Gender comparisons in the private, collective, and allocentric selves

Researchers (e.g., M. B. Brewer & W. Gardner, 1996; H. C. Triandis, D. K. S. Chan, D. P. S. Bhawuk, S. Iwao, & J. P. B. Sinha, 1995) have suggested expansion of the standard model of individualism-collectivism to include people's close personal relationships in addition to their identification with in-groups. There has been considerable discussion of the hypothesis that women are more collective, interdependent, relational, and allocentric than men (e.g., S. E. Cross & L. Madson, 1997; Y. Kashima et al., 1995). In the present study, the authors used the Twenty Statements Test (M. H. Kuhn & T. McPartland, 1954) to examine gender differences in the self-concept by assessing the accessibility of private, collective, and allocentric self-cognitions. The U.S. women described themselves with more allocentric and more collective self-cognitions than did the U.S. men. Discussion focuses on the implications of those data for interpretation of other gender differences as well as for traditional models of individualism-collectivism.     

The Accessibility of Group Memberships

Abstract

The authors performed 2 experiments to examine the accessibility of thoughts about group memberships (i.e., collective self-cognitions) relative to thoughts about traits, states, and behaviors (i.e., private self-cognitions). Few collective self-cognitions were accessible for the present participants from an individualist culture. Furthermore, collective self-cognitions were highly associated with each other in a self-structure. The findings were interpreted in terms of the two-baskets theory that private and collective self-cognitions tend to be stored relatively separately in memory (D. Trafimow, H. C. Triandis, & S. G. Goto, 1991).     

The accessibility of group memberships

The authors performed 2 experiments to examine the accessibility of thoughts about group memberships (i.e., collective self-cognitions) relative to thoughts about traits, states, and behaviors (i.e., private self-cognitions). Few collective self-cognitions were accessible for the present participants from an individualist culture. Furthermore, collective self-cognitions were highly associated with each other in a self-structure. The findings were interpreted in terms of the two-baskets theory that private and collective self-cognitions tend to be stored relatively separately in memory (D. Trafimow, H.C. Triandis, & S.G. Goto, 1991).     

Gender and Context Differences in Alcohol Expectancies

Abstract

In 2 studies, the authors investigated gender and context effects of alcohol expectancies among U.S. college students. In Study 1, they examined the responses of 771 women and 493 men to the Sexual Enhancement (SE) subscale and the Relaxation and Tension Reduction (TR) subscale of the Alcohol Expectancy Questionnaire (S. A. Brown, B. A. Christiansen, & M. S. Goldman, 1987). They found no gender differences when they controlled for drinking quantity. When they controlled for drinking frequency, the men scored significantly higher on the TR subscale than the women did. In Study 2, also among U.S. college students, 41 women and 21 men first imagined that they were on blind dates or in long-term relationships and then completed the SE and TR subscales. On the SE subscale, the women scored higher in the relationship context than in the blind-date context, whereas the men did not vary between contexts. All the participants also reported more tension-reduction expectancies in the relationship context than in the blind-date context.     

Motivation for Conflict Among Chinese University Students: Effects of Others' Expertise and One's Own Confidence on Engaging in Conflict

Abstract

Researchers (A. C. Amason, 1996; D. H. Gruenfeld, 1995; K. A. Jehn, 1995, 1997; M. A. Rahim, 1989; M. A. Rahim & A. A. Blum, 1994; D. M. Schweiger, W. R. Sandberg, & P. L. Rechner, 1989; P. E. Tetlock, D. Armor, & R. S. Peterson, 1994) have documented the value of conflictual discussions for solving problems, but few have explored the conditions under which people are motivated to engage in controversy (K. A. Jehn, C. Chadwick, & S. M. B. Thatcher, 1997). Some (M. Van Berklom & D. Tjosvold, 1981) have hypothesized that high expertise and a competitive social context arouse concerns about defending one's position and challenging the opposing one. In the present study, Chinese university students in Hong Kong who expected to disagree with an expert, compared with those who did not expect to disagree with an expert, had less confidence, felt less knowledgeable about their position, and selected an agreeable discussant. Consistent with the idea of maintaining distance from those in power, the participants were reluctant to disagree directly with someone with greater expertise.     

Culture and Personal Epistemology: U.S. and Middle Eastern Students’ beliefs about Scientific Knowledge and Knowing

Middle Eastern (Omani) and Western (U.S.) students’ beliefs about knowledge and knowing in the sciences were compared on four dimensions of personal epistemology proposed by Hofer and Pintrich (Review of Educational Research (1997), 67, 88–140). As predicted, given their experiences with comparatively traditional political and religious institutions, Omani more so than U.S. college students were more likely to accept scientific authorities as the basis of scientific truth. Furthermore, Omani men were more accepting of authorities than were Omani women, but there was no gender difference among U.S. students. Omani more than U.S. students also believed that knowledge in the sciences was simpler and more certain, which is consistent with comparisons between U.S. and Asian students (e.g., Qian & Pan, 2002, A comparision of epistemological beliefs and learning from science text between American and Chinese high school students. In B. K. Hofer & P. R. Pintrich (Eds.), Personal epistomology: The psychology of beliefs about knowledge and knowing (pp. 365–385), Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum). Students in the two countries did not differ, however, in whether their beliefs were based on personal opinions versus systematic evidence. Suggestions for further research included directly assessing experiences with, and attitudes toward, authorities in academic and other areas of students’ lives.     

When Gender Differences Surpass Cultural Differences in Personal Satisfaction with Body Shape in Israeli College Students

This study was designed to examine influences of gender and cultural background on participants satisfaction with body-shape. Participants were Jewish and Arab university students (104 men and 96 women), who completed the Figure Rating Scale (Fallon & Rozin, 1985). Discrepancy between current and ideal figures was used to measure body satisfaction. As in the U.S., women, in comparison with men, were significantly less satisfied with their bodies. They exaggerated the magnitude of thinness that they thought men desire. In contrast with U.S. findings, there were women as well as men, who indicated dissatisfaction with their bodies because they thought they were too thin. Contrary to our predictions, cultural background did not influence body satisfaction. However, gender and age produced significant differences in ratings.     

Gender and context differences in alcohol expectancies

In 2 studies, the authors investigated gender and context effects of alcohol expectancies among U.S. college students. In Study 1, they examined the responses of 771 women and 493 men to the Sexual Enhancement (SE) subscale and the Relaxation and Tension Reduction (TR) subscale of the Alcohol Expectancy Questionnaire (S. A. Brown, B. A. Christiansen, & M. S. Goldman, 1987). They found no gender differences when they controlled for drinking quantity. When they controlled for drinking frequency, the men scored significantly higher on the TR subscale than the women did. In Study 2, also among U.S. college students, 41 women and 21 men first imagined that they were on blind dates or in long-term relationships and then completed the SE and TR subscales. On the SE subscale, the women scored higher in the relationship context than in the blind-date context, whereas the men did not vary between contexts. All the participants also reported more tension-reduction expectancies in the relationship context than in the blind-date context.     

Egocentric-updating during navigation facilitates episodic memory retrieval

Influential models suggest that spatial processing is essential for episodic memory [O’Keefe, J., & Nadel, L. (1978). The hippocampus as a cognitive map. London: Oxford University Press]. However, although several types of spatial relations exist, such as allocentric (i.e. object-to-object relations), egocentric (i.e. static object-to-self relations) or egocentric updated on navigation information (i.e. self-to-environment relations in a dynamic way), usually only allocentric representations are described as potentially subserving episodic memory [Nadel, L., & Moscovitch, M. (1998). Hippocampal contributions to cortical plasticity. Neuropharmacology, 37(4-5), 431-439]. This study proposes to confront the allocentric representation hypothesis with an egocentric updated with self-motion representation hypothesis. In the present study, we explored retrieval performance in relation to these two types of spatial processing levels during learning. Episodic remembering has been assessed through Remember responses in a recall and in a recognition task, combined with a “Remember-Know-Guess” paradigm [Gardiner, J. M. (2001). Episodic memory and autonoetic consciousness: A first-person approach. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 356(1413), 1351-1361] to assess the autonoetic level of responses. Our results show that retrieval performance was significantly higher when encoding was performed in the egocentric-updated condition. Although egocentric updated with self-motion and allocentric representations are not mutually exclusive, these results suggest that egocentric updating processing facilitates remember responses more than allocentric processing. The results are discussed according to Burgess and colleagues’ model of episodic memory [Burgess, N., Becker, S., King, J. A., & O’Keefe, J. (2001). Memory for events and their spatial context: models and experiments. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences, 356(1413), 1493-1503].     

Eliminating Gender Differences Through Practice in an Applied Visual Spatial Task

Training strategies to reduce the well-documented (e.g., Lim & Petersen, 1985; Voyer, Voyer, & Bryden, 1995) gender difference in visual spatial ability were investigated. Participants (21 men, 21 women) were trained under 1 of 2 conditions to estimate the orientation angle of a ship viewed on a submarine periscope simulator. The data were analyzed in a 3 by 2 by 2 (Training Conditions by Gender by Test Session) mixed design with repeated measures over the last variable. A significant Training Condition by Gender interaction revealed large performance differences in favor of men in the control group and the group trained using an instruction manual. However, no significant gender difference was found for participants trained with repeated practice accompanied by feedback. This suggests that even a brief training session, using an appropriate instructional strategy, may be all that is required to increase the mental rotation performance of women to the level of men on a specific task. The benefit of the instruction was still evident when tested 3 weeks later; the gender difference was still absent.     

Relation of Affect Control Theory to the Sentencing of Criminals

Abstract

Past researchers (A. Blumstein, J. Cohen, S. E. Martin, & M. H. Tonry, 1983; A. Von Hirsch & H. Gross, 1981) have explored legal variables and demonstrated the significance of various criteria (e.g., criminal's prior record, seriousness of offense, influence of victim) on the sentencing of criminals. Affect control theory (D. R. Heise, 1979) focuses on inferences about the identity of the criminal. In the present study, the author examined the influence of the foregoing legal variables and affect control theory in sentencing decisions by using U.S. undergraduates' reactions to statements of criminals and of victims. Results of a 2 (criminal's emotion: sad vs. unconcerned) x 2 (victim's emotion: sad vs. unconcerned) x 2 (prior record: none vs. auto theft) factorial design supported affect control theory and demonstrated the significance of the victim's perceived identity in sentencing decisions, even when information about the prior record was provided.     

Perceptions of Dating Violence Following a Sexualor Nonsexual Betrayal of Trust: Effects of Gender, Sexism, Acceptance of Rape Myths, and Vengeance Motivation

College womens (N = 220) and mens (N = 208) perceptions of violence following a betrayal by a romantic partner were studied in an independent groups design that varied gender of the participant, type of betrayal (sexual or nonsexual), and gender of the betrayed individual. Participants read one of four brief vignettes in which the betrayed person slapped his/her partner and made his/her lip bleed. Justification of this action was rated on 10 items. Factor analysis of these items indicated the presence of three factors for men and four for women. Both men and women indicated that hitting the partner, getting even, and being angry were more justifiable following a sexual betrayal. The hitting of a male partner by a betrayed woman was perceived as more justified than the hitting of a female partner by a betrayed man. In absolute terms, hitting and getting even by both women and men were generally viewed as unjustifiable, whereas being angry was viewed as justifiable. For both women and men, scores on the Vengeance Scale (Stuckless & Goranson, 1992) and Rape Myth Acceptance Scale (Lonsway & Fitzgerald, 1995) were related to getting even. For men, the Hostile Sexism Scale (Glick & Fiske, 2001) was related to getting even or being angry and breaking up. Results indicated that perceptions of reactions to betrayal are related to type of betrayal and to the dispositional characteristics of the perceiver.     

Book Reviews

Abstract

Kleinbeck, U., Quast, H.-H., Thierry, H., & Hacker, H. (1990). Work Motivation. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Pp. 283.

Ketchum, L.D., & Trist, E.L. (1992). All teams are not created equal. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. ISBN 0-8039-4652-X (cloth). 318 pp.     

Bridging the personal and the political: practices for a liberation psychology

In the Irish context, legacies of colonialism, the Northern Ireland conflict situation, and the strength of community and women's liberation movements all provide rich resources for understanding the processes involved in both oppression and liberation. This paper draws on the theoretical and research literature and on Irish experiences to develop an understanding of some of the processes and practices that aid in liberation. The research is grounded in diverse writings on oppression and liberation, which include writings on colonialism (E. Duran &B. Duran, 1995; F. Fanon, 1967; V. Kenny, 1985, L. Maracle, 1996), feminist psychology (J. B. Miller, 1986; S. Wilkinson, 1996), liberation psychology (H. A. Bulhan, 1985; L. Comas-Díaz, M. B. Lykes, & R. D. Alarcon, 1998; I. Martín-Baró, 1994; Starhawk, 1987), and psychological aspects of racism (b. hooks, 1993; A. Mama, 1995; R. J. Watts, D. M. Griffith, & J. Abdul-Adil, 1999), homophobia (A. R. D'Augelli & C. J. Patterson, 1995), poverty (K. O'Neill, 1992), and other dimensions of oppression.     

An extension of the ‘two-baskets’ theory to Native Americans

A theory that private and collective self-cognitions are stored in separate locations in memory (Trafimow, Triandis, & Goto, 1991; Trafimow, Silverman, Fan, & Law, 1997) was tested with a sample of participants (Native Americans) that differed substantially from those in previous research. Two findings supported the theory. First, participants retrieved more private self-cognitions when the private self rather than the collective self was primed; but retrieved more collective self-cognitions when the collective self rather than the private self was primed. Second, people were more likely to retrieve a private self-cognition following another private self-cognition than following a collective one, but were more likely to retrieve a collective self-cognition following another collective one than following a private one. Copyright © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Social Status, Not Gender Alone, Is Implicated in Different Reactions By Women and Men to Social Ostracism

Williams and Sommer found that ostracized women, but not men, worked harder on a subsequent collective task, speculating that women’s social compensation was motivated by threatened belongingness. The present 2?×?3 design with 180 U.S. women and men replicated this gender gap in work contributions then closed it using two status-manipulations that favored women’s task abilities or the higher education of undergraduates with high school partners. Additional analyses identified three clusters of participants who failed to compensate: only men in the replication control, women scoring low in self-monitoring, and participants who persisted unsuccessfully to resist exclusion. These patterns shift our focus away from gender and threatened belongingness toward control and status as explanations for the original gender difference.     

Affectionate Same-Sex Touch: The Influence of Homophobia on Observers' Perceptions

Abstract

The author extended the proposition (V. J. Derlega, R. J. Lewis, S. Harrison, B. A. Winstead, & R. Costanza, 1989) that the fear of being seen as homosexual accounts for the common finding that U.S. women engage in more same-sex touch than do U.S. men. The author proposed a theoretic model positing that the magnitude of homophobia's influence on behavior and on reactions to behavior is proportional to the likelihood that the behavior is sexual in nature. An experiment involving reactions to same-sex embraces demonstrated that, although homophobia was negatively related to evaluations of same-sex affectionate touch, the magnitude of the relationship covaried with the probability that the touch was sexual. The implications of these findings for longer range theory development are discussed.     

Body Image: Gender,Ethnic, and Age Differences

Abstract

Using figure drawings (E. Fallon & P. Rozin, 1985), 120 male and female U.S. college students–African American, Hispanic, and Caucasian–indicated their current and ideal figures, the figures that they considered most attractive to the opposite sex, and the opposite-sex figures most attractive to themselves. Dissatisfaction with body shape was greater among the women regardless of ethnicity. Both the men and the women misjudged which shapes the opposite sex would rate as most attractive: The women guessed that the men preferred shapes thinner than those that they actually reported. The African American women had the most accurate perceptions of what the men found attractive, whereas the Caucasian women had the most distorted views. The men guessed that the women preferred shapes bulkier than those that they actually indicated. These findings may be relevant to the lower incidence of eating disorders among African American women and the higher incidence of such disorders among Caucasian women.     

The Career Satisfaction Scale: Response bias among men and women

Recent studies demonstrate an increasing emphasis on subjective career success. This construct is typically measured using self-report scales, with the most used instrument being the Career Satisfaction Scale of Greenhaus, Parasuraman, and Wormley [Greenhaus, J. H., Parasuraman, S., & Wormley, W. M. (1990). Effects of race on organizational experiences, job performance evaluations, and career outcomes. Academy of Management Journal, 33, 64–86]. As career success is often studied in relation to gender, one may wonder whether men and women rate subjective career success, as measured by the Career Satisfaction Scale (Greenhaus et al., 1990), in the same manner—which is an important requirement when interpreting sex differences. Therefore, this study provides a rigorous evaluation of the Career Satisfaction Scale (Greenhaus et al., 1990) in terms of measurement invariance. The results show that gender invariance of the Career Satisfaction Scale (Greenhaus et al., 1990) does not hold. Implications of these findings in terms of optimal measurement of the subjective career success construct are spelled out.