DON'T ROCK THE BOAT: WOMEN'S BENEVOLENT SEXISM PREDICTS FEARS OF MARITAL VIOLENCE

We examined how Spanish women's benevolent sexism (a sex-role attitude) affects their perceptions of whether a hypothetical husband will feel threatened by a wife's success at work. In a social perception study, female participants ( N  = 210) read a vignette in which a husband and his wife argued over her job promotion. Women's benevolent sexism (but not hostile sexism) predicted viewing the husband as more threatened by his wife's promotion and more likely to aggress against her (intimate partner violence). The effect of women's benevolent sexism was robust and not mitigated when specific information about the husband's attitude (traditional, egalitarian, no information) was provided. Belief that a husband would feel threatened by a wife's promotion partially mediated the relationship between women's benevolent sexism scores and their anticipation that the husband would become violent. Benevolently sexist women may embrace traditional roles in relationships in part to avoid antagonizing male partners, ultimately maintaining the status quo.     

Perfectionism and Sexual Satisfaction in Intimate Relationships

This study sought to provide information on the relations between trait perfectionism and perfectionistic self-presentation and sexual satisfaction in married couples. A sample of 74 married or cohabiting couples were recruited from the community to participate in the study. They completed measures of perfectionism, perfectionistic self-presentation, sexual satisfaction, dyadic adjustment, and depression. The results showed that the interpersonal dimensions of trait perfectionism were negatively related to general sexual satisfaction and sexual satisfaction with the partner for both husbands and wives. After partialing out marital satisfaction and depression, the husband's sexual satisfaction was significantly negatively correlated with his own socially prescribed perfectionism and with his wife's ratings of other-oriented perfectionism. The wife's satisfaction was significantly negatively correlated both with her husband's socially prescribed perfectionism and with her own socially prescribed perfectionism, other-oriented perfectionism, and perfectionistic self-presentation. Regression analyses suggest that the wife's other-oriented perfectionism is a unique predictor of her general lower sexual satisfaction and her husband's lower satisfaction with her contribution to the sexual relationship. Overall, the findings suggest that perfectionistic expectations have an important role to play in sexual satisfaction in married couples.     

“...and a Japanese wife.” Social structural antecedents of women's role values in Japan

Japanese women were asked to rank the relative importance they place on the role of wife, mother, woman, and person as well as the relative importance they believe their husbands place on similar male roles. Also asked were questions on the qualities of a good wife, the tone of interpersonal relationships with husbands, and the division of household responsibilities. Findings support the hypothesis that social structural variables related to environmental complexity result in an emphasis on individuality. Furthermore, although the Japanese wife's uncomplaining acceptance of household chores and responsibilities appears to make her fit the stereotype of the selfless domestic desirous of filling her husband's every wish, she seems to be more a disinterested than a willing servant, her husband being nowhere as important a factor in her social and psychological existence as are her children.     

原生家庭父母冲突、 夫妻冲突解决模式与婚姻质量的关系:基于主客体互倚模型的分析

采用问卷调查法,对263对夫妻的原生家庭父母冲突、 夫妻冲突解决模式和婚姻质量进行测量.结果表明,(1)个体的原生家庭父母冲突与自身以及配偶的婚姻质量呈显著负相关;(2)丈夫的原生家庭冲突可以预测自身以及妻子的冲突解决模式,妻子的原生家庭冲突可预测丈夫的冲突解决模式;(3)丈夫夫妻冲突解决模式在双方原生家庭父母冲突对自...     

The relationship of sex-role norms to couple and parental demographics

Four underlying, common sex role factors were identified via separate factor analyses on husbands' and wives' responses to a battery of Likert items tapping sex role norms. Canonical correlation analyses showed that sex role norms were significantly related to couple and parental demographics. Modern sex role norms were positively related to wife's education, occupational status and income, to wife's mother's occupation and work experience, and to husband's education, but negatively related to presence of young children.     

Marriage in academe: Hitching your wagon to a star

A frequent pattern of marital dysfunction seen in an academic setting is described. Typically, the wife of a professor sublimates her own strong intellectual achievement needs in order to facilitate her husband's success. After he achieves renown, she expects he will support her efforts to satisfy suppressed achievement strivings. The husband/professor is locked into an external reward system and is unwilling to meet his wife's needs, leading to marital conflict. Background factors in both spouses set up this dysfunctional pattern. Marital therapy with an emphasis on self versus others' expectations for achievement is recommended. A case study is presented.     

目标坚持性和目标灵活性对老年夫妻幸福感的影响:基于行动者-对象互依性模型

采用目标坚持性/灵活性量表和费城老年中心信心量表对北京的258对老年夫妻进行问卷调查,基于行动者-对象互依性模型,探讨目标处理策略对老年夫妻幸福感的影响。结果发现：（1）夫妻双方的目标处理策略和幸福感分别具有一致性;（2）目标坚持性和灵活性均对自身幸福感有积极效应;（3）丈夫目标坚持性对妻子幸福感有积极效应,但妻子目标坚持性对丈夫幸福感作用不显著;丈夫和妻子的目标灵活性均对配偶幸福感有积极效应;（4）对于丈夫的幸福感,目标灵活性的行动者效应和对象效应均强于目标坚持性;对于妻子的幸福感,目标坚持性和灵活性的行动者效应和对象效应差异均不显著。目标坚持性和目标灵活性对夫妻幸福感的影响存在差异。     

Husbands' and wives' alcohol use disorders and marital interactions as longitudinal predictors of marital adjustment

In this longitudinal study, the relationships among wives' and husbands' lifetime alcoholism status, marital behaviors, and marital adjustment were tested. Participants were 105 couples from the Michigan Longitudinal Study (MLS), an ongoing multimethod investigation of substance use in a community-based sample of alcoholics, nonalcoholics, and their families. At baseline (T1), husbands and wives completed a series of diagnostic measures, and lifetime diagnosis of alcohol use disorder (AUD, as defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th ed.), was assessed. Couples completed a problem-solving marital interaction task 3 years later at T2, which was coded for the ratio of positive to negative behaviors. Couples also completed a measure of marital adjustment at T4 (9 years after T1 and 6 years after T2). Results showed that husbands' lifetime AUD predicted lower levels of their wife's positive marital behaviors 3 years later but was not related to their own or their wife's marital adjustment 9 years from baseline. By contrast, wives' lifetime AUD had direct negative associations with their own and their husband's marital satisfaction 9 years later, and wives' marital behaviors during the problem-solving task predicted their own and their husband's marital satisfaction 6 years later. Findings indicate that marital adjustment in alcoholic couples may be driven more by the wives' than the husbands' AUD and marital behavior. Implications for intervention with alcoholic couples were discussed.     

Can Spouses Provide Knowledge of Each Other's Communication Patterns? A Study of Self‐Reports,Spouses' Reports,and Observational Coding

The purposes of this study were (1) to assess individuals' self-reports of communication and their reports about their spouses' communication in order to examine the congruence of spousal views and (2) to investigate whether each report provided unique information about observed marital interactions. These associations were evaluated in a sample of 119 longtime married couples. The Verbal Aggression and Cooperation subscales from the Conflicts and Problem-Solving Scales were used as measures of negative and positive aspects of communication. The findings indicated that self-reports of both verbal aggression and cooperation were strongly associated with the same individual's report of his or her spouse's verbal aggression and cooperation. Conversely, self-reports were only moderately associated with reports made by spouses (e.g., the husband's report of his wife's communication). Hence, within-reporter agreement was higher than between-reporter agreement about marital communication. When entered into regression models, reports made by spouses, but not self-reports, explained unique variance in observations of marital hostility and affection. There was one exception: Wife self-report of verbal aggression explained unique variance in coders' ratings of wife hostility, controlling for husband report of wife verbal aggression. Findings indicate the importance of assessing partners' views of one another's communication for the most accurate portrayal of marital interactions. Implications for research and clinical work are discussed.     

Amnesia and second language learning

The ability of an anterograde amnesic C.S. to learn a second language is assessed. First, her claim that she learned Italian while amnesic was examined in a series of formal tests of Italian. Second, C.S. and her husband were tutored in French and her acquisition was compared to that of her husband's. Third, C.S.'s ability to learn other kinds of verbal material with practice was investigated. The implications of C.S.'s apparent ability to learn a second language in the presence of a severe deficit for memory for other kinds of verbal material is discussed.     

The princess in the tower: Zelda Fitzgerald's creative impasse

Gifted women often find it difficult to integrate an acceptable social image with an autonomous artistic identity. This paper explores the ambitions and conflicts of Zelda Fitzgerald, who aspired to be an artist in several fields, but whose fame is largely contingent on the role she played in the life of her husband, F. Scott Fitzgerald. Zelda's flamboyant public pose, which served as a model for many of her husband's literary characters, is interpreted as an attempt to organize a consistent identity configuration by means of constant appeals for applause from an admiring audience. But although this configuration provided some stability and cohesion for her during her twenties, it was a superficial and vulnerable structure which failed to support her serious artistic aspirations. An examination of the separation conflicts and difficulties in internalization which contributed to Zelda's dilemma leads to a consideration of the role of the father in the organization of differentiated female achievements. Although Zelda Fitzgerald's pathology was extreme, her struggles suggest useful insights into the intrapsychic and social barriers commonly confronting creative women.     

The transvestite and his wife

This study reports the analysis of a transvestite man through focusing on his marital interaction and his wife's complementary behavior to his perversion. In his marriage, this patient dramatically recapitulated many of his infantile core conflicts, fixations, and traumas associated with his cross-dressing. These were: (1) the marital crisis which brought him into analysis and its associations with his split gender identifications; (2) his wife's ability to force him into cross-dressing on cue; (3) the extent to which his cross-dressing was dependent on the degree of psychic separateness he felt from his wife; and (4) his and his wife's complementary transvestite fantasies. Both this man and his wife's attempted to use their marriage as a cure for resolving their complementary transvestite problem. The extent to which they were able to accomplish this before the husband's "breakdown" (brought about by the wife's affair) was examined. The nature of his transvestite transference--what was termed his "John Wayne transference"--provided him with the ideal vehicle for the transferential working-through of the many aspects of his transvestite pathology. The continuance of a strong positive and unanalyzed transference after the formal end of the analysis was commented upon.     

SOCIAL CLASS PERCEPTION AND SOCIAL STATUS AMONG SWEDISH YOUTH

Social class perception (identification) was studied as a function of ‘objective’ status (socioeconomic level) and class (occupational class) using a sample of Swedish high school students. Confirming the two minor hypotheses, the results disclosed that class perception was affected by both the ‘objective’ class and status of the subject: the manual occupational class, and those with low socioeconomic status, had in general a higher proportion of working-class identification than the nonmanual class, and those with low socioeconomic status, respectively. However, the major hypothesis, an interaction hypothesis stating that manuals are not affected by status in their class perceptions, was not confirmed. The results are discussed in the context of social psychological theory and earlier empirical research.     

Predicted and Recommended Behavior of a Woman as a Function of Her Inferred Helplessness in the Dowry and Wife-Beating Predicaments

Two experiments, using hypothetical situations, examined predictions and recommendations regarding a woman's behavior in the dowry and wife-beating predicaments as a function of her perceived helplessness. The dowry experiment described the situation of a stimulus person who has to decide whether to marry a boy under the dowry condition and had a 2 (subject's sex) × 2 (stimulus person's attractiveness) × 2(stimulus person's age) × 3 (stimulus person's socioeconomic status) factorial design, with estimated likelihood of marrying and recommendation to marry as the two dependent measures. The wife-beating experiment described the situation of a battered stimulus person who has to decide whether to leave her violent husband and had a 2 (subject's sex) × 2 (stimulus person's economic independence) × 2 (stimulus person's having children) × 3 (stimulus person's socioeconomic status) factorial design, with estimated likelihood of leaving the husband and recommendation to leave the husband as the two dependent measures. The subjects of the two experiments were undergraduate or graduate students of Bombay University, with 15 subjects per cell in the dowry experiment and 13 subjects per cell in the wife-beating experiment. Female subjects gave a stronger recommendation against marrying under the dowry condition and in favor of leaving the husband than did male subjects. The economically independent women was perceived as more likely to leave the husband than the dependent woman. Results of the wife-beating experiment suggested greater social constraints, under some conditions, on the middle class woman as compared to upper and lower class women in India.     

An investigation of the relationship between work and family size decisions over time

This longitudinal study finds that wife's labor force participation and family size are spuriously correlated. Research data are from the Panel Study of Young Married Couples collected by the Survey Research Laboratory of the University of Illinois. The sample represents a marriage cohort. In 1972, a list of couples married in August of that year and residing in the Chicago metropolitan area was provided by the Illinois Office of Vital Records. Only those couples in which the husband was aged 30 or less were considered. A random sample of 400 couples was drawn from this group. At the start of the survey, the average age of the women was 21 and men 23. Data used in the study consisted of information collected in 1978 and 1980, after 6 and 8 years of marriage. 2 measures of actual labor force behavior of the wife were taken at each of the 2 points in time. Family size was indicated through 3 measures at each point in time, and achievement motivation of the wife was measured with a 5-point bipolar very positive/very negative scale asking for the evaluation of the wife's attitude toward work. Responses from both the husband and wife served as 2 measures of a latent achievement motivation variable in the key informant methodology. 3 dimensions of sex role norms were measured with Scanzoni's Wife's Self-actualization Scale, Traditional Wife Role Scale, and Problematic Husband Alterations Scale. Responses from both spouses were used. Findings indicate that, except for certain special cases, wife's work and family size are not causally related. Although negatively correlated between themselves, wife's work and family size appear to be mutually dependent on achievement motivation of the wife, sex role norms, and the felt value of children. Thus, when the effects of these antecedents are partialled-out, no evidence for causality exists between wife's work and family size outcomes. Evidence suggests that the spouses in a marriage socially construct their role relationships and this then serves as a common antecedent influencing work and family size choices.     

One step behind: Current stereotypes of women,achievement, and work

This paper describes a series of studies that used projective story cues to elicit the stereotypes held by sixth-form students regarding the likely consequences of males' and females' successes in a variety of academic and occupational settings. Four studies are described. In the first a boyfriend and girlfriend are receiving their advanced level results, in the second a couple are meeting for the first time at a party, in the third a married couple are deciding to start a family, and in the fourth, one member of a couple has been offered promotion that involves a move of 200 miles. Within each of these settings the ratio of the male to female success (academic and/or occupational) was systematically varied. The results, which show that this ratio of male to female success has a more significant influence upon the amount of negative imagery expressed toward the females' than the males' success are discussed, as is the predominance in the students' stories of a female character who was willing to give up her career in order to protect her marriage and family, and her husband's career. These are interpreted as illustrating the strong double standard that still exists for males' and females' successes and careers.This research was conducted in partial fulfillment of the degree of D.Phil. at the University of Oxford, and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.     

Personality correlates of occupational status according to Holland types

The present investigation sought to identify personality correlates of occupational status. Because occupational status is a direct function of occupation, the relationship between personality and status was examined both within and across occupational groups using Holland's 1973 typology. Four two-way analyses of covariance of 16PF (Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire, Form A) second-order personality factors were performed using data from 175 employed adult males. No single personality factor was associated with status across occupational types. Among Social occupations, the low-status group had higher Extraversion and lower Anxiety scores than the high-status group. In general, the relationship between personality factors and occupational types provided additional confirmation of Holland's theory using an employed adult sample.     

The division of labor in close relationships: An asymmetrical conflict issue

This research addresses couples’reports of their (hypothetical) attempts to maintain or change a gendered division of labor through conflict interactions. Two experiments in which spouses responded to scenarios showed that spouses reported more conflict over the division of housework than conflict over paid work and child care, and that wives more often than husbands desired a change in their spouses’contribution. Spouses reported more wife‐demand/husband‐withdraw than husband‐demand/wife‐withdraw interaction during hypothetical conflict over the division of labor, but only when the wife desired a change in her spouse's contribution. Together, the data imply that wife‐demand/husband‐withdraw interaction is a likely response to the asymmetrically structured conflict situation in which the wife is discontent with her husband's contribution to housework, while her husband wants to maintain the status quo. We further showed that defenders of the status quo were more likely expected to reach their goal than complainants. In the role of complainant, wives were more likely expected to reach their goal than were their husbands, but only when the conflict issue concerned their own gender stereotypical domain (i.e., family work).     

The perception of women's status in Israel as a social problem

This study examines the perception of the status of women in Israel as a social problem, its cognitive structure and its correlates. The 994 respondents included a sample of university students, nurses, and female army officers. In general, the results suggest that feminist issues are perceived as less severe than most other social problems and that men perceive feminist issues as significantly less severe than do women. Factor analyses indicate that men and women think about social problems differently and that women have a broader more integrated conception of sex inequality. Sex, religiosity, education, and occupational context were all found to be significant predictors of perceptions of women's issues as social problems.