Sex Differences In Response To Evaluative Feedback: A Field Study

We investigated sex differences in response to evaluative feedback among bank employees who were going through the annual performance evaluation process. Questionnaires were mailed to employees before and after they had their face–to–face evaluation with their supervisor. Women and men received similar evaluation scores. Men's self–esteem was relatively unaffected by the nature of the feedback, whereas women's self–esteem slightly improved after positive feedback and substantially dropped after negative feedback. After the evaluations, women reported greater intentions to change their behavior based on the evaluation. However, this finding was accounted for by men's higher job status relative to women. The findings for self–esteem were partly explained by women's greater agreement with the feedback compared to men. Future research should explore how the nature of the supervisee–supervisor relationship influences how women and men respond to feedback.     

Response To Jason Springs

Jason Springs’s Healthy Conflict in Contemporary American Society is a masterful attempt to practice productive conflict and democratic dialogue in the face of static antagonisms and deep-seated divisions. In my response, I underscore Springs’s insistence on mediating between the moral imagination of Richard Rorty and the prophetic critique of Cornel West. For the author of Healthy Conflict, any hope in the survival of democracy relies on balancing critique of domination with constructive proposals for a more just and equitable world. On the one hand, Springs rejects any strong distinction between moral imagination and socio-political critique; in fact, he argues for their intertwinement, especially in the work of West. At the same time, there are moments when he suggests an opposition between expanding the moral imagination and engaging in the critical enterprise, especially as he identifies the limits in Foucault regarding normativity and democratic struggle. I respond to this slippage by arguing that Foucault, and critical theory more broadly, open up possibilities for rethinking ethics, politics, and our relationship to the violence that sustains the order of things.     

Generic Response Classes And Relational Frame Theory: Response To Hayes And Barnes-Holmes.

Hayes and Barnes‐Holmes (2004) assert that the concept of a topographically unconstrained response class, the concept that carries the explanatory burden of relational frame theory, appeals to no new principles. Operants are properly defined functionally. I argue that they have stretched the concept of the generic response class beyond its appropriate limits. Skinner conceived of response classes as empirically defined units, mutually interchangeable in quantitative functions. The notion of overarching, generalized operants is an uncritical, analogical extension of this concept. I hold that the conceptual work of relational frame theory is incomplete, that a statement of principle is necessary, even if not new. Finally, I distinguish a supposed commitment to a philosophical “mediationism” from a valid inquiry about mediating behavior; that is, behavior with stimulus products that participate in the control of the behavior of primary interest.     

Counseling Student Response To Affect Level

This research was designed to investigate whether 42 counseling students would respond differently to identical client statements in which the degree of affect was varied. Students viewed four people, each presenting four one-minute videotaped stimulus vignettes. There were four female high-affect statements, four female neutral-affect statements, four male high-affect statements, and four male neutral-affect statements. A 2 × 2 × 2 × 4 analysis of variance with repeated measures on the last measure was used to analyze the data, and Newman-Keuls post hoc comparisons were done. The analysis indicated that the affect level had a significant effect on the degree to which the counselor judged that the client needed help. There was also a difference in the ratings of female and male counselors and a difference in counselor response to female and male clients.