Age Differences and Sex Differences in some Introvertive and Emotional Traits

Two quantitative experiments involving eidetic imagery, performed in 1928–29 on two girls, ages 11 and 15 years, respectively, were repeated in every detail in 1974 on the same two persons. It was found that minor changes (perhaps unreliable) had occurred in the precision of eidetic projection, and that both Ss retained their ability to project a seen circle onto a target square and compare the two for “goodness of fit.”     

A Field Study of Social Information Processing Mean Differences and Variance Differences

Previous tests of the effects of socially transmitted information have not provided strong support for a social information processing approach to the formation of work related attitudes and perceptions. This study proposes that the attention-focusing effects of social information should be evidenced by unequal response variance and not necessarily in the typically hypothesized between-group mean differences of previous investigations. Three separate assessments of informational influence on work environment perceptions were conducted on a sample of state government emloyees who were relocating to an open office environment. Predictions of smaller within-group variances for employees receiving environment-salient information were partially supported in the hypotheses tested. Comparison of variance versus mean differences suggests that mean differences alone may not be sufficient for detecting social information processing effects on stimulus perception and evaluation.     

Differences in Parental Investment Contribute to Important Differences Between Men and Women

Parental investment theory addresses sex differences that result from the trade-off between parenting effort and mating effort. For example, relative to men, women spend more time caring for offspring, are more selective in assenting to sexual intercourse, are more upset by a partner's emotional infidelity than by a partner's sexual infidelity, and are better able to inhibit their behaviors in certain situations. These and other sex differences are attributable to evolved mechanisms that work in interaction with the physical and social environments.     

Factors and Taxa, Traits and Types, Differences of Degree and Differences in Kind

ABSTRACT A taxon is a nonarbitrary class whose existence is conjectured as an empirical question, not a mere semantic convenience. Numerous taxa are known to exist in nature and society (chemical elements, biological species, organic diseases, geological strata, kinds of stars, elementary particles, races, cultures, Mendelizing mental deficiencies, major psychoses, vocations, ideologies, religions). What personality types, if any, occur in the nonpathological population remains to be researched by sophisticated methods, and cannot be settled by fiat or "dimensional" preference. The intuitive concept of taxonicity is to be explicated by a combination of formal-numerical and causal criteria. Taxometric methods should include consistency tests that provide Popperian risk of strong discorroboration. In social science, latent class methods are probably more useful than cluster algorithms.     

Religious Fundamentalism and Gender Differences

The role of religious fundamentalism and its relationship to shame and guilt was evaluated in 107 students who attend a church-sponsored university. A number of personality measures were given and gender differences were analyzed. The role of externalization was similar for males in this sample to that of earlier studies. However, it was found that females showed positive correlations between externalization and both shame and guilt. For females, more fundamentalistic religious training may help to contribute to an external orientation at the expense of identifying with a personal religion, and appropriate guilt.     

Differences and interactions between stresses

This paper reviews a number of experiments in which different stresses have been applied to comparable subjects performing similar tasks. It is argued that, since the effects of the stresses are different, it is not legitimate to think of a single mechanism mediating reaction to stress. Experiments on the simultaneous application of two stresses show that the effects of heat appear to be independent of those of noise and sleeplessness, while the latter two conditions partially cancel each other. It is therefore argued that noise and sleeplessness affect the same mechanism in opposite directions, while heat affects some other mechanism. Tentatively, noise is regarded as over-arousing and lack of sleep as under-arousing.     

文化差异与性的自我表露

性的自我表露(sexual self-disclosure)是自我表露中最亲密的形式。它是一个亲密的二人关系中一方把他(她)的性事表露给伴侣的程度。出乎意料的是, 和对于大量关于其他方面的自我表露相比, 学界对这方面的研究很少。在这些为数不多的研究中, 一些研究发现：性的自我表露和人们的性满意度是相关的。因此研究性的自我表露或许有助于了解或增益人们的性生活。过去的研究从未调查过文化是否影响人们对性的自我表露。在不同的文化中, 人们性的自我表露的程度和内容都应该会有所差异。现有的关于人们自我表露中的文化差异的理论研究对未来研究性的自我表露受文化差异的影响提供了方向。     

Evolution and Developmental Sex Differences

From an evolutionary perspective, childhood is the portion of the life span during which individuals practice and refine those competencies that facilitate survival and reproduction in adulthood. Although the skeletal structure of these competencies appears to be inherent, social interaction and play flesh them out during childhood so that they are adapted to local conditions. Darwin's principles of sexual selection, including male-male competition over mates and female choice of mating partners, successfully explain the acquisition and expression of reproductive competencies in hundreds of species. When this perspective is applied to humans, it predicts sex differences that are, in fact, found in the childhood activities of boys and girls and that reflect sex differences in reproductive strategies in adulthood. A few of these differences are described, along with cultural factors that modify their expression. The article closes with a brief discussion of the social and scientific implications.     

Sex Differences and Cross-Cultural Studies

No abstract available for this article.     

Gender and Conjugal Differences in Happiness

Abstract

The author examined conjugal congruence on 4 role experiences–spousal, parental, filial, worker–and on subjective well-being (SWB). According to purposive sampling strategy, 222 community adults (111 married couples) in Taiwan completed a research questionnaire. Conjugal congruence on role experiences was linked to conjugal congruence on SWB as well as personal well-being. Analyses showed that conjugal congruence on role experiences (except the worker role) and SWB was generally high. However, some conjugal discrepancies persisted: The husbands were more committed to the worker role, whereas the wives were more committed to the parental role. Furthermore, conjugal discrepancies in role experiences were related to conjugal discrepancies in SWB as well as to husbands' happiness.     

Differences between belief and knowledge systems

Seven features which in practice seem to differentiate belief systems from knowledge systems are discussed. These are: nonconsensuality, “existence beliefs,” alternative worlds, evaluative components, episodic material, unboundedness, and variable credences. Each of these features gives rise to challenging representation problems. Progress on any of these problems within artificial intelligence would be helpful in the study of knowledge systems as well as belief systems, inasmuch as the distinction between the two types of systems is not absolute.     

Gender Differences in Gossip and Friendship

Gossip has been related to friendship as it can increase the bond between people and sense of belonging to a group. However, the role of gender in the relationship between gossip and friendship has not been examined in the literature. So, the present study examined gender differences in the relationship between friendship quality and gossip tendency with a sample of 167 female and 69 male Western Canadian undergraduate University students using the Friendship questionnaire and the Tendency to Gossip questionnaire. Given gender differences in friendship, with males being more agentic and females more communal, the relationship between gossip and friendship was predicted to be stronger in the males compared to the females. Friendship quality was positively correlated with gossip tendency in the males, but this effect was not present with the females. The information gossip scale was strongly associated with male friendship quality. This finding may be related to the greater emphasis on status with males, and that possession of knowledge and control of information is a method of attaining status. Physical appearance gossip was found to be more prevalent in females, but not related to friendship quality. This type of gossip may be a more of a competitive threat to the relationship in females. Achievement related gossip was also related to male friendship quality, which reflects the greater emphasis on individuation in male friendships.     

Behavioral Differences between Rabbits and Cats

The sensory modality of a task and the modality of a retroactive interfering activity were systematically covaried in order to test Connolly and Jones' and Pick's translation models of intersensory functioning. Forty 10-year-old boys and girls were asked to recall distance and location cues of length under intrasensory and intersensory task conditions (visual and kinesthetic). Visual and kinesthetic interpolated activities were used in an attempt to provide modality specific interference with the recall of length under the various sensory task conditions. Results of the data analyses provided no support for the Connolly and Jones model of modality specific storage with translation. Rather, the findings of the study were interpreted as supportive of Pick's hypothesis which emphasizes the coding of stimulus information (regardless of modality of input) into a form specific to whatever modality is specialized for detection of the information.     

On Conflicts and Differences Among Women

Jana Sawicki uses the work and methods of Foucault to explore the possibility of a politics of difference. I argue that Foucault may help us overcome some forms of dogmatism inherited from men's political philosophy of the past, but Foucault is otherwise useless, or worse: misleading. Because Sawicki presents a politics of diversity among women regardless of, and independent from, a politics of sexual difference, I believe Foucault is misleading.