The Portrayal of Men's Family Roles in Television Commercials

This study examines the portrayal of men infamily roles, as fathers and husbands, on televisioncommercials. A content analysis of commercials airedduring football, daytime, and prime time is carried out. The sample size of characters is 944, mostof whom are middle-class, non-Hispanic whites. Men withchildren but no spouse are more likely to be shownduring football than are women with children but no spouse. Advertisements for computers andelectronics are more likely to include men with childrenbut no spouse than women with children but no spouse.Men appearing alone with children are more likely to be shown outside than women alone withchildren. Men are less likely to be portrayed cooking,cleaning, washing dishes, and shopping than women. Menwithout spouses are more likely to be shown with boys and less likely to be shown with infants thanwomen without spouses. Men are infrequently shown takingcare of a child and are never shown caring for girls.However, men are often shown teaching, reading, talking, eating, and playing with children. Tothe extent that men are shown as more involved in familylife, they still tend to depend largely on knowledge andactivities that are stereotypically male.     

Socialist realism in the Soviet Union: Portrayal of Western European and North American businessmen

Success in Soviet trade negotiations depends to a great extent on the images that the Soviet negotiators form of their Western counterparts. These images, in turn, depend to a great extent on the images presented to such Soviet negotiators during their education, through various tales and stories.     

An Analysis of the Portrayal of Gender Roles in Turkish Television Advertisements

The aim of this study was to examine gender role portrayals in Turkish television advertising. For this purpose, a content analysis of the advertisements that aired on the selected 6 television channels was carried out. Three hundred fourteen independent advertisements were coded according to general characteristics of the advertisements and demographic and attitudinal/behavioral characteristics of the primary figures. The data show significant gender differences in these 2 groups of variables. The findings are also compared with findings of other research conducted in different cultural settings.     

The Air Pollution Experience and Physical Aggression1

Sixty undergraduate males delivered electric shocks to a confederate as punishment for making errors on a learning task. Half did so after being exposed to an aggressive model, whereas the other half did so without being exposed. Shocks were delivered from a room whose atmosphere was either unpolluted or contaminated by a moderately unpleasant odor (ethyl mercoptan) or an extremely obnoxious stench (ammonium sulfide). As hypothesized, the moderately unpleasant pollutant facilitated higher levels of aggression than either the extremely obnoxious one or the absence of pollution. However, contrary to a second hypothesis, pollution facilitated aggression only in the model's absence. The confirmation of the first hypothesis was interpreted as supporting and extending the affect-aggression model from heat research. It was speculated that disconfirmation of the second hypothesis resulted either from a ceiling effect or from malodor distracting attention away from the aggressive cues of the model. The methodological, theoretical, and applied implications of research on air pollution were discussed.     

The Influence of American Urban Culture on the Development of Normative Beliefs About Aggression in Middle-Eastern Immigrants

The effects of a community's culture on children's and adolescents' normative beliefs about the appropriateness of aggression were examined. One hundred forty-seven high school students and 103 fourth graders participated in a survey of normative beliefs; 69 high school and 44 elementary school students were of Middle-Eastern background. Although there were no differences in the beliefs of immigrant and nonimmigrant fourth graders, adolescents born in the United States were more accepting of aggression than those who immigrated from the Middle East. Moreover, adolescents who immigrated to the U.S. at age 12 or later were less accepting of aggression than those who immigrated prior to age 12.     

Aggression and Heat: The Mediating Role of Negative Affect1

Sixty-four undergraduate males received either very postive or very negative personal evaluations from an attitudinally similar or dissimilar stranger, and were then given an opportunity to aggress against this person by means of electric shock. Half were exposed to these stimuli under comfortably cool environmental conditions, while half were so treated under uncomfortably hot conditions. It was predicted that aggression toward the victim would increase as the degree of negative affect induced among subjects by the experimental conditions increased up to moderate levels, but that beyond this point, further increments in negative affect would actually tend to inhibit such behavior. A significant (p < .007) curvilinear relationship between negative affect and aggression supported these predictions, and suggested that such affect mediates the influence of high ambient temperatures on human aggression.     

关于"关系性攻击"研究的新进展

儿童的关系性攻击是近年来一些研究者较为关注的研究新领域。本文从关系性攻击的提出、关系性攻击研究的理论基础,目前关于关系性攻击研究的新进展等几个方面对关系性攻击作一介绍,并在最后对关系性攻击今后的研究方向作了一些展望,以期对关系性攻击的研究有一些启示。     

Stateside: A North American Perspective on Radical Orthodoxy

Books reviewed in this article:
Graham Ward, Cities of God
John Milbank and Catherine Pickstock, Truth in Aquinas     

A North American perspective on the psychological maltreatment of children

Psychological maltreatment may be the most common form of abuse suffered by North American children within the family environment. However, little effort has been directed towards eliminating and preventing it. The present article emphasizes the importance of thoroughly understanding the phenomenon so that effective intervention strategies can be developed. North American research studies of child maltreatment are reviewed and discussed with particular emphasis placed upon the manifestations of psychological maltreatment, the scope and the consequences of the problem, and the identification of associated risk factors. The paper identifies several areas for improvement before successful interventions can be conceptualized.     

Aggression as One Response to Conflict1

This paper presents two studies that explore the link between self-reported conflict management strategies and aggression. It was predicted that conflict strategies involving concern for the needs of the other would be inconsistent with aggressive behavior. On the other hand, conflict strategies that involve coercion and domination were predicted to be positively related to aggressive behavior. Studies using self-report and behavioral measures of aggression provide support for these predictions.     

Video Games and Aggression in Children1

This study examined the effect of playing an aggressive or nonaggressive video game on fifth-graders' free play. Twenty-two pairs of boys and 20 pairs of girls were randomly assigned to one of three conditions. One of the children in each pair played a video game rated by peers as aggressive, a video game with little aggression, or a non-video maze-solving game for 8 minutes. The other child watched. Each child was then left individually to engage in free play in a separate room for 8 minutes, and also given the opportunity to deliver rewards and punishments to another child. The results were similar for both players and observers. Girls evidenced significantly more general activity and aggressive free play after playing the aggressive video game. Girls' activity decreased and their quiet play slightly increased after playing the low aggressive game compared to the control group. Neither video game had any significant effect on boys' free play. Neither girls nor boys gave significantly more punishments or rewards after playing any of the games.     

Television and Sex-Role Stereotyping1

The possible influence of television on sex-stereotyped behavior was investigated in three studies. In Study I the portrayal of male and female central characters on children's Saturday morning television programs was examined, and a number of differences consistent with current sex-role stereotypes were found. Males and females were portrayed in different roles, they manifested different behaviors, and their behaviors were followed by different consequences. In addition, male characters were more frequent than females, and they exhibited higher rates of behavior. Similar differences in the portrayal of males and females in the commercial announcements accompanying these programs were found in Study II. The sexes differed in their frequency of appearance, their location, their roles, their expertise, and the consequences of their behavior. In Study III the effects on children's behavior of exposure to sex-stereotyped vs. non-stereotyped behavior by adult televised models were examined. It was found that children manifested greater imitation and recall for the behavior of a same-sex model with the result that boys exposed to “stereotyped” behavior by a male and female model manifested and recalled relatively more “masculine” behavior than those exposed to “non-stereotyped” behavior, while the opposite trend obtained for girls. Implications of these three studies for television's contribution to sex-stereotyped behavior are discussed.     

The Impact of Attributional Processes on Triggered Displaced Aggression

The current study examined the role of attributional processes on triggered displaced aggression and specified the conditions wherein affect versus attributions would predict the degree of aggressive responding. Consistent with expectations, attributions for a minor provoking event predicted the degree of aggression towards targets that had violated expectations or where a specific attribution was provided. When no such expectancy violation occurred, only negative affect generated by the provocation predicted aggression. Furthermore, results indicated that initial feelings toward a provoking target impacted aggressive responding by influencing attributions made for a target's provoking action. When faced with a minor provocation, individuals were more likely to spontaneously attribute that event to external causes for people they like (e.g., positive valence targets), thus reducing the subsequent degree of aggressive retaliation. In contrast, for disliked targets, individuals were more likely to attribute provoking behavior to internal causes, resulting in an increase in aggression. The new model provides a theoretical extension to the cognitive-neoassociationistic perspective on aggression (L. Berkowitz, 1989, 1990, 1993).

Men,Muscles, and Machismo: The Relationship Between Television Violence Exposure and Aggression and Hostility in the Presence of Hypermasculinity

This study examined the effects of exposure to television programming that contains both violent actions and macho portrayals of male characters on subsequent self-reports of aggression and hostility. Experimental results showed that those exposed to a violent and hypermasculine television program had a larger increase in reports of aggression and hostility compared to those exposed to a nonviolent, hypermasculine television program. Self-reports of higher levels of hypermasculinity prior to exposure led to larger increases in aggression and hostility after exposure. Predicted interactions between exposure to the stimulus and prior hypermasculinity occurred for many of the aggression/hostility dimensions. The theory of neo-associationism and priming is discussed to explain the patterns of results.