The real and the ideal; gender differences in heterosexual behaviour among Norwegian adolescents

This article focuses on gender differences in early heterosexual behaviour among Norwegian adolescents. The material comprised a random sample of 3000 Norwegian adolescents aged 17–19 years. The response rate was 63%. Data were collected by means of anonymous self-administered questionnaires. Sixty-nine per cent of the girls and 59% of the boys had had sexual intercourse. The majority of the adolescents, and a larger percentage of girls than of boys, had their first intercourse within a relationship of mutual commitment. The boys' first coital partners were 0.2 years younger than the boys themselves and the girls' partners were 2.8 years older than were the girls. Boys had had more coital partners than girls but girls had had intercourse more often than boys. Coital frequency was affected more by how long the adolescents had known the partner than by gender as such. In conclusion, boys and girls aged between 17 and 19 years form part of couples at two different stages of development. For this reason, boys and girls accumulate different sexual experiences in the early stage of their sexual careers.     

The conception of audience in Perelman and Isocrates: Locating the ideal in the real

The author compares two theoretical models which develop constructs of an ideal audience. Chaim Perelman's universal audience serves a methodological function within the New Rhetoric which provides for the examination of philosophical arguments on values. Implicit within the work of Isocrates is a competing image which asserts that the ideal audience is empowered by the conditions of argument to engage the advocate in discursive praxis to construct and embody a consensus on contingency-driven value debates. The author concludes that the concept of an ideal audience will be most valuable where interest in adherence to theses is less central than attendance to relationships born in and borne by discourse. Such a view has purchase within a constitutive view of rhetorical relations which asserts that the most useful role for argument is as an invitation to engagement. The situation of argumentation within a deontological ethics requires the partnership and participation of individuals in a mutually constructed discursive praxis.David Douglas Dunlap is a Doctoral Candidate in Speech Communication at Pennsylvania State University     

The self ideal versus the model ideal

A list of 50 ways of perceiving one's personal ideal was constructed and administered to 74 women about to make a lifelong commitment. The mean number of items endorsed was 28. An item analysis yielded discrimination indices for 28 items at better than the .05 level of significance. These attitudes were discussed as less motivativing, and opposite attitudes from the same point of view were grouped under six principles of motivation: dominant relationship, closeness, growth, valuational center, similarity, realism. From these two diametrically opposite perceptual structures of attitudes emerged the self ideal and the model ideal.Daniel Patrick Foley, S.J., is with Xavier University. This report is based on a paper entitled Constellation of Attitudes Toward a Religious Ideal, presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, Honolulu, Hawaii, September, 1972.     

Gender‐typing of leadership: Evaluations of real and ideal managers

This research focuses on female underrepresentation in managerial positions. Specifically, two studies examine gender‐typing for managerial roles in Spain using ratings for real and ideal managers. In addition, we analyse the existence of same‐gender bias on evaluations of the behavior of actual leaders. In the first study, 195 Spanish workers evaluate the extent to which gender‐stereotypical traits are important for becoming a successful middle manager in three conditions (female managers, male managers, and managers in general). In the second study, we explore the degree to which the behavior of real Spanish managers is gender‐typed and the existence of same‐gender bias on leadership styles – transformational, transactional and avoidant/passive – and on leadership outcomes – effectiveness, extra effort and satisfaction – from the perspective of subordinates (N = 605). Overall, the results demonstrate that masculine characteristics were rated as more important than feminine characteristics for managerial positions, and they were more often assigned to male managers than to female managers. Unexpectedly, this manager‐male association is stronger among female participants than among male participants. Our findings also demonstrate that women subordinates evaluate their same‐sex supervisors more favorably in transformational leadership, effectiveness, and extra effort. The negative consequences derived from gender‐typing managerial positions are highlighted according to the role congruity theory of prejudice toward female leaders. The positive effects of in‐group female bias on behavior ratings are also noted. The mixed implications of these results for women's advancement to leadership positions are discussed.     

The ideal advocate and limited resources

The central thesis of this paper is that cost-containment challenges to an Ideal Advocate model of the physician-patient relationship can be met under proper circumstances. More specifically, it is possible for physicians to constrain costs while still making clinical decisions that are free from considerations of the physician's own interests and are uninfluenced by judgements about the patient's worth. But what is required is a closed distributive system, in which savings of resources at one point are applied to others' care of higher priority and a just system, that is, a system whose distributive priorities are consistent with relevant principles of justice under moderate scarcity. The historical context of the argument and a stopgap, “palliative,” step are also developed.     

Congruence of real and ideal job characteristics: A focus on sex,parenthood status,and extrinsic characteristics

Current theory, conceptualized almost exclusively in terms of the work setting, has assumed that intrinsic job characteristics are most relevant for workers' job satisfaction. A recent emphasis, however, on the interrelatedness of the nonwork and work domains suggests a need to reevaluate the importance of extrinsic job characteristics in workers' lives. Intrinsic and extrinsic job characteristics were studied in relation to perceived real-ideal job characteristic congruence for a sample of male and female full-time lawyers. In keeping with a focus on nonwork influences, two types of extrinsic characteristic were delineated: those related solely to the job, and those related to the work/parenting intersection. Results indicate that sex differences exist in perceived real-ideal congruence even when variables known to covary with sex in the work setting are controlled. The relevance to perceived real-ideal congruence of extrinsic job characteristics, and especially those related to the work/parenting intersection, appears clear from the results of this study.     

From ideal to real: a longitudinal study of the role of implicit leadership theories on leader-member exchanges and employee outcomes

The results of the present longitudinal study demonstrate the importance of implicit leadership theories (ILTs) for the quality of leader-member exchanges (LMX) and employees' organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and well-being. Results based on a sample of 439 employees who completed the study questionnaires at 2 time points showed that the closer employees perceived their actual manager's profile to be to the ILTs they endorsed, the better the quality of LMX. Results also indicated that the implicit-explicit leadership traits difference had indirect effects on employee attitudes and well-being. These findings were consistent across employee groups that differed in terms of job demand and the duration of manager-employee relation, but not in terms of motivation. Furthermore, crossed-lagged modeling analyses of the longitudinal data explored the possibility of reciprocal effects between implicit-explicit leadership traits difference and LMX and provided support for the initially hypothesized direction of causal effects.     

Indian students' perceptions of the ideal self, the ideal leader, the ideal teacher, Indira Gandhi and the business executive.

The Activity Vector Analysis (AVA) was administered to three samples drawn from a population of graduate students at an Indian university. Results indicated a high positive relationship among the perceptions of the ideal self, ideal teacher, and ideal leader. Likewise, the consensual profile of Indira Gandhi was found to be quite similar to the ideal self cluster (r = .96). The collective perception of the business executive, however, was only remotely similar to the other two character profiles.     

The ideal self and cognitive development in adolescence

This study investigated the relationship between cognitive development level and the ideal self in adolescence, sampling 223 male and female 12- and 13-, and 15- and 16-year-old working and middle class English comprehensive school students, hypothesizing that maturity of the ideal self would be related to cognitive development. Correlations between cognitive developmental total score and ideal self score were significant for the whole sample and for both age groups. Regression analysis showed cognitive development score to be the major significant predictor of ideal self score at both age levels, with sex contributing additionally at the older age level.