Discrimination and Women’s Mental Health: The Mediating Role of Control

Perceived discrimination is a stressor, related to both negative physical and mental health outcomes. Utilizing a sample of 259 undergraduate females from the northeast region of the U.S., the present study examined a model that tested the direct, indirect, and mediated relations among perceived sexist discrimination, psychological distress, self-esteem, and sense of personal control. Path analysis of the model indicated that (a) perceived sexism was related to greater psychological distress, with personal control partially mediating this link and (b) perceived sexism was not related to self-esteem. The path model accounted for 28% of the variance in self-esteem and 37% of the variance in psychological distress. Implications of the findings for women’s health are discussed.     

Do Solo Arrangements Lead to Attributions of Tokenism? Perceptions of Selection Criteria and Task Assignments to Race and Gender Solos1

In 2 studies, African American and White participants judged the likelihood that solos in work groups were selected for membership in a work group on the basis of either affirmative action or ability. Following this, they were asked to imagine themselves as managers of the group and to assign tasks to each of the employees. Judgments of the overall work groups were also obtained. As expected, the extent to which observers attributed the presence of the solo to affirmative action and assigned tasks was dependent on the gender and race of the solo and, importantly, the gender and race of the majority of group members. These findings have practical utility in that they point to the continuing importance of context effects in impression formation and task assignments.     

Do Women in the Newsroom Make a Difference? Coverage Sentiment toward Women and Men as a Function of Newsroom Composition

Sex Roles - Positive or negative media coverage may have important consequences for individuals’ lives and ability to succeed. One potential factor that may affect the tone of coverage, in...     

Do Women Prefer Dominant Men? The Case of the Missing Control Condition

Past research finds evidence that college women prefer a romantic partner who is dominant more than one who is not dominant. However, this research failed to include a control condition in which neither dominant nor nondominant behaviors are described. Study 1 and Study 2 included such a control condition and found that describing men as either dominant or nondominant decreased the desirability of hypothetical dating and romantic partners for undergraduate women. When asked to describe their ideal partner in Study 3, very few women identified dominant as a desirable trait. However, several traits associated with dominance, such as assertiveness and confidence, were selected. The findings suggest that a simple dominant–nondominant dimension may not be very useful when predicting women's mate preferences.     

Disordered Eating in Undergraduates: Does Gender Role Orientation Influence Men and Women the Same Way?

Previous studies have examined the influence of femininity on disordered eating behavior in female undergraduates, but few studies have examined the relation between gender roles and disordered eating in male undergraduates. The present study examined whether gender roles relate to disordered eating behaviors the same way in male and female undergraduates. 512 undergraduates (58% female) at a large university in the Pacific West region of the United States responded to a survey asking about eating behaviors and gender role orientation. Women displayed higher levels of disordered eating than did men. Undifferentiated and masculine women had higher levels of disordered eating than did androgynous women, whereas undifferentiated and feminine men had higher levels of disordered eating than did masculine and androgynous men.     

Perceptions of Rational Discrimination: When Do People Attempt to Justify Race-Based Prejudice?

This research investigated the role of situational context and personality factors in moderating perceptions of race-based decisions made by others. White participants were presented with a short story that described a taxi driver who refuses to pick up a Black man. The primary dependent variable concerned the perceived rationality of the taxi driver's decision. Analyses of these perceptions revealed 2 main findings, both of which involved need for cognition (Cacioppo, Petty, & Morris, 1983). First, need for cognition moderated the effects of participants' attitudes toward Blacks, such that anti-Black participants judged the taxi driver's decision as more rational than did pro-Black participants, but this was only true when participants also scored high in need for cognition. Second, participants who were experimentally induced to think about the task in an "analytical" fashion also judged the taxi driver as relatively rational, but this again was only true for participants who scored high in need for cognition. The implications of these results for a controversial set of arguments regarding rational discrimination by the social critic Dinesh D'Souza (1995) are discussed.     

Men and Women Inmates’ Accounts of Their Pathways to Crime: A Gender Analysis

Most of the research on gender differences in crime has been based on quantitative methods and focused on either women or men, but not both. In this qualitative study, we explored the association between gender and perceived pathways to crime. We employed a thematic analysis of 20 interviews with inmates, focusing on how they negotiated notions about femininity and masculinity while constructing their own pathways to crime. Men and women presented different pathways, but both oscillated between pathways guided by victimization and by power seeking. The findings suggest possible new directions regarding the use of gender binaries in criminology research and indicate the heavy toll of gender essentialism on both genders.     

Gender Differences in Response to Experimental Forgiveness Prompts: Do Men Show Stronger Responses Than Women?

After recalling interpersonal offenses, undergraduates (106 women, 79 men) were assigned to a control condition or one emphasizing a forgiveness motivation: personal benefit, moral obligation, or goodwill. All three forgiveness conditions facilitated men's forgiveness, although the goodwill condition was most effective. Women's responses did not differ across conditions. Another study of undergraduates (106 men, 112 women) revealed that relative to men, women put more effort into forgiveness before the study, and they were more likely to view forgiveness as a process requiring healing. Study 2's findings may partly explain why men show greater response than women to experimental forgiveness prompts.     

Femmephobia: The Role of Anti-Femininity and Gender Policing in LGBTQ+ People’s Experiences of Discrimination

Sex Roles - Since the 1970s social science researchers have documented the cultural devaluation of femininity and its impact on experiences of discrimination among sexual and gender minorities....     

When Do Speakers Use Gestures to Specify Who Does What to Whom? The Role of Language Proficiency and Type of Gestures in Narratives

Previous research has found that iconic gestures (i.e., gestures that depict the actions, motions or shapes of entities) identify referents that are also lexically specified in the co-occurring speech produced by proficient speakers. This study examines whether concrete deictic gestures (i.e., gestures that point to physical entities) bear a different kind of relation to speech, and whether this relation is influenced by the language proficiency of the speakers. Two groups of speakers who had different levels of English proficiency were asked to retell a story in English. Their speech and gestures were transcribed and coded. Our findings showed that proficient speakers produced concrete deictic gestures for referents that were not specified in speech, and iconic gestures for referents that were specified in speech, suggesting that these two types of gestures bear different kinds of semantic relations with speech. In contrast, less proficient speakers produced concrete deictic gestures and iconic gestures whether or not referents were lexically specified in speech. Thus, both type of gesture and proficiency of speaker need to be considered when accounting for how gesture and speech are used in a narrative context.     

Why Do Women Endorse Hostile and Benevolent Sexism? The Role of Salient Female Subtypes and Internalization of Sexist Contents

The present research aims to explain women’s endorsement of hostile and benevolent sexist beliefs. Based on a convenience sample of N?=?92 women in the general public in Germany, Study 1 demonstrated that women endorse hostile sexist beliefs when they do not think about themselves when completing the hostile sexism scale but about non-traditional female subtypes (feminists or career women). In contrast, women were more likely to agree with benevolent sexist beliefs the more they internalize these beliefs and the more they think about traditional subtypes (housewives) while completing the scale. A follow-up experimental study using a convenience sample of N?=?123 German women further demonstrated that these results depend on women’s identification with the respective subtypes.     

Do Middle-Class Students Perceive Poor Women and Poor Men Differently?

In this study, we examined attitudes toward poor women, stereotypes about them, attributions for their poverty, and whether these thoughts and feelings differ from those about poor men. In our Midwestern college students sample (n = 206), attitudes toward poor women were significantly more positive than attitudes toward poor men. In addition, stereotypes of poor women were both more positive and more consistent with gender stereotypes than were those of poor men. Participants endorsed internal attributions for the poverty of both women and men more strongly than external or cultural attributions. However, the content of these attributions was different for the two target groups. Poor women were held responsible for nontraditional familial and reproductive patterns, whereas poor men were held responsible for lack of initiative and self-improvement. For poor men, all types of attributions included references to ability or willingness to work. The three types of attributions were more conceptually distinct for poor women.     

Divorce and the Multidimensionality of Men and Women’s Mental Health: The Role of Social-Relational and Socio-Economic Conditions

Research consistently reveals that the divorced generally face more mental health problems than the married. Less attention however has been paid to positive mental health indicators. Insight in these however may help policy makers and care providers to see both the broader picture and stimulate active coping. Using data from the European Social Survey (2006–2007), differences in both feelings of depression, and in feelings of self-esteem, autonomy, and competence between the married (N?=?14,072) and divorced (N?=?4,304) are estimated for women and men separately. Drawing on stress and coping theories, we map how specific social-relational and socio-economic conditions relate. Analyses reveal that divorce is related not only to more feelings of depression, but also to lower levels of self-esteem and competence. Difference scores in mental health based on marital status are also found to differ significantly between men and women for competence, with the difference being more pronounced in men. Additionally, social-relational and socio-economic conditions explain much of the gap in depression scores—and to a lesser extent, in self-esteem and competence scores—between the married and divorced. Finally, some interesting gender differences were found in how social-relational and socio-economic conditions relate to mental health when divorced, with women especially seeming to benefit from advantageous socio-economic conditions.     

“How'd You Do on That Test?”: The Effects of Gender on Self-Presentation of Achievement to Vulnerable Men

This study examined the effects of gender on how people present their academic achievements when interacting with vulnerable male peers. Participants were 86 college students (40 males, 46 females) drawn from a population that was 7% African American, 10% Asian American, 6% Latino/a, 6% non-U.S. citizens, and 71% Euro-Americans. They were induced to predict their grade point average (GPA) to a male confederate who presented himself as (a) having earned either a low GPA or an average GPA, and (b) concerned or unconcerned about his academic performance. Both men's and women's GPA predictions were higher when interacting with the concerned partner, and men's predictions were even higher when interacting with the concerned, low-GPA partner. For male participants, there were significant positive correlations between predicted GPA and perceived similarity to the partner and between predicted GPA and interest in establishing a relationship with the partner, especially when interacting with the worried partner. These and other findings are discussed in the context of previous findings and related theory.     

The Personality Characteristics of Methodist Ministers: Feminine Men and Masculine Women?

A detailed questionnaire was mailed to every Methodist minister engaged in circuit ministry in Great Britain. Each of the 1,339 respondents completed the Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQR-S). The male ministers recorded lower psychoticism scores than the male population norms. The female ministers recorded lower neuroticism scores than the female population norms. These findings support the view that ministry may appeal particularly to men who value and display the tender-minded personality characteristics associated with femininity and to women who value and display the stable personality characteristics associated with masculinity. Implications of these findings for ministry are discussed.