The Washington University Sentence Complete Test: are the two halves alternate forms? Are the female and male forms comparable?

Evidence from 85 adult medical outpatients supported psychometric comparability of the 2 halves of the Washington University Sentence Completion Test (SCT) Form 81 and of the female and male forms of the SCT. There was slightly stronger internal consistency for the first versus the second half of the SCT. Each half correlated highly with the ogive total protocol rating and 36-item-sum rating. Intercorrelations of the 2 halves with external measures also suggested essentially equivalent relations. For the 30 identical items across gender, the median correlation between individual item ratings with the item-sum ratings was nearly equal for women and men. When the 6 nonidentical items were considered with the identical items, the median item-total correlation was slightly higher for men (45) than women (41). This difference was accounted for by the slightly larger variability in the mate subsample. Practically speaking, the 2 halves and the female and male forms may be used with minimal concern regarding psychometric comparability in similar medical outpatient settings.     

Free recall measures of short-term store: Are rehearsal and order of recall data necessary?

Several investigators have claimed that immediate free recall is a composite of output from two different storage systems—a short-term store (STS) and a long-term store (LTS). Free recall data and measures of STS were evaluated by having subjects report their rehearsals while lists of words were presented at a rate of one word every 1.25, 2.50, or 5.00 sec. The results support the conclusions that (a) arranging recall as a function of where an item was presented, rather than where it was rehearsed, is inappropriate to discussions of STS and LTS, and (b) computing measures of STS without both rehearsal and order of recall data yields a biased estimate of STS.

     

Inhibition of return and visual search: how many separate loci are inhibited?

Using a novel sequential visual search paradigm Danziger, Kingstone, and Snyder (1998) demonstrated that inhibition of return (IOR) can reside at three spatial locations. In the present study, we extended the work of Danziger et al. by investigating whether there is a limit to the number of locations that can be inhibited in a sequential visual search task. Our study revealed that IOR can be measured at a minimum of five locations. The magnitude of the IOR effect was largest at the most recently searched location and declined from there in an approximately linear fashion. Two models that can account for our data are presented.     

Differences in male and female patterns of communication in groups: A methodological artifact?

This study investigated communication patterns in an all-male, all-female, and mixed-sex group. All participants were white and middle class. These groups met for longer periods of time than those in most previous studies that reported differences between men and women in task and maintenance communication patterns. Most previous research investigations were based on groups that met for an hour or less and used unacquainted undergraduates. In this study, no significant differences were found in seven categories of verbal input. While there were no significant differences, the typical pattern reported in the literature was present in the first 30–60 minutes of the groups. After that time period, no consistent patterns were noted, and stereotypic sex differences vanished. This has led the authors to tentatively conclude that the findings of previous research may be due to the limited time period used in most investigations. Men and women did not differ on task and maintenance input, or other categories of verbal input, in groups meeting for 4 1/2 hours or 6 hours.     

Goals of male and female college students: Do traditional sex differences still exist?

Importance ratings of reasons for attending college were obtained from male and female undergraduates. Responses were compared for sex differences and were compared to the responses of subjects in the Constantinople (1967) study. The picture of college students that emerged is very different from those of previous studies. Current females did not emphasize career goals less, nor social goals more, than males. Current males were more interested in social aspects of college than were their male predecessors. Male and female concepts of success seemed to differ. To females challenge and accomplishment were most important; to males, complying with parental pressures and economic success were most important.The authors thank Phillip Shaver for his helpful comments on an earlier version of this article.     

Person orientation of male and female high school students: To the Educational disadvantage of males?

Potential differences in the person orientation of male and female high school students that are likely to have a significant influence on their achievement strivings were investigated. A questionnaire, consisting of several indices of person orientation, was administered to 848 grade 10 and 12 students. The data revealed that boys are especially susceptible to anti-intellectual influences from their peers and suggest that the interference of affiliative concerns with achievement behavior, a problem that has received considerable attention in the psychology of women, may also be very relevant to understanding the academic underachievement of males.     

Suicide and the contemporary woman: Are male and female suicide rates converging?

Nationwide statistics on White suicide rates for the years 1960–1978 are examined to assess whether the suicide rates of women are increasing relative to those of men. This is accomplished by calculating for the total population and for several age groupings the sex differential (SD), which is defined as the percentage of suicides which are female after adjustments are made for the sex distribution in the population. The data reveal that the SD narrowed from 1960–1967, held steady from 1968–1972, and then widened slightly from 1973–1978. The most important aspects of these trends are that (a) the narrowing of the SD is due more to declining suicide rates among older (over-40) males than to increasing female suicide rates, and (b) the narrowing of the SD and the small increases in female suicide rates occurred prior to 1970 and thus were earlier than would be expected on the basis of changing sex-role expectations. Post hoc explanations of these patterns refer to methodological factors and to changes in social integration resulting from a variety of sociohistorical factors.     

Why are average faces attractive? The effect of view and averageness on the attractiveness of female faces

Images of faces manipulated to make their shapes closer to the average are perceived as more attractive. The influences of symmetry and averageness are often confounded in studies based on full-face views of faces. Two experiments are reported that compared the effect of manipulating the averageness of female faces in profile and full-face views. Use of a profile view allows a face to be ”morphed“ toward an average shape without creating an image that becomes more symmetrical. Faces morphed toward the average were perceived as more attractive in both views, but the effect was significantly stronger for full-face views. Both full-face and profile views morphed away from the average shape were perceived as less attractive. It is concluded that the effect of averageness is independent of any effect of symmetry on the perceived attractiveness of female faces.     

Twisting space: are rigid and non-rigid mental transformations separate spatial skills?

Cognitive science has primarily studied the mental simulation of spatial transformations with tests that focus on rigid transformations (e.g., mental rotation). However, the events of our world are not limited to rigid body movements. Objects can undergo complex non-rigid discontinuous and continuous changes, such as bending and breaking. We developed a new task to assess mental visualization of non-rigid transformations. The Non-rigid Bending test required participants to visualize a continuous non-rigid transformation applied to an array of objects by asking simple spatial questions about the position of two forms on a bent transparent sheet of plastic. Participants were to judge the relative position of the forms when the sheet was unbent. To study the cognitive skills needed to visualize rigid and non-rigid events, we employed four tests of mental transformations—the Non-rigid Bending test (a test of continuous non-rigid mental transformation), the Paper Folding test and the Mental Brittle Transformation test (two tests of non-rigid mental transformation with local rigid transformations), and the Vandenberg and Kuse (Percept Motor Skills 47:599–604, 1978) Mental Rotation test (a test of rigid mental transformation). Performance on the Mental Brittle Transformation test and the Paper Folding test independently predicted performance on the Non-rigid Bending test and performance on the Mental Rotation test; however, mental rotation performance was not a unique predictor of mental bending performance. Results are consistent with separable skills for rigid and non-rigid mental simulation and illustrate the value of an ecological approach to the analysis of the structure of spatial thinking.     

Relations between implicit measures of prejudice:what are we measuring?

Some recent findings suggest that different implicit measures of prejudice assess the same underlying construct, but other work suggests that they may not. In this experiment, White participants completed a version of a priming measure of racial attitudes that either encouraged categorization of the face primes in terms of race or did not encourage such categorization, and then completed the Implicit Association Test. Correspondence between the two measures was found only when categorization by race was required on the priming measure. Moreover, participants appeared more prejudiced when they were led to construe individuals in terms of race than when they were not so encouraged. The discussion focuses on the potential for dissociations between evaluations of a category and evaluations of members of the category.     

Eve and Adam--is a partnership between the male and female actually possible?

Whereas the girl can pattern the formation of her post-oedipal gender-typical selfrepresentation on the model of her mother, the boy must give up the maternal object and turn to the father. The author believes that the reorientation consumes energy which the boy lacks when forming his ego structures, his frustration tolerance, his capacity for relationships. This deficit model is invoked to explain the commonly deplored typically male behavioral and attitudinal characteristics.     

Increasing similarity in the values and life plans of male and female college students? Evidence and implications

A time-series analysis of college freshmen indicates that from 1969 to 1984 there has been a dramatic increase in the value women place on status-attainment goals, but not a comparable decrease in the value placed on domestic-nurturant goals—a pattern that reflects an amalgamation rather than a masculinization of the feminine value constellation. As the value placed on status-attainment goals has not increased as significantly for males, there has been a narrowing of the difference in the value constellations of the sexes over this time period. Further, there has been a greater increase in the percentage of women than men aspiring to graduate degrees and to the highest status professional and executive occupations, resulting in increased congruence in the educational and high-status career goals of women and men. The limitations and implications of these data are discussed.The research for this paper was funded by a grant from the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation. I thank Andrea Tyree and Norman Goodman for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper. I particularly thank Stephen Cole for his incisive comments.     

Climbing the corporate ladder: do female and male executives follow the same route?

This study compares the careers of matched samples of 69 female executives and 69 male executives by examining perceived barriers and facilitators of advancement, self-reported developmental experiences, and career histories. Consistent with tokenism theory, women reported greater barriers, such as lack of culture fit and being excluded from informal networks, and greater importance of having a good track record and developing relationships to facilitate advancement than did men. Career success, measured by organizational level and compensation, was positively related to breadth of experience and developmental assignments for both genders, but successful women were less likely than successful men to report that mentoring facilitated their advancement. Developmental experiences and career histories were similar for female and male executives, but men had more overseas assignments and women had more assignments with nonauthority relationships.     

What to diffuse in a gender‐specific store? The effect of male and female perfumes on customer value and behaviour

Sensory marketing can be an efficient way to involve consumers in the store environment. Diffusing a pleasant ambient scent that matches with the store setting is often used to create pleasant shopping experiences. The aim of this study is to extend scent marketing research: (i) by examining the effect of pleasant ambient scent on the different dimensions of customer value; and (ii) by exploring whether product‐scent incongruity can have a positive effect on consumer evaluations. A field experiment with 182 participants showed that a pleasant gender‐incongruent ambient perfume positively influences different dimensions of customer value as compared to the absence of a perfume. Moreover, a gender‐incongruent perfume also leads to a more positive evaluation of the play, product excellence, and social dimension of customer value as compared to a gender‐congruent perfume. A pleasant gender‐congruent ambient perfume, on the other hand, only has a positive effect on the aesthetic dimension of customer value as compared to the absence of a perfume. The observed ambient scent effects do not differ between men and women. These results are in contrast with existing literature. However, an explanation for this undocumented effect can be found in the mate attraction theory. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The “sword of a woman”: Gossip and female aggression

An interest in the affairs of same-sex others is especially strong among females, and women are more likely than men to use gossip in an aggressive, competitive manner. The goal of such gossip is to exclude competitors from a social group and damage the competitor's ability to maintain a reliable social network of her own. Timeworn assumptions about an affinity between females and negative gossip appear to be more than just a stereotype. Understanding the dynamics of competitive gossip may also give us insight into related social phenomena such as how people use social media such as Facebook.     

The aftereffects of ventriloquism: are they sound-frequency specific?

Exposing different sense modalities (like sight, hearing or touch) to repeated simultaneous but spatially discordant stimulations generally causes recalibration of localization processes in one or both of the involved modalities, which is manifested through aftereffects. These provide opportunities for determining the extent of the changes induced by the exposure. Taking the so-called ventriloquism situation, in which synchronized sounds and light flashes are delivered in different locations, we examine if auditory recalibration produced by exposing tones of one frequency to attraction by discordant light flashes generalizes to different frequencies. Contrary to an earlier report, generalization was obtained across two octaves. This result did not depend on which modality attention was forced on through catch trials during exposure. Implications concerning the functional site of recalibration are briefly discussed.