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Research has demonstrated that depressed people lack the optimistic bias evidenced by nondepressed persons and that the former may be more realistic in predicting the outcome of future events (depressive realism hypothesis). This study assesses the depressive realism hypothesis by comparing the accuracy of depressed and nondepressed people's self-predictions of a series of life events. One hundred college students (75 females) answered the Beck Depression Inventory and then made self-predictions about a series of future life events. Results indicate that depressed persons made significantly more pessimistic predictions than nondepressed subjects. Depressed persons were more accurate than nondepressed ones for pessimistic judgments while the latter were more accurate on optimistic judgments. No mediating factors such as event controllability and base rate were found for prediction accuracy. One possible explanation for the finding that depressives are more accurate than nondepressed subject in predicting undesirable events is that nondepressed persons may be more apt to avoid undesirable outcomes whereas depressed individuals may not elude these. Included are two tables which summarize the data and a copy of the Life Events Questionnaire. (RJM)

A study examined whether a person's ability to accurately identify a voice is influenced by factors similar to those proposed by the Supreme Court for eyewitness identification accuracy. In particular, the Supreme Court has suggested that a person's prior description accuracy of a suspect, degree of attention to a suspect, and confidence in identifying a suspect, are reliable predictors for accurately identifying a suspect. Subjects, 18 males and 42 females from an undergraduate psychology course or volunteers from the local community, listed to a voice and later described the voice on a speech characteristic checklist. Later they were asked to identify the voice from a lineup and denote how certain they were of their choice. Results indicated no relationship between voice description accuracy and identification accuracy, or between degree of confidence and identification accuracy. Moreover, depth of processing had no effect on description accuracy, identification accuracy, or the relationship between the two. Future "earwitness" research should: employ a voice lineup in which the target voice is either present or absent; use longer retention delay between target presentation and voice identification; and develop a valid descriptive measure. (Contains 21 references, 2 tables, and 1 figure of data. The voice description checklist is attached.) (RS)