Sex differences in the generalization of attraction

The effects of intergroup evaluations on intragroup attraction were assessed in a situation involving two-person teams that were all of the same sex. Male (N=123) and female (N=118) group members separately reported their political views to another dyad and then received either unfavorable, favorable, or no feedback regarding their team as a whole on the basis of this information. The results indicated that females evidenced more anger in response to the out-group's unfavorable feedback than did males. These anger responses were related to attraction to ward a teammate for males but not for females. Moreover, males evidenced less attraction toward an in-group member after receiving unfavorable rather than favorable intergroup evaluations, whereas females did not. On the other hand, only for females was attraction to ward a teammate related to the perceived similarity of that individual within experimental conditions. Apparently, the greater cognitive orientation of females as compared to males to ward another ingroup member resulted in their being less susceptable to the influence of situationally induced affect.This research was performed as part of the author's doctoral dissertation submitted to the Department of Psychology, Purdue University. Portions of this paper were presented at the meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association held in Boston, 1977.It should be noted that the views expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not reflect those of the Army or any other government agency.     

Sex differences in factors of romantic attraction

Subjects were asked to rate various physical features, demographic characteristics, and personal qualities in terms of their degree of importance in determining choice of romantic partners in both sexual and meaningful or long-term relationships. Consistent with the sex-role stereotype, males placed relatively greater emphasis than females on the physical characteristics of their prospective romantic partners. Females more strongly emphasized the personal qualities of their prospective partners than did males. Both sexes more heavily weighed various personal qualities than physical characteristics in the context of romantic choice in a meaningful relationship.     

Similarity attraction and actually selecting similar others: How cross-societal differences in relational mobility affect interpersonal similarity in Japan and the USA

Several studies have demonstrated that similarity between friendship partners is higher in the West than in East Asian countries. We hypothesized that these differences could be explained by relational mobility, or the number of opportunities to form new relationships in a given society. Through two studies, we confirmed that whereas the preference for similarity did not differ, similarity between friendship partners was higher in the USA than in Japan. Furthermore, a measure of relational mobility mediated the cultural difference in similarity, supporting our hypothesis. The effectiveness of considering socio-ecological factors when interpreting cultural differences in behaviour is discussed.     

Individual and sex differences in reminiscence

Inverted alphabet printing, rotary pursuit, and mirror tracking tasks were administered to 84 subjects in order to ascertain (a) reproducibility of reminiscence scores within and between tasks and (b)sex differences in reminiscence. With prerest performance levels held constant by second-order partial correlation procedures, reproducibility of individual reminiscence differences within tasks was significant but quite low, while predictability of reminiscence from one task to another was negligible. The sexes reminisced essentially alike on inverted alphabet printing, but females reminisced more than males on the other tasks, presumably because they were relatively more depressed by massed practice on these tasks. Thus, individual and sex differences were essentially task specific. Implications of results for reminiscence theories and for the credibility of alleged relationships between reminiscence and other organismic variables were discussed.     

Individual differences in negative affect repair

The extant literature implicates affect repair ability as one source of individual differences in negative affect. Emerging from this literature are three regulatory traits that should predict repair ability (negative mood regulation expectancies, monitoring, labeling), yet no experimental examination of this possibility exists. Two studies explored this issue. Participants (Ns=305, 146) watched negative affect-inducing videos and completed a repair or control writing task, before and after which they reported their affect. Results revealed wide individual differences in repair ability. Specifically, participants with high expectancies of repair success and those who attend to and understand their affect experienced the largest decreases in negative affect and largest increases in positive affect following the repair tasks. These findings advance understanding of individual differences in affect regulation and have implications for future research.     

Handedness and sex differences in hemispheric asymmetry

A study was designed to assess the contributions of the factors of sex and familial history to cerebral dominance, where cerebral dominance was inferred from laterality on a dichotic listening task. The 144 subjects were selected from a larger sample on the basis of handedness, sex, and familial history of sinistrality, and tested on a task involving the dichotic presentation of CV syllables. Analysis of the data indicated that in female subjects, the presence of familial sinistrality increased the likelihood that they present atypical left-ear superiorities, while in males the converse was the case. Moreover, there was a significant sex difference overall, such that males were more clearly lateralized than females. A review of other dichotic listening studies provided support for the reliability of this sex difference for dichotic tasks using verbal material. A review of the clinical literature indicated that the hypothesis of a sex difference is at least tenable and merits further investigation. However, the possibility that there is a sex difference in the cognitive strategy used in dichotic listening cannot be ruled out.     

Cultural and sex differences in touch avoidance

250 male and female respondents from American, Mediterranean, Near Eastern, and Far Eastern cultures completed a self-report measure of touch-avoidance. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated factors for opposite-sex and same-sex touch-avoidance. These factors were used as dependent variables in a 4 x 2 (culture by sex) multivariate analysis of variance which yielded a significant interaction of culture by sex on opposite-sex touch-avoidance and a main effect of the respondents' sex on same-sex touch-avoidance.     

The components of love: Romantic attraction and sex role orientation

Hypotheses derived from both Erich Fromm and the feminist literature linking sex role orientation to type of love experienced were tested in a sample of 123 heterosexual dating couples Five components of love were identified through factor analysis romantic dependency, communicative intimacy, physical arousal, respect, and romantic compatibility Type of love was related to sex role orientation (p 01), with traditionals characterized by romantic dependency and romantic compatibility, while nontraditionals emphasized communicative intimacy Sex differences showed females being more emotionally expressive in then love than males and scoring higher on communicative intimacy (p's < 01)     

Gender differences and similarities in sex and love

One's attitudes toward love and sexuality are influenced by many factors, including gender. To explore the role of gender (and other variables) in participants' attitudinal orientations toward love and sexuality, data were collected in the United States at three time points (1988, 1992, 1993), resulting in a total sample of 1,090 participants. Data analyses showed gender differences in both sexual attitudes and love. Men were more sexually permissive than women (consistent with previous research), although women and men similarly endorsed other aspects of sexuality, including sex as an emotional experience. Men and women differed on several relationship variables (e.g., women were more oriented to friendship-based love, and men to game-playing love). However, correlational analyses showed many similar patterns for women and men. These findings underline the need to consider both gender differences and similarities in sex and love within intimate relationships.     

Selective sex differences in declarative memory

Sex invariance of a six-factor, higher order model of declarative memory (two second-order factors: episodic and semantic memory; and four first-order factors: recall, recognition, fluency, and knowledge) was established for 1,796 participants (35-85 years). Metric invariance of first- and second-order factor loadings across sex was demonstrated. At the second-order level, a female advantage was observed for both episodic and semantic memory. At the first-order level, sex differences in episodic memory were apparent for both recall and recognition, whereas the differences in semantic memory were driven by a female superiority in fluency. Additional tests of sex differences in three age groups (35-50, 55-65, and 70-85 years of age) indicated that the female superiority in declarative memory diminished with advancing age. The factor-specific sex differences are discussed in relation to sex differences in hippocampal function.     

Positive affect as a moderator of liking effects on trust and attraction

Attitude similarity effects on attraction appear to be mediated sequentially by positive affect, inferred attraction, and trust. That is, the first two supposedly distal mediators influence each other in building trust, a mediator proximal to attraction. However, the correlational nature of data reported heretofore precludes definitive conclusions about sequential dependency between the two distal mediators. In the research reported, therefore, the authors manipulated positive affect in the participants (Time 1) and liking of the partner for them (Time 2), and measured trust before attraction. As predicted, liking effects on trust and attraction were stronger when positive affect in the participants was high than when it was low. Importantly, the interaction effect in trust fully mediated the interaction effect in attraction.     

Individual differences in negative affect repair style

Motivation and Emotion - Two studies (ns?=?422, 263) examined individual differences in repair styles, in which strategies habitually used to repair negative affect depend on shared...     

Spatial visualization and sex differences in quantitative ability

The hypothesis that sex differences in spatial visualization ability might account for sex differences in mathematical ability was supported for a group of 183 male and 81 female college students. With spatial visualization statistically controlled, no significant sex differences in Quantitative Scholastic Aptitude Test (QSAT) scores was found; including sex as a predictor variable increased the variance explained by less than 1%. Although the slope of the regression of mathematics on spatial visualization did not differ as a function of sex, males were somewhat more predictable than females. As the OSAT of both males and females high on spatial visualization was more predictable than the QSAT of those scoring less well, it appears that the sex difference in predictability is due to males having higher spatial ability than females.     

Sex differences and sex similarities in disgust sensitivity

Across two studies, we test for sex differences in the factor structure, factor loadings, concurrent validity, and means of the Three Domain Disgust Scale. In Study 1, we find that the Three Domain Disgust Scale has indistinguishable factor structure and factor loadings for men and women. In Study 2, we find a small sex difference in sensitivity to pathogen and moral disgust and a large sex difference in sensitivity to sexual disgust, with women more sensitive to disgust across domains. However, correlations between Three Domain Disgust Scale factors and the five factors and 30 facets of the NEO Personality Inventory were indistinguishable between the sexes. These findings suggest that, despite mean sex differences in disgust sensitivity, the Three Domain Disgust Scale measures similar constructs in men and women. Implications for understanding the constructs measured by the Three Domain Disgust Scale are discussed.