“What It Means To Be a Woman:” Ambivalent Sexism in Female College Students’ Experiences and Attitudes

This study used content analysis to examine if themes related to ambivalent sexism (Glick and Fiske 1996) emerged when female students wrote an essay answering the question “What does it mean to be a woman?” and examined the relationship between Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI) scores (Glick and Fiske 1996) and content analysis. Participants were 78 female undergraduate students in the Southeastern U.S. Findings revealed themes related to ambivalent sexism were present in 99% of essays, indicating that ambivalent sexism is highly relevant to women’s gendered experiences. Furthermore participants’ ASI scores were positively correlated with a sexism score created from coded essay content. The discussion addresses theoretical and contextual implications of the findings.     

White Female Bystanders’ Responses to a Black Woman at Risk for Sexual Assault: Associations With Attitudes About Sexism and Racial Injustice

Women of color are affected by both sexism and racism. We examined White women’s attitudes about sexism (hostile and benevolent sexism) and racial injustice (White empathic responses to racism) as correlates of their responses to a Black woman at risk for an alcohol-related sexual assault. White undergraduate women (N = 172) reported on their attitudes and then completed measures of blame and willingness to intervene in response to a scenario in which a woman named “LaToya” is at risk. All 3 types of attitudes were directly related to victim blame, whereas only hostile sexism was directly, negatively related to willingness to intervene. White empathic responses to racism moderated the associations between benevolent sexism and both victim blame and willingness to intervene. Results suggest that among White female bystanders, both hostile and benevolent sexist attitudes were related to increased blame and reduced willingness to intervene to help Black women at risk. The adverse effects of benevolent sexism, however, were reduced for those with greater concerns about racial injustice.     

Predictors of Turkish Women’s and Men’s Attitudes toward Sexual Harassment: Ambivalent Sexism, and Ambivalence Toward Men

This study examined the relationships among ambivalent sexism (hostile/benevolent), ambivalence toward men (hostility/benevolence) and Turkish women/men’s attitudes toward sexual harassment, including attitudes toward viewing sexual harassment as a result of provocative behaviors of women (ASHPBW) and attitudes toward viewing sexual harassment as a trivial matter (ASHTM). Participants included 220 Turkish undergraduates (136 female; M_age?=?20.00). They tended to blame women for the incidents of sexual harassment whereas they viewed sexual harassment as a very important social problem. As compared to women, men scored higher in both ASHPBW and ASHTM, suggesting that men are more tolerant of sexual harassment. For both genders, hostile sexism and benevolence toward men predicted ASHPBW. However, for only men, hostile and benevolent sexism predicted ASHTM.     

Ambivalent Sexism, Belief in a Just World, and Empathy as Predictors of Turkish Students’ Attitudes Toward Rape Victims

The present study investigated whether hostile sexism, benevolent sexism, belief in a just world and empathy predict attitudes toward rape victims in a Turkish sample. Turkish college students (N = 425, mean age = 22) completed scales assessing Ambivalent Sexism, Belief in a Just World and Rape Victim Empathy as predictors of a general measure of attitudes toward rape victims. Male (as compared to female) participants had significantly less positive attitudes toward rape victims. Correlational analyses showed that, for both male and female participants, benevolent as well as hostile sexism, and belief in a just world each predicted less positive attitudes toward rape victims, but empathy predicted more positive attitudes.     

How Nice of Us and How Dumb of Me: The Effect of Exposure to Benevolent Sexism on Women’s Task and Relational Self-Descriptions

This research demonstrates how women assimilate to benevolent sexism by emphasizing their relational qualities and de-emphasizing their task-related characteristics when exposed to benevolent sexism. Studies 1 (N?=?62) and 2 (N?=?100) show, with slightly different paradigms and measures, that compared to exposure to hostile sexism, exposure to benevolent sexism increases the extent to which female Dutch college students define themselves in relational terms and decreases the extent to which they emphasize their task-related characteristics. Study 3 (N?=?79) demonstrates that benevolent sexism has more pernicious effects when it is expressed by someone with whom women expect to collaborate than when no collaboration is expected with the source of sexism. The implications of these results are discussed.     

Characteristics Associated With Individuals’ Caring,Just, and Brave Expressions of the Tendency to Be a Moral Rebel

Extending previous research on the characteristics associated with adolescents’ general tendency to be a moral rebel (Sonnentag & Barnett, 2016), the present study examined the roles of moral identity and (general and situation-specific) moral courage characteristics on 3 (i.e., caring, just, and brave) expressions of the tendency to stand up for one’s beliefs and values despite social pressure not to do so. Results revealed that general and situation-specific moral courage characteristics are important motivators of individuals’ caring, just, and brave expressions of the tendency to be a moral rebel, especially when they possess a relatively strong moral identity.     

“Ain’t I a Woman?”: Towards an Intersectional Approach to Person Perception and Group-based Harms

Our research examines whether intersecting racial and gender identities affect person perception. Predominantly White undergraduates (292) from a large northeastern U.S. university categorized and rated pictures (Study 1) and videos (Study 2) of Black and White men and women. We supported three hypotheses: 1) intersectionality affects person perception processes, leading to gender categorization errors for Black women; 2) “Blackness” and “maleness” are highly associated for Black male and female targets; and, 3) women are perceived as unattractive proportionally to their perceived masculinity, leading Black women to be rated as less attractive than other women. We suggest that intersectional approaches are required in order to fully understand person perception. Further, the Black/male association may lead to unique harms for Black women.     

One Need Not Be a House to Be Haunted: On Enactment,Dissociation, and the Dread of “Not-Me”—A Case Study

This paper examines psychic trauma as experience so shockingly strange that it exceeds the threshold for cognitive processing and begins to flood the mind with unintegratable affect that threatens to disorganize the internal template on which one's experience of self-coherence, self-cohesiveness, and self-continuity depends. A detailed clinical vignette illustrates how the unprocessed “not-me” experience held by a dissociated self-state as an affective memory without an autobiographical memory of its traumatic origin “haunts” the self. It remains a ghostly horror even in an otherwise successful psychoanalysis unless a new perceptual reality is created between patient and analyst that alters the narrative structure maintaining the dissociation as though the past were still a present danger. The analyst's making optimal use of dissociative processes in an intersubjective and interpersonal context enables the patient more readily to self-regulate affect in those areas of implicit memory where trauma has left its mark; the dissociated ghosts of “not-me” are thus persuaded, little-by-little, to cease their haunting and participate more and more actively and openly as self-reflective, self-expressive parts of “me.”     

On ‘Stabilising’ medical mechanisms, truth-makers and epistemic causality: a critique to Williamson and Russo’s approach

In this paper I offer an anti-Humean critique to Williamson and Russo’s approach to medical mechanisms. I focus on one of the specific claims made by Williamson and Russo, namely the claim that micro-structural ‘mechanisms’ provide evidence for the stability across populations of causal relationships ascertained at the (macro-) level of (test) populations. This claim is grounded in the epistemic account of causality developed by Williamson, an account which—while not relying exclusively on mechanistic evidence for justifying causal judgements—appeals nevertheless to mechanisms, and rejects their anti-Humean interpretation in terms of capacities, powers, potencies, etc. By using (and expanding on) Cartwright’s basic critique against Humean mechanisms, I suggest that, in order to move beyond the level of plausibility, Williamson and Russo’s position is in need of a clarification as to the occurent reading of the components, functioning and interferences of mechanisms. Relatedly, as concerns Williamson’s epistemic account of causation, I argue that this account is in need of a more straightforward answer as to what truth-makers its causal claims should have.     

‘As in a Mirror’: Jonathan Edwards,Self-Love and Enlarging to Receive Another

Through a robust deployment of visual metaphors, Jonathan Edwards’s theology utilizes notions of vision to articulate his doctrine of God, creation, anthropology, redemption and ultimately glorification. Focusing on anthropology, this article attends to how human beings are constituted through sight, and reconstituted (i.e. regenerated) as they are contemplated in the Son and as they are given a vision of the Father in the Son by the Spirit of illumination. Put differently, Edwards’s anthropology is ordered around its teleology of becoming like God only if one can ‘see him as he is’ (1 Jn 3:2), which is anticipated by faith in this present age and ‘through a mirror dimly’ (1 Jn 13:12). After mooring his anthropology to broader theological concerns, the article narrows to consider how Edwards’s idiosyncratic personalism is developed around the notion of a ‘reflective self’ that can enlarge to internalize an ‘other’. Clarifying this notion is a brief comparison of a similar construction in Thomas Aquinas, showing how Edwards’s theory of loving neighbor as oneself is a unique contribution to questions concerning personhood, self-love and neighbor-love.     

“To Cook, Sew, to Be a Man”: The Socialization for Competence and Black Men's Involvement in Housework

The context in which Black children do housework and its effect on adult behavior have been relatively unexplored. This article presents analyses of the recollections of 45 Black fathers of young children about performing household chores when they were children and its relevance for their involvement in housework as adults. The fathers' relatively high involvement in housework is traced to the ‘socialization for competence’ that most of them experienced as boys. Four dimensions in the socialization for competence are discussed: the actual household chores done in childhood, the ways of performing them, the rationale for assigning them, and parents' justifications for making children engage in housework. Although the childhood socialization for competence does not translate uniformly into men's sharing housework equally, it takes away ineptitude as an excuse for resisting housework as adults.     

“You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught”: How Apartheid Was Lived and Learned on a South African Farm

After apartheid ended, many White South Africans asked themselves, over and over, “Who was I during apartheid?” and “How did I learn to live in that way?” This article is an attempt to address those questions. In the first part, a personal example is used to illustrate a life lived during the heyday of apartheid. There was a great silence between the races about race. In the second part, I discuss that life and the nature of embeddedness from a relational, hermeneutic perspective with a self psychological flavor. My doctoral dissertation, titled Race, Place and Self (Philips, 2007), was an attempt to examine the nature and influences over the years of different countries and contexts, and disentangle myself from the particular racialized beginnings that were uniquely mine. This article is one part of that journey.     

Cognitive,Affective, and Behavioral Responses to Ingroup’s Devalued Social Status: a Field Study at a Public University

In this study based on an actual event, we examined how group members cognitively, affectively, and behaviorally respond to devaluation of ingroup’s social status. Integrating predictions from Social Identity Theory (SIT; Tajfel and Turner 1986) and Intergroup Emotions Theory (IET; Smith et al. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93(3), 431–446 (2007)), we explored how appraisals about ingroup’s perceived decrease in status (i.e., stability and legitimacy of status change and permeability of group boundaries) are associated with discrete group-level emotions (e.g., anger, shame), and how those emotions in turn predict different coping strategies Blanz et al. European Journal of Social Psychology, 28(5), 697–729 (1998). Analyses of the results showed that: First, preference for each coping strategy varied according to appraisals of ingroup status, and the patterns were largely consistent with what SIT predicts. Second, different group-level emotions were reported according to appraisals of ingroup status. Third, inclusion of group-level emotions as mediators of associations between ingroup status appraisals and coping strategies significantly increased the explanatory power of the path models. In sum, this study demonstrated how the two theories on intergroup relations can be used together to offer a more detailed account of group identity management. For future direction, experimental or longitudinal designs as well as cross-cultural comparisons were suggested.     

Individual Values,Organizational Commitment,and Participation in a Change: Israeli Teachers’ Approach to an Optional Educational Reform

Purpose  

The purpose of this study was to examine how individual values and organizational commitment are related to teachers’ participation in an optional change program in the Israeli educational system.     

In defence of a faith-like model of love: a reply to John Lippitt’s “Kierkegaard and the problem of special relationships: Ferreira,Krishek, and the ‘God filter”’

In his major work on love, Works of Love, Kierkegaard clearly and robustly affirms the moral superiority of neighbourly love, and approves preferential love on one condition: that it serve as an instance of neighbourly love. But can an essentially preferential love be an instance of the essentially non-preferential neighbourly love? John Lippitt seems to think it can. In his paper “Kierkegaard and the problem of special relationships: Ferreira, Krishek, and the ‘God filter”’ he defends Kierkegaard’s position in Works of Love against my criticism (as presented in my book Kierkegaard on Faith and Love); specifically, against my claim that in using Kierkegaard’s view of neighbourly love as a framework for understanding preferential love, one fails to account for the latter’s distinctive character. Lippitt claims that I misinterpret Kierkegaard’s position and, using what he calls ‘the God filter’, he attempts to show how adhering to Kierkegaard’s view of neighbourly love allows one to sustain the distinctiveness (and value) of preferential love. In what follows I will defend my interpretation of Kierkegaard’s position and explain why I take the view he presents in Works of Love to be problematic. Furthermore, in my aforementioned book I offer a Kierkegaardian model of love that does precisely what Lippitt seeks his ‘God filter’ model to do: namely, preserve the distinctiveness of preferential love while allowing its possible coexistence with neighbourly love. Thus, against the background of Lippitt’s criticism I will demonstrate this model again, in hope of clarifying the advantages this view offers.