eating, body dissatisfaction, headaches, sleep problems, and fatigue that develops at adolescence. Furthermore, research shows that this phenotype is...
A review of studies suggests hypotheses regarding body image issues among women that have not received enough attention from researchers. They are based in two theoretical assumptions: 1. In cultures undergoing rapid change in gender roles, many young women may aspire to achieve in areas historically reserved for males but often continue to confron...
PURPOSE:
A variety of studies suggest the existence of a distinct phenotype of somatic depression, i.e., depression accompanied by significant somatic symptomatology. Previous research suggests that the gender difference in the prevalence of depression is primarily due to a difference in somatic depression. The aim of this study was to compare the...
Studies suggest that the gender difference in the prevalence of depression results because women exhibit higher prevalence than men of a depressive phenotype associated with somatic symptoms. Because this phenotype has been found to be based in psychosocial forces, it may not respond well to antidepressant medication. In this study, data from the S...
This paper comments on the approach and findings of the preceding papers on the psychology of enemy images, and presents numerous suggestions about needed and feasible research. The research cited mostly used the approaches of attitude measurement and of social-cognitive theories, including attribution and social identity theories, and it employed...
Analyses of a systematic household sample of 750 respondents aged 11-22, 19 with atypical depression, find atypical depression associated with fear of fat, insomnia, headache, and fatigue. Other research suggests adding these symptoms to criteria for atypical depression, rendering them quite similar to criteria used in studies of somatic depression...
The relationship between depression and somatic symptoms such as headache has never been explained. Both depression and headache appear to become more prevalent among women than among men only for cohorts that reach adolescence during periods of great change in opportunities for a female's academic achievement. In Studies 1a and 1b, the same patter...
This study related female college students' (n= 377) reports of symptomatology to their reports of parental attitudes suggesting limitations inherent in being female. Young women completed a scale measuring their perceptions that their fathers would have been prouder of them if they were male, and a scale measuring their distress over the limitatio...
Atypical depression (AD) exhibits distinct patterns of gender,bipolar-II disorder, genetic, and neuro-biological measures. Using prospective data from a community sample, this paper identifies criteria (and correlates) for an AD syndrome that maximizes the association with female sex and bipolar-II.
The Zurich cohort study is composed of 591 subjec...
Using data from the Epidemiologic Catchment Area (ECA) study, the author attempted to replicate the finding of the National Comorbidity Survey that the prevalence of depression associated with somatic symptoms was much higher among women than men.
The author reanalyzed data from the ECA study. He divided respondents into those who met criteria for...
This study tested the hypothesis that female subjects may exhibit a higher prevalence than male subjects of depression associated with somatic symptoms but not a higher prevalence of depression not associated with these other symptoms.
The author reanalyzed research interview data on major depression from the National Comorbidity Survey, dividing r...
A reanalysis of a large multi-generational,predominantly Caucasian sample of adults found a largegender difference in self-reported depression involvinganxiety, appetite and sleep disturbance, and fatigue (“anxious somatic depression”) butnot in “pure depression” unaccompanied bymany of these other symptoms, replicating earlierfindings on high scho...
In several previous studies, females who reported that they felt limited by responses to their gender, or viewed their mothers as having been limited in this way, exhibited higher prevalence compared to other females or to males of depression accompanied by anxiety, somatic symptoms such as headaches, disordered eating, and poor body image/preferen...
In the studies reported here, females were more likely than males to report high levels of depression accompanied by anxiety and somatic symptomatology such as disordered eating and headache, but not more likely to report depression unaccompanied by these symptoms. This gender difference in depression prevalence and the symptomatology associated wi...
Comments that the power and the danger of E. E. Sampson's (see record
1994-17460-001) argument on identity politics are suggested by research on the psychology of women and the work done by R. K. White (1966) and by R. R. Holt and B. Silverstein (see record
1990-01052-001) on enemy images. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserv...
Comments that the power and the danger of E. E. Sampson's (see record 1994-17460-001) argument on identity politics are suggested by research on the psychology of women and the work done by R. K. White (1966) and by R. R. Holt and B. Silverstein (see record 1990-01052-001) on enemy images.
Recent research suggests that many females who mature during periods of great change in women's roles develop, beginning at adolescence, depressive symptomatology combined with such somatic problems as headache, dyspnea, insomnia, disordered eating, and preference for thinness. In this study of possible psychological mechanisms underlying the appar...
Depression has been widely reported to be more prevalent among females than among males. In this study we demonstrate that gender differences in depression occur only among individuals born during particular historical periods, and test the utility of a model focusing on changes in women's opportunities for academic and professional achievement in...
Many studies point directly to the role played by sex roles and indirectly to the role played by gender identity in the onset of disordered eating. In this study, women who report adhering to nontraditional sex role aspirations are almost twice as likely as other women to report purging or frequent bingeing. Women who exhibit gender identity confli...
Several studies have demonstrated that once people perceive an individual or group as hostile or threatening, i.e., as an “enemy,” biases enter their processing of information in regard to the actions of that individual or group. These biases may affect any phase of social information processing, including attention, encoding, memory, assessment of...
The images that the United States and the Soviet Union hold of one another may play a large role in perpetuating the nuclear arms race. Although many psychologists are unaware of it, much research has been done on the psychology of U.S. images of the Soviet Union. This work has been done from a variety of psychological perspectives, including psych...
The images that the United States and the Soviet Union hold of one another may play a large role in perpetuating the nuclear arms race. Although many psychologists are unaware of it, much research has been done on the psychology of U.S. images of the Soviet Union. This work has been done from a variety of psychological perspectives, including psych...
Discusses enemy images, which have played an important role in stimulating and perpetuating the nuclear arms race, focusing on aspects of the psychology of US images of the USSR. Psychologists can apply methods and theories to investigating, and perhaps ameliorating, the causes and effects of the exaggerated enemy images of another nation that the...
For over 40yr the Soviet Union has been portrayed as the main US enemy, and Americans have held quite negative images of Russians. These images are constantly reinforced by items in the US news media and politics. Yet images of the Soviets, too, may be subject to change with events, as seems to be happening with the favorable publicity accorded to...
A questionnaire measuring respondents' beliefs about the attitudes regarding female achievement held by their parents was distributed to 326 women attending a state university. Women who report frequent bingeing are more likely than other women to report that (1) their parents believed a woman's place is in the home (2) their mothers were unhappy w...
Eating problems and body dissatisfaction among women have been associated in the literature with both slim standards of female bodily attractiveness and concerns about success and failure. This study demonstrates that among college women the desire for slim, noncurvaceous bodies associated with dieting and binging is correlated with an emphasis on...
Propaganda, which entails much more than communications delivered with the conscious intent of manipulation, has become an important and pervasive factor in modern sociopolitical systems. In the 1930s, psychologists, sociologists, and educators were active in the field of propaganda analysis. At the present time, much propaganda research is being d...
Based upon studies that have demonstrated that curvaceous women are rated as less competent and less intelligent than noncurvaceous women, it was hypothesized that during periods when the intelligence and professional competence of women are stressed, the standard of bodily attractiveness for women becomes noncurvaceous, and that women who are conc...
Historical analyses were used to test the hypothesis that the recent outbreak of eating disorders among women may be due, in part, to the slim standard of bodily attractiveness for women that has become fashionable. Historical changes in the standard were estimated by means of a measurement of the curvaceousnes of women depicted in photographs appe...
Historical analyses were used to test the hypothesis that the recent outbreak of eating disorders among women may be due, in part, to the slim standard of bodily attractiveness for women that has become fashionable. Historical changes in the standard were estimated by means of a measurement of the curvaceousnes of women depicted in photographs appe...
Eating disorders appear to be more common among women than among men and more common now than they were in the past. Recent speculation has focused upon the role played by an unrealistically thin standard of bodily attractiveness for women in the promotion of these disorders. To demonstrate that this standard does play such a role, and to implicate...
In an attempt to explain the self-report of smokers that cigarette smoking is relaxing, shock endurance was used to measure the amount of anxiety experienced in a stressful situation by nonsmokers, smokers who were allowed to smoke cigarettes containing either low levels or moderately high levels of nicotine, and smokers who were not allowed to smo...
In two experiments, nonsmoking females whose urine was acidified were more willing after smoking one cigarette to volunteer to smoke additional cigarettes than were females whose urine was made alkaline. Males did not exhibit this effect. The results indicate that physiological factors that influence nicotine intake during the early smoking experie...
The incidence of cigarette smoking among teenage females has greatly increased during the past decade. We suggest that this increase has been encouraged by the increasing availability of low-nicotine cigarettes. Recent research has shown that physiological response to nicotine level is an important factor in whether and when people choose to smoke...
Provides a summary and introduction to five articles examining the interaction of psychological and pharmacological determinants of smoking, as presented in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General Those articles are as follows: "Nicotine Regulation in Heavy and Light Smokers", by Schachter ; "Effects of Urinary pH on Cigarette Smoking", by...
Based on a variety of pharmacological facts about the metabolism and excretion rate of nicotine, the hypothesis that increased smoking under stress is due to the effects of stress on nicotine level was tested. Two experiments were conducted that independently manipulated stress and urinary pH. Ss selected from respondents to newspaper advertisement...
Conducted 2 studies with a total of 38 college Ss to investigate the effects of party-going on cigarette smoking and on urinary pH. In Study I, day-to-day measures were taken of social activity, the number of cigarettes smoked, and the pH of the urine at the end of each day. In study II, Ss attending a colloquium followed by a party were persuaded...
Pharmacological evidence indicates that the rate of excretion of unmetabolized nicotine depends in part on the pH of the urine. The more acid the urine, the greater the excretion of nicotine. To test the relationship of urinary pH to actual smoking behavior, 2 studies were conducted--the 1st with 7 long-time heavy smokers (mean age 35.9 yrs) and th...
Three studies examined the effects of stress on cigarette smoking and on urinary pH. Study I employed 45 students who underwent manipulated stress; Study II utilized 10 Ss who included graduate students undergoing oral and written PhD examinations and assistant and senior professors delivering colloquium lectures; Study III used 10 students attendi...