Dynamic Stereotypes of Power: Perceived Change and Stability in Gender Hierarchies

Despite widespread change in gender roles, women continue to have less power than men. From the perspective of social role theory, this gender difference in power should be perceived as eroding as women gain access to male-dominated roles typically associated with power. Study 1's open-ended reports nearly unanimously projected an increase in women's power over the next 50 years, whereas responses were equally split between projecting stability or a decrease in men's power. Study 2's quantitative findings illustrated that participants perceived women as gaining in political, economic, occupational, individual, and relational power from the past into the future. In contrast, men were perceived as decreasing in relational power but maintaining levels of other forms of power over time. Despite the projections of increases in women's power, women were not projected to reach parity with men by 2050. We examine the implications of these beliefs for future social change.     

Dark Webs: Tantra,Black Magic,and Cyberspace

International Journal of Hindu Studies - This article examines the changing nature of Tantra in the digital era by focusing on three online tāntrik practitioners from Assam. The region of...     

Resistance Revisited: Disillusionment,Hierarchies and the Brain

With the proliferation of new psychoanalytic theories and methods, some concepts, such as resistance and free association, have been cast aside. This paper looks at a pattern of forward motion and retreat that characterizes defense, but with a significant twist. The author maintains that there is an alternation between patients’ novel observations about themselves and their families and a logical sounding, authoritative dismissal of all they had just described. Considerations of left and right hemisphere functioning that echo this clinical pattern, the idea of powerful illusions being shed and the ubiquity of hierarchies are considered. A case for the importance of retaining the concept of resistance—that is, stopping the forward motion of treatment—is considered. Implications for the length of psychoanalytic treatment and the role of authority are discussed.

     

Navigating the Workplace: The Costs and Benefits of Shifting Identities at Work among Early Career U.S. Black Women

Although much progress has been made in race relations in the United States, discrimination still persists in the workplace. As a result, Black women, among individuals from other underrepresented groups, develop coping strategies, such as identity shifting, to diminish the negative consequences of discrimination. We used the phenomenological variant of ecological systems theory to examine shifting racial, gender, and class identities among early career (recent college graduates) U.S. Black women working in predominantly White environments. Drawing on ten semi-structured interviews with college-educated Black women, data were analyzed with an interpretative phenomenological analysis. The results revealed two major themes: (a) benefits of identity shifting and (b) the costs of identity shifting, the latter with five subthemes: (a) managing interpersonal rejection: frozen effect, (b) assimilation to the dominant culture and inauthenticity, (c) confronting and dismantling stereotypes, (d) model Black citizen, and (c) mixed feelings toward identity shifting. The findings indicate that Black women vacillate between the benefits and costs of identity shifting, altering their dialect and behavior to meet social norms. Our study’s implications suggest the necessity of a multicultural approach by employers to affirm their workers’ social identities, strengthen employee relationships, and lessen the need for shifting identities.     

Components of Teamwork: Impact on Evaluations of Contributions to Work Team Effectiveness1

This study examined the relationship between Dickinson's (1993) components of teamwork and ratings of team members' contributions to team success. Undergraduate students (n= 179) each viewed 1 of 8 videotapes depicting a team interacting to solve the Winter Survival Problem. Participants then completed a 52-item questionnaire assessing the connection between teamwork components and perceptions of contributions to team productivity, team viability, teamwork, and overall team performance. With 1 exception, all of the teamwork components manipulated in the study significantly affected appraisals of several aspects of worker effectiveness. Furthermore, raters considered teamwork behaviors that provided direct assistance or direction to team members as being especially critical.     

Hierarchies,Networks, and Causality: The Applied Evolutionary Epistemological Approach

Applied Evolutionary Epistemology is a scientific-philosophical theory that defines evolution as the set of phenomena whereby units evolve at levels of ontological hierarchies by mechanisms and processes. This theory also provides a methodology to study evolution, namely, studying evolution involves identifying the units that evolve, the levels at which they evolve, and the mechanisms and processes whereby they evolve. Identifying units and levels of evolution in turn requires the development of ontological hierarchy theories, and examining mechanisms and processes necessitates theorizing about causality. Together, hierarchy and causality theories explain how biorealities form and diversify with time. This paper analyzes how Applied EE redefines both hierarchy and causality theories in the light of the recent explosion of network approaches to causal reasoning associated with studies on reticulate and macroevolution. Causality theories have often been framed from within a rigid, ladder-like hierarchy theory where the rungs of the ladder represent the different levels, and the elements on the rungs represent the evolving units. Causality then is either defined reductionistically as an upward movement along the strands of a singular hierarchy, or holistically as a downward movement along that same hierarchy. Upward causation theories thereby analyze causal processes in time, i.e. over the course of natural history or phylogenetically, as Darwin and the founders of the Modern Synthesis intended. Downward causation theories analyze causal processes in space, ontogenetically or ecologically, as the current eco-evo-devo schools are evidencing. This work demonstrates how macroevolution and reticulate evolution theories add to the complexity by examining reticulate causal processes in space–time, and the interactional hierarchies that such studies bring forth introduce a new form of causation that is here called reticulate causation. Reticulate causation occurs between units and levels belonging to different as well as to the same ontological hierarchies. This article concludes that beyond recognizing the existence of multiple units, levels, and mechanisms or processes of evolution, also the existence of multiple kinds of evolutionary causation as well as the existence of multiple evolutionary hierarchies needs to be acknowledged. This furthermore implies that evolution is a pluralistic process divisible into different kinds.

     

Dominance Hierarchies and Health: Constructing Personal Zones of Spiritual Power and Healing in Modern Medicine

Ethological studies of animals in groups and sociobiology indicate that hierarchies of dominance amongst some species ensure the survival of the group. When transferred to human groups, dominance hierarchies suggest a crucial role played by recasting the scope of such hierarchies of dominant and subordinate members to included “hyper-dominant beings.” A recognition of such beings as even more dominant than the socially dominant members of a hierarchy facilitates the empowerment of the socially subordinate members. Religious belief and practice works to establish such hyper-dominant beings (“gods,” “goddesses,” and so forth) as superior members of human groups. Doing so is a means of ensuring the survival of the species and, thus, enhancing healing and human health. The “doctor–patient” relationship is examined from such a point of view, with an emphasis on whether the hierarchy created by the relationship allows consideration of alternative and complementary forms of medical treatment.     

Webs, cell assemblies, and chunking in neural nets: introduction.

This introduction to Wickelgren (1992), describes a theory of idea representation and learning in the cerebral cortex and seven properties of Hebb's (1949) formulation of cell assemblies that have played a major role in all such neural net models. Ideas are represented in the cerebral cortex by webs (innate cell assemblies), using sparse coding with sparse, all-or-none, innate linking. Recruiting a web to represent a new idea is called chunking. The innate links that bind the neurons of a web are basal dendritic synapses. Learning modifies the apical dendritic synapses that associate neurons in one web to neurons in another web.     

Generation and Gender: Normative and Covert Hierarchies

This essay argues that gender is an irreducible category of clinical observation and theorizing, as crucial to the family therapy paradigm as the concept of "generation." Gender, therefore, is not a secondary, mediating variable like race, class, or ethnicity, but, rather, a fundamental, organizing principle of all family systems. The author analyzes the history and politics of family therapy in order to explicate how gender, as a co-equal concept, was erased as a universal principle of family organization, leaving only generation. The theoretical and clinical implications of situating gender at the center of family therapy are then discussed.     

Authenticity at Work: Development and Validation of an Individual Authenticity Measure at Work

Building on the work by Barrett-Lennard (Carl Rogers’ helping system: Journey & substance. Sage, London 1998) and Wood et al. (J Couns Psychol 55:385–399 2008), this study describes the development and validation of a theory-based measure of state authenticity at work, the Individual Authenticity Measure at Work (IAM Work). Even though this construct is obviously relevant to the work context (e.g., as regards issues of work relations, leadership and well-being), none of the instruments currently available focuses on authenticity in the area of work and organizational psychology. A total sample of 646 participants was divided in two equal sized subsamples. Exploratory factor analysis supported the underlying tripartite construct of authenticity at work, resulting in the subscales authentic living, self-alienation, and accepting external influences. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the tripartite construct and showed good psychometric properties of the state-focused measure of authenticity at work. Finally, correlation analysis showed that each subscale and the total score of authenticity was positively related to commonly used work outcomes such as job satisfaction, in-role performance, and work engagement. This study concludes that the IAM Work is a reliable and valid measure of state authenticity at work. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.     

工作情景中差错概念与差错取向因素分析

研究一调查了解我国工作差错概念以及对待差错的基本态度与行为。研究二通过问卷调查,分析差错取向因素结构及其影响因素,结果发现,差错是一种目标导向的行为;差错取向由差错处理、差错掩盖、差错压力和差错预防四个因素组成,并且管理层次和文化程度对差错取向有较大的影响。     

Team Autonomy, Performance, and Member Job Strain: Uncovering the Teamwork KSA Link

En raison du développement des équipes de travail dans les organisations, on souhaite obtenir des informations sur la meilleure façon de structurer les groupes pour les rendre efficients. Cette étude porte sur la relation de l'expérience de l'autonomie et du travail en équipe, des capacités et des compétences (KSAs) avec la performance du groupe et l'effort émanant de ses membres. Deux modèles ont été mis à l'épreuve à partir d'une recherche théorique et empirique continue. Des données provenant d'un échantillon de 41 équipes de production (174 participants) apportèrent des éléments en faveur du modèle de médiation selon lequel l'autonomie est associée à la perfomance et à l'effort par l'intermédiaire des KSAs. Le modèle alternatif de modération qui suppose que l'autonomie et les KSAs interagissent pour déboucher sur la performance et l'effort ne fut pas corroboré.
Given the increasing use of work teams in organizations, interest exists in identifying the best ways to design teams so that they lead to positive outcomes. This study examined how team autonomy and teamwork knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) relate to team performance and member job strain. Based on extant empirical and theoretical work, two models were tested. findings from a sample of 41 production teams (174 team members) showed support for the mediation model—that autonomy is associated with performance and strain through teamwork KSAs. The alternative moderation model, suggesting that autonomy and teamwork KSAs interact in predicting performance and strain, was not supported.     

Navigating the Penumbra: Children and Moral Responsibility

Child moral agency is dismissed in many historical and contemporary accounts based on children's supposed lack or marginal possession of agency-bearing capacities, including reason, deliberation, and judgment, amongst others. Given its prominence in the philosophical canon, I call this the traditional view of child agency. Recent advancements in moral developmental psychology challenge the traditional view, pointing toward the possession of relevant capacities and competencies for moral and responsible agency in early and middle childhood. I argue that both views—traditional and developmental—underdetermine our practices of holding children responsible in our common interactions. For one, we face significant epistemic barriers in accurately assessing children’s agential status qua possession of responsibility-bearing capacities and competencies. Second, overreliance on assessments of individualistic capacities emphasizes an atomistic view of agency at the expense of relational views that are of particular relevance for children as uniquely developing persons. Our practices of holding children responsible and the values that guide these practices in the context of supportive relationships are central to both supporting current and drawing out future responsible agency in childhood and, importantly, provide us with a path to regard children as participants in our moral communities, as opposed to mere agents-in-waiting.     

The Thrill of Creative Effort at Work: An Empirical Study on Work,Creative Effort and Well-Being

The connections between creative effort at work and four measures of subjective well-being are studied using data on a sample of 922 Jewish Israeli adults who are salaried employees. The paper finds that self-reported creative effort aimed at making work more enjoyable is positively associated with global evaluation of life; with purpose and meaning in life, and with positive emotions. No significant link with negative emotions was found. This study also finds significant associations with three additional intrinsic features of work-creative tasks; independence at work and intellectual work-and various measures of subjective well-being, even when controlling for age, gender, marital status, having children, education, time worked, financial satisfaction, subjective health and religiosity. The robustness of the links between intrinsic features of work and subjective well-being demonstrate that work serves not only as a means to material ends, but also as a direct source of personal happiness, meaning and satisfaction.     

Hierarchies, similarity, and interactivity in object recognition: "category-specific" neuropsychological deficits.

Category-specific impairments of object recognition and naming are among the most intriguing disorders in neuropsychology, affecting the retrieval of knowledge about either living or nonliving things. They can give us insight into the nature of our representations of objects: Have we evolved different neural systems for recognizing different categories of object? What kinds of knowledge are important for recognizing particular objects? How does visual similarity within a category influence object recognition and representation? What is the nature of our semantic knowledge about different objects? We review the evidence on category-specific impairments, arguing that deficits even for one class of object (e.g., living things) cannot be accounted for in terms of a single information processing disorder across all patients; problems arise at contrasting loci in different patients. The same apparent pattern of impairment can be produced by damage to different loci. According to a new processing framework for object recognition and naming, the hierarchical interactive theory (HIT), we have a hierarchy of highly interactive stored representations. HIT explains the variety of patients in terms of (1) lesions at different levels of processing and (2) different forms of stored knowledge used both for particular tasks and for particular categories of object.