Mobilizing the hijab: Islamic identity negotiation in the context of a matchmaking website

• This article explores the intended use and meaning of the hijab as a personal branding tool for Muslim users of an online matchmaking service. We analyze the motivations of male and female Muslim consumers for mobilizing the symbolism of the hijab as they construct online identities. We ask whether including information about ‘willingness to wear the hijab’ is motivated primarily by a desire to comply to normative rules of conduct or by an instrumental attitude driven by a desire to effectively build and communicate a personal online brand. Our results indicate that the meaning of the hijab is not fixed and uncontested but is dependent on the historical and social context of insertion. In the context of an online matchmaking site, the motivation to mobilize the hijab is predominantly instrumental. In addition, women are more likely to use the hijab for personal branding than men, whose motivation to mobilize the veil's cultural and traditional symbolism prevails. In accordance with previous research, we find that a higher degree of education reduces the likelihood of men and women to use the hijab in order to conform to community norms.

Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Evolved sex differences in the number of partners desired? The long and the short of it

Do men seek more short-term mates than women? Buss and Schmitt (1993) showed a pattern of mean difference in the ideal number of sexual partners men and women desired over various time frames. We replicated these mean sex differences (e.g., ideal number over the next 30 years: Ms = 7.69 and 2.78 for men and women, respectively), but in both data sets the sampling distributions were highly skewed. In Study 1, we found few sex differences in medians across time frames (e.g., ideal number over the next 30 years: Mdn = 1 for both men and women). In Study 2, most college men (98.9%) and women (99.2%) said they wanted to settle down with one mutually exclusive sexual partner at some point in their life, ideally within the next 5 years. Neither medians in number of partners desired overall before settling down (replicating Study 1) nor medians in short-term partners desired before settling down (Mdn = 0) differed significantly by gender. Rather, men and women concurred: Short-term mating is not what humans typically seek.     

Power,Empowerment, and Equality: Evidence for the Motives of Feminists,Nonfeminists, and Antifeminists

Both feminists and antifeminists claim they do not seek to dominate others, and accuse their ideological opponents of an insidious desire for power. The purpose of this study was to examine the motives of feminists, nonfeminists, and antifeminists by assessing their values in a context in which they would not feel that their motives regarding feminism were being scrutinized. Participants were 126 mostly European-American students. Antifeminist men placed more emphasis on their own power than did other men; but antifeminist, nonfeminist, and feminist women did not differ in emphasis placed on power. Among both men and women, antifeminists placed little importance on equality. Feminist women placed more importance on equality than did nonfeminist women, who in turn placed more importance on equality than did antifeminist women.     

Looking for a Family Man? Norms for Men Are Toppling in Heterosexual Relationships

Gender norms indicate that men should be agentic and work-oriented rather than communal and family-oriented. Yet, this traditional expectation conflicts with findings that communion is highly valued in romantic partners. Moreover, because more women in industrialized countries are pursuing careers, they may increasingly seek family-oriented partners to share the second shift of family tasks. Investigating the attractiveness of communal, family-oriented men, we show that 87 female college students in Belgium evaluate more family-oriented men as generally more attractive (Study 1) and that especially college women in Belgium with high work ambitions seek communion and family orientation in ideal partners (Study 2, n?=?224). Lastly, women in 198 Belgian heterosexual dual-earning couples are more satisfied with their lives and experience less work and family conflict the more their partner indicates that he is oriented toward his close family (Study 3). Together, our findings outline the contextualized nature of norms and add to knowledge on norm change, showing how gender equality may be fed through romantic relationships. Moreover, our findings suggest the importance of exploring men’s family orientations in couples therapy, and they call for counselors, as well as policymakers and Human Resources practitioners, to guide men in times of norm change to enable men to be family-oriented and to offer family-friendly work policies.

     

Religious Consolation Among Men and Women: Do HealthProblems Spur Seeking?

While most religions provide a meaning system that helps people cope with personal problems, there has been relatively little research on how and why men and women seek religious consolation and comfort. Data from a national longitudinal survey, Americans' Changing Lives, Waves I and II ,were used to examine whether physical and mental health problems precipitate seeking religious consolation. The findings indicate that seeking religious consolation is most likely among those who identify with and practice a religion suggesting that religious consolation intensifies among religious persons. Chronic (non-serious)conditions were associated with increased religious seeking over time, and cancer was associated with higher religious seeking, especially among women. Depression was associated with greater seeking of religious consolation among both men and women. The results reveal clearly that women are more likely than men to seek religious consolation, but men seek religious consolation for a wider range of health and situational problems (e.g.,unemployment).The findings also demonstrate the importance of considering the role of religious consolation in studies of religion and health.     

Are shy people reluctant to ask for help?

Examined the help-seeking behaviors of shy and not-shy men and women. In Study 1, Ss worked on an impossible task in the presence of a male or female confederate whom they were told had just successfully completed the task. Shy Ss asked for help no less frequently than did not-shy Ss overall, but they did seek help less frequently from opposite-sex confederates than from same-sex confederates. In Study 2, shy and not-shy men and women were required to call a man and a woman and ask them to complete a questionnaire. All respondents agreed to return the questionnaire. However, when shy Ss (compared with not-shy Ss) called opposite-sex respondents, fewer of the questionnaires were actually returned. When making their calls, shy Ss sounded somewhat less warm and confident than did not-shy Ss, and they also spoke less fluently. Fluency, in turn, predicted response rate for the shy subjects calling respondents of the opposite sex.     

Sexual Motives: Cultural,Evolutionary, and Social Psychological Perspectives

Recently, scholars from a variety of disciplines have begun to investigate passionate love, sexual desire, and sexual behavior. Specifically, they have started to ask such questions as: “Why do young men and women engage in sexual liaisons?” “Why do they avoid such encounters?” Unfortunately, in attempting to answer such questions, scholars have generally focused on surveys and experiments within their own disciplines and have accorded scant attention to the discoveries of other disciplines. In this paper, we will begin by discussing three theoretical perspectives that have had the most to say about why young people seek out (or avoid) sex—cultural psychology, evolutionary psychology, and social psychology (where theorists often take a biopsychosocial approach). Then, we will (1) describe the many scales that have been used to assess sexual motives, and (2) review the multidisciplinary data which has been assembled in an attempt to answer the questions as to why people seek out (or avoid) sexual activity. Unfortunately, almost all this research was conducted by Western researchers, investigating the attitudes and behavior of young American men and women, who were heterosexual. (Alas, the wider-ranging data one would wish to consider is as yet only rarely available.) Through this multi-disciplinary synthesis, we hope to demonstrate the impact of culture, social experience, and biological imperatives in shaping young men’s and women’s motives for engaging in sexual encounters and provide a sort of “encyclopedia” of sexual motives measures and research for future scholars.     

Forgiveness in Younger,Middle-Aged and Older Adults: Age and Gender Matters

The present study investigated age and gender differences in forgiveness of real-life transgressions. Emerging and young, middle-aged, and older adults recalled the most recent and serious interpersonal transgression and then completed the Transgression-Related Interpersonal Motivations Inventory (TRIM-18), which measured their avoidance, revenge, and benevolence motivation toward an offender and indicated to what extent they are generally concerned with the subject of forgiveness. The results revealed a trend among middle-aged adults to express more avoidance than younger adults. Moreover, young men had a greater motivation to seek revenge than middle-aged and older men. No such age differences were apparent for women. Additionally, forgiveness was a more manifest subject in everyday life for middle-aged adults and women. These findings emphasize the importance of age and gender when investigating forgiveness.     

Some Factors Related to Social Success in College

Abstract

Preferences for age of partners of heterosexual and homosexual men and women were investigated. Personal advertisements were collected from newspapers in the United States and analyzed for the difference between the age of the advertiser and the age of the preferred partner. Heterosexual men tended to seek women younger than themselves, whereas women sought partners near their own age or older. The preferences of homosexual men and women were similar to those of heterosexuals, although more homosexuals stated a preference for a partner younger than themselves.     

Sex ratio and women's career choice: does a scarcity of men lead women to choose briefcase over baby?

Although the ratio of males to females in a population is known to influence behavior in nonhuman animals, little is known about how sex ratio influences human behavior. We propose that sex ratio affects women's family planning and career choices. Using both historical data and experiments, we examined how sex ratio influences women's career aspirations. Findings showed that a scarcity of men led women to seek high-paying careers and to delay starting a family. This effect was driven by how sex ratio altered the mating market, not just the job market. Sex ratios involving a scarcity of men led women to seek lucrative careers because of the difficulty women have in finding an investing, long-term mate under such circumstances. Accordingly, this low-male sex ratio produced the strongest desire for lucrative careers in women who are least able to secure a mate. These findings demonstrate that sex ratio has far-reaching effects in humans, including whether women choose briefcase over baby.     

Technological advancements and Internet sexuality: does private access to the Internet influence online sexual behavior?

The aim of this study was to investigate whether demographic characteristics and sexual behavior online and offline were associated with private, respectively, nonprivate access to the Internet in a Web sample of people who use the Internet for sexual purposes. A total of 1,913 respondents completed an online questionnaire about Internet sexuality, and 1,614 reported using the Internet for sexual purposes. The majority of these respondents reported having access to an Internet-connected computer no one else had access to (62 percent women and 70 percent men). The results showed that it is possible to differentiate between those who have access to an Internet-connected computer no one else has access to and those who have shared access to an Internet-connected computer. Not only did they differ in demographic characteristics, but also in the sexual activities they engaged in on the Internet. Different patterns were found for women and men. For example, men who had private access to Internet-connected computers were more likely than those who had shared access to seek information about sexual issues. Thus, having access to Internet computers no one else has access to may promote sexual knowledge and health for men. The results of this study along with the technological development implies that in future research, attention should be paid to where and how people access the Internet in relation to online behavior in general and online sexual behavior in particular.     

German matchmaking web sites: Online trafficking in women?

This article reports on a study of Germany-based matchmaking agencies operating on the Internet, investigating how they are organized and how they advertise their commodities. Matchmaking has rapidly grown into a big digital business. This has engendered debate regarding the sexual behavior of its users, consequences of the resulting intermarriages, and on successful international policy for regulating the related migration. Being a new phenomenon, matchmaking on the Internet has largely remained unresearched until very recently. This analysis is a preliminary attempt to address online introduction services in one industrialized western country, Germany. It examines the size and extent of this kind of German business. One goal is to explore regional manifestations of the trade such as which countries are the counterparts in the other end of the trade? The article also highlights features typical for the advertising on this kind of web site, keeping in mind gender, ethnic, and race aspects. Finally, the issues are raised of whether matchmaking agencies are providing equal possibilities to different kinds of people in this kind of transaction, and whether these kinds of services have an impact on gender and ethnic equality.     

Novelty seeking in adulthood: increases accompany decline

Using stereotypes, researchers have predicted that novelty seeking declines in adulthood. Through this cross-sectional study, the authors revealed that only the external sensational type of novelty seeking declined, whereas the internal sensational and internal and external cognitive types remained stable or increased. A population of 233 adults (152 men, 81 women) completed the Novelty Experiencing Scale (P. H. Pearson, 1970). Correlational analyses revealed that older men sought novelty more frequently through cognition than did younger men and that older women were less likely than were younger women to seek novelty through their senses. Multivariate analysis of variance, 2 x 5 (Gender x Age), showed that cognitive novelty seeking increased significantly among participants younger than 50 years of age. Sensational novelty seeking was lower among women older than 40 years and among men older than 50 years. The analyses revealed no significant Gender x Age interactions.     

Rethinking Traumatic Brain Injury from Intimate Partner Violence: A Theoretical Model of the Cycle of Transmission

ABSTRACT

Despite growing evidence of the repeated nature of traumatic brain injury (TBI) in women experiencing intimate partner violence (IPV), there is no theoretical model depicting TBIs as a cyclical process throughout a lifetime. Situational analysis methodology was used on interviews with 10 women who self-reported passing out from being hit in the head during an episode of IPV to create a theoretical model depicting the cycle of transmission of TBI. We define the cycle of transmission of TBI as the way that women experience multiple TBIs over the course of their lifetime and how TBI can be perpetuated in a family or community. The cycle begins in childhood or adolescence, when women receive a TBI from abuse, sports, or motor vehicle accident. They enter into abusive relationships with men who are also described as living with a TBI and the women receive other TBIs during this relationship. With repeating head trauma, women described increasing TBI symptoms: problems with memory, cognition, executive functioning, depression, and concentration. If they do seek help, they must choose between healthcare and protective shelter. With either choice, the element of instability could be introduced and the cycle of transmission continues. This theoretical model shows that it is necessary to move beyond individual behaviors to think about how TBIs are transmitted through communities and how untreated symptoms can impact help-seeking behavior and perpetuate other risk factors for receiving a TBI.     

'Oh, I'm just, you know, a little bit weak because I'm going to the doctor's': young men's talk of self-referral to primary healthcare services

Young men visit their general practitioner (GP) less frequently than young women and tend to utilise primary healthcare services reluctantly. This research aimed to explore the ways young men used their talk to make sense of their own masculinity in the context of their healthcare visits, and to explore the ways they used their talk to make sense of those visits in terms of multiple masculinities and gendered behaviours. This was an important area for research as previous work has not focused on young men. Interviews, lasting approximately 1?h, were conducted by a male researcher with seven men aged 22-33. Questions related to visiting the GP, attention to healthcare and help-seeking behaviours. These were analysed, using an eclectic approach informed by Foucauldian discourse analysis and discursive psychology. Participants subscribed to a hegemonic masculinity that constructed men as strong, stoical and reluctant to seek help. However, at times, these men negotiated and disengaged from such discourses. Women were constructed as immediately responding to symptoms and seeking help for minor illnesses. In contrast to traditional masculinity, the young men drew upon discourses of vulnerability and embarrassment. These results are discussed in relation to their implications for Health Psychology.     

Why There Were Relatively Few Eminent Women Creators

Researchers who have studied the characteristics of genius generally agree that the most salient characteristic of eminently creative people is persistent single-minded dedication to work. It has also been found that eminently creative people tend to develop a particular type of skill at an early age, and to place high value on achievement in that area. Also typical of eminent creators is their need for solitude and lack of interruption. In the past, intellectual achievement in women was little valued or encouraged, and women were given relatively little opportunity to develop skills upon which creative productivity seems to depend. They also enjoyed little uninterrupted solitude. Today, however, women are better able to develop intellectual skills-but they are still more prey to interruption than men are, not only because their relatively strong need for social contact and intimacy leads them to seek out company.     

Traditional vs. nontraditional women and men's perceptions of the personalities and physiques of ideal women and men

Traditional and nontraditional women and men's perceptions of ideal people, in terms of both traits and physiques, were assessed using 80 male and 80 female Caucasian undergraduates as study participants. The data indicated that traditional women and men perceived the ideal male as mesomorphic and as having more instrumental than expressive traits. Nontraditional women and men also favored a mesomorphic physique for the ideal male, but they differed from traditionals in that they saw this mesomorphic male as being androgynous in regard to traits. Concerning the ideal female, traditional and nontraditional women and men preferred an androgynous physique, but they differed in their perceptions of the ideal personality for a woman. Traditional women and men perceived their ideal women as having more expressive than instrumental traits, whereas nontraditional women and men saw their ideal women as being androgynous in regard to traits. The results are discussed within the framework of Bem's gender schema and enculturated lens theories.     

SOCIAL STIMULUS PERCEPTION AND SELF-EVALUATION: EFFECTS OF MENSTRUAL CYCLE PHASE

Women in different phases of the menstrual cycle were compared to each other and to men in their responses to a social interaction stimulus: a videotape depicting a female nurse interacting with a hospitalized patient. Sex differences and cycle-phase differences were found for both affective and cognitive dimensions. Premenstrual women reported feeling more dominant, energetic, indifferent, negative, and somewhat more tense than women menstruating or women in the intermenstrual cycle phase. However, they did not differ from men in their affective ratings. Premenstrual women evaluated the nurse as less attractive than did men and they attributed greater responsibility for the nurse's behavior to the patient than men and intermenstrual women. Women in all groups evaluated the nurse as nicer and more pleasant, interesting, concerned and self-assured than did men. All women also felt more friendly toward the nurse and reported that they would be more comfortable asking her questions than the men did. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Success and Failure, Gender Differences, and the Menstrual Cycle

Eighty-one women and 26 men were led to succeed or fail at a task. No differences in actual performance were found between men and women or among women in different menstrual phases. Although they had participated alone, women felt worse, less competent, and less "up" than men after both success and failure. After success women also felt less satisfied, felt they had made lower scores, expected to perform worse, and rewarded themselves less than men. After success, women who were menstruating at the time of the experiment reported feeling better than women in other menstrual phases on most measures. A possible explanation was that menstruating women may have expected to perform poorly.