Psychoanalytic theory, clinical practice, and intuition all suggest that human beings can be profoundly ambivalent about significant others. However, experimental psychology has commonly assessed automatic evaluations as either positive or negative, but not both simultaneously. Experiment 1 showed that activating the mental representation of a significant other facilitated the processing of bot...

Little attention has been given to the preparation of the patient's family prior to surgery, even though nurses' clinical experience suggests that family members are often more anxious than the patient. This study explored the knowledge and anxiety of spouses and significant others of patients preparing for cardiac surgery. The subjects were selected by convenience from a preoperative class off...