Sex role conformity in homosexual and heterosexual males

Nine principal components were extracted from the scores of 26 homosexual and 26 heterosexual males matched on age, education, occupation status, and sampling frame on Adjective Check List, Bem Sex Role Inventory, Chapin Social Insight Test, Experience Inventory, and Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire scales selected to represent a variety of "masculine" and "feminine" sex role attributes. The four most general varimax factors, accounting for 48% of the total variance, were: I) "Feminine Openness," II) "Masculine Boldness," III) "Reflection," and IV) "Novelty Seeking." Factor scores were constructed and indicated that the homosexual sample was significantly more identified with Factor I (p < .00l; 17% of total variance). There was no significant difference between the samples on Factor II, nor on the remaining two general factors which were not sex typed.     

Sex differences in confidence influence patterns of conformity

Lack of confidence in one's own ability can increase the likelihood of relying on social information. Sex differences in confidence have been extensively investigated in cognitive tasks, but implications for conformity have not been directly tested. Here, we tested the hypothesis that, in a task that shows sex differences in confidence, an indirect effect of sex on social information use will also be evident. Participants (N = 168) were administered a mental rotation (MR) task or a letter transformation (LT) task. After providing an answer, participants reported their confidence before seeing the responses of demonstrators and being allowed to change their initial answer. In the MR, but not the LT, task, women showed lower levels of confidence than men, and confidence mediated an indirect effect of sex on the likelihood of switching answers. These results provide novel, experimental evidence that confidence is a general explanatory mechanism underpinning susceptibility to social influences. Our results have implications for the interpretation of the wider literature on sex differences in conformity.     

信息性从众行为和规范性从众行为比较研究

目的:从众可分成两种,即信息性从众行为和规范性从众,探讨它们两者之间的区别。方法:通过瑞文智力测验为材料创造了这两种从众情境,观察大学生被试在两种实验条件下的行为差异。结果:信息性从众和社会规范性从众两者之间存在显著差异(Z=-3.183,P=0.001)。结论:大学生被试的信息性从众行为多于社会规范性从众行为,两者存在统计学上的显著性差异。     

Sex differences on a measure of conformity: comments on a recent study

Reysen and Reysen's recent article made a contribution to understanding of sex differences by interpreting the results through the lens of conformity research. Reinterpretation could refer to differences in perceptual sensitivity. The results, then, are theoretically and empirically consistent with the literature.     

A comparative view of the new journal: Assessment

The reference sections from all articles in the 1997 volumes of Assessment, Journal of Personality Assessment, and Psychological Assessment were entered into a database and analyzed. An article published in Assessment averaged almost 31 references. An article published in Journal of Personality Assessment contained an average of 33 references. Psychological Assessment averaged 38 references per article. The median age of the references in the three journals was 8 years with an interquartile range of 4 to 14 years. The Journal of Personality Assessment had the largest number of citations in this database of 5,316 references. Each of these received a relatively large number of their citations from articles published in the same journal (self-citations). Randomly selected articles from the 1997 volume of Assessment received fewer citations in the Social Science Citation Index than a similar set of articles from the other two journals. However, the data on Assessment, when compared with data available on other new scientific publications, suggests that Assessment is doing as well as other fledgling journals.     

宗教社会学研究的新视角:宗教组织研究

随着社会转型的深入,宗教在此过程中宗教性、社会性的表现形式已成为当前宗教社会学研究的重要论题之一.不论是从社会现实情况要求,还是从完善现有研究路径来看,对于推进我国宗教社会学的发展来说,宗教组织研究不失为一个较好的视角切入点;此外,我们还可借助"通过组织来研究宗教,通过宗教研究社会,通过社会来研究宗教"的分析思路来整合宗教组织研究中的不同思路.     

Sex differences on a measure of conformity in automated teller machine lines

Sex differences in conformity were examined as participants approached two ATMs, one of which was occupied by three confederates and the other immediately available. The number of men and women in the line in front of one of the ATMs was manipulated (3 men or 3 women), and an unobtrusive observer recorded the sex of each participant. The results indicated that women were more likely than men to wait in line to use the ATM regardless of the makeup of the line. Thus, the present study provides evidence in favor of the idea that sex differences in conformity are evident on a common task performed in a natural setting.     

性别选择与法律之回应——法理视野中的变性手术

变性人的出现对社会秩序及法律制度提出了挑战。自然人生而具有的人作为社会主体定在的自由和健康权利,为变性人享有性别选择的权利提供了法理支撑。在权利确认后,很有必要在变性手术的对象、施行者及程序上作出规范的应对,而变性人术后的社会角色及权利保护也应该得到法律的适时回应,以实现法的秩序、公正等价值。     

Sex crimes and the new punitiveness

In the last few years, new ways of punishing sex offenders have been introduced in many modern societies. However, these sanctions have a broader significance than this: they are part of a broader set of penal arrangements-directed at the criminal population as a whole-which represents a new punitiveness. This seems to be moving the direction of legal punishment beyond the established parameters that had hitherto been set for it in modern society. This had involved punishment becoming increasingly administered by penal bureaucracies, to the exclusion of the general public, being influenced by the opinion of penal experts, and becoming more tempered, consistent and purposeful in form. Sanctions that did not fit these criteria faded out of modern penality. The indeterminate prison sentence was introduced at its outer limits as a residual measure of control to be used against those offenders-frequently sex criminals-for whom the existing penal framework was thought inappropriate. Even so, by the 1970s, these special penal measures were falling into disuse. However, the new punitiveness has not only given new life to them, but has also led to the introduction of measures which seem to reverse or move beyond modernpenal parameters. The article argues that the reasons for these shifts lie in the profound economic and social changes that have taken place in Western societies over the course of the last two decades or so.     

Sex bias in visual images evoked by generics: A new zealand study

Male biases are known to exist in the usage, evaluation, and interpretation of masculine generics. This study explored, by means of a tachistoscope, sex-specific biases in visual images evoked by masculine (All men are created equal, At university a student can study whatever he wants) and feminine (The feminists protested outside the town hall, At university a student can study whatever she wants) generics. Photographs of male and female faces were presented in a deliberately ambiguous (subthreshold) viewing field while maintaining the masculine or feminine generic sentence on constant view. It was predicted and found in a sample of 48 university students that if generics invoked sex-specific images, the images would affect the direction in which the viewer would resolve the ambiguous faces, resulting in more reported male faces in the masculine than in the feminine generic condition.Preparation of this article was supported by a New Zealand Social Sciences Research Fund Committee grant (8632/21/24/8604) to S. H. Ng.     

A new defense of trope content view of experience

The idea that what we perceive are tropes (abstract particulars) is anything but new. In fact, it was one of the reasons why the ontology of tropes was postulated in the first place. Still, the claim that we perceive tropes is invariably and purely based on pre-philosophical intuitions or, indirectly, either as a supporting argument for the advantages of content view when compared to the relational view of experience, or as a supporting argument in favor of the irreducible subjective character of experience. In this paper, I take the content view for granted and argue in favor of what is herein referred to as the trope-content view of experience. My defense is a case of inference to the best explanation. The trope-content view can meet all reasonable desiderata on the experience and its content without assuming gaps or making the ad hoc assumption that there are different layers of content, or so shall I argue.

     

A new view on visuomotor channels: the case of the disappearing dynamics

A considerable body of kinematic data supports the proposal that independent visuomotor channels are involved in the control of the transport and grip components of reach and grasp. These channels are seen as having separate perceptual inputs, outputs and internal processing and are thought by some to correspond to independent neuroanatomical pathways. The idea that different groups of muscles and biomechanical structures can be controlled independently is attractive, but this kinematically-inspired hypothesis fails to take into account the complexity of the dynamic relationships and their interactions within the neuromusculoskeletal system. Inertial, viscous, centrifugal, coriolis, gravitational and reflex cross couplings exist between efferent drives to muscles and resulting body movements. Rotation at even a single joint generates a complex set of dynamic reaction forces and requires coordinated activation of many muscles throughout the body to maintain posture and balance. In this theoretical paper we present a new view of independent visuomotor channels in the form of an adaptive neural controller that can compensate for the above interactions and decouple the relationships between efferent drives to muscles and resulting body movements. At the same time, the neural controller renders all the dynamics (linear and nonlinear), other than time delays, of the neuromusculoskeletal system, unobservable in the visuomotor relationships. Using the geometry of nonlinear dynamical systems we show that, providing certain constraints on the structure of time delays within the system are satisfied, there exists a neural controller that can render all the dynamics of the neuromusculoskeletal system (except for time delays) unobservable in the responses. The controller simultaneously decouples all the interactive dynamics so that each of the m independent inputs controls one and only one degree of freedom of the response. This means that each degree of freedom in a multi-joint response can be controlled by an independent component of the visual input, a behaviour that has long been observed in visual tracking experiments. The controller effectively establishes m independent visuomotor channels. However, rather than reflecting separate neuroanatomical pathways, the independent channels result from a neural controller with convergent and divergent connections to compensate for the interactive nonlinear dynamics within the neuromusculoskeletal system. This new view of visuomotor channels has implications for neural control processes involved in the acquisition and adaptability of skilled perceptual-motor behaviour in general, as well as for the design of robotic controllers.