Solo pioneers: Single-minded rationality

There is an increasing number of single women in the United States. These women are having to confront new emotional problems as well as previously unknown opportunities for personal growth and development. The current article identifies two polarities of female singlehood, i.e., the desperate, dependent woman and the solo pioneer woman. The cognitive and behavioral characteristics of the two polar types are delineated.Desperate, dependent women endorse irrational beliefs which involve their self-worth being contingent upon the love and approval of men. Solo pioneers are autonomous in their personal identity and are able to construct meaningful lives for themselves outside of the context of marriage. Single mothers by choice are presented as being a prototype of solo pioneers.Laura Primakoff, Ph.D. has developed a cognitive-behavioral treatment program for individuals living alone (Primakoff, 1983).     

“I'll Take Gender Differences for $1000!” Domain-Specific Intellectual Success on “Jeopardy”

A great deal of laboratory research has demonstrated that women underestimate their intellect and abilities, and we studied whether this tendency manifested itself outside the laboratory by examining the performance of men and women on the television game show Jeopardy. Information about the masculinity and femininity of the topic categories for 65 games was collected, and selections, answers,wagering strategies, and earnings were noted for 195 White men and women contestants on the show. Men were more likely than women to appear as contestants, made most of the selections in the game, and won more money. Until the end of the game, men selected and correctly answered a disproportional number of questions from masculine topic categories, which appeared more often during the first round of play. Women chose more feminine and neutral questions than did men, and correctly answered those questions at a proportional rate. Wagering strategies differed late in the game, as men bet a higher percent of their earnings than did women, but only when wagering on masculine topics. Several explanations for differing performance of men and women on Jeopardyare offered, including confidence in ability due to self-estimation of intelligence, differential use of evaluative feedback, and the gender role appropriateness of demonstrating intellect.     

Expletives and woman's place

This study empirically examined the relationship between the expletives, bitch and bastard, and sex-role stereotyping. The expletives were rated by 68 men and 68 women on 80 trait adjectives as to how typical or characteristic each trait was of the stereotypic bitch or bastard in our society. The sex-role implications of the 10 trait terms judged most characteristic of each expletive were then examined. For male subjects, the most distinguishing feature between the two expletives was the inclusion of the stereotypically masculine trait dominant, in their characterization of bitch. Female subjects, on the other hand, did not ascribe such opposite sex-role stereotype traits to bitch, but rather emphasized stereotypically masculine traits in their characterization of bastard. These results are discussed in terms of the regulatory and expressive nature of language, as well as the differential sanction value of the terms bitch and bastard for out-of-role behavior.     

Competence and the overjustification effect

The overjustification effect is manifested in decreased interest in an activity as a result of having been rewarded for participation in the activity. According to attribution theory's discounting principle, decreased interest occurs because the subject discounts the role of intrinsic motivation when a salient extrinsic reward is present. An alternative analysis based on the competence principle suggests that only rewards that convey no message of competence foster the overjustification effect, while manipulations that do convey competence information do not. A study crossing Reward (no reward-monetary reward) and Task Difficulty (hard-easy) supported the competence analysis. Subjects who succeeded on the hard task and thus felt competent manifested higher subsequent interest in the task. Consistent with the competence analysis, presence or absence of reward did not influence subsequent interest in the task.This research has been supported by a grant from the Ohio University Research Fund. I am grateful to Mark Henault, who served very ably as the experimenter. The hard work of Joel Ghitman and Craig Alexander is also gratefully acknowledged.     

Theorizing Gender for Experimental Game Theory: Experiments with “Sex Status” and “Merit Status” in an Asymmetric Game

In experimental game-theoretic research, to the extent that sex has been considered at all, the approach has been to focus on the individual level of analysis. This paper reports the results of experiments designed to focus on sex/gender and to expand the level of analysis to include the institutional level. An asymmetric game was designed such that players in the male and female institutional locations had 3 and 2 alternatives, respectively. Players earned the institutional locations based on a test, so that top and bottom scorers respectively merited the 3- and 2-alternatives locations. Game-theoretic understandings of sex-of-player were compared to the expectations states theory concept of sex status; that is, men expect and are expected to perform more competently than women. Results indicated that top-scorer men and women behave similarly; bottom-scorer men resist their low merit status (behaving the most rationally of all player groups); bottom-scorer women accept their low merit status (behaving the most irrationally of all player groups). Whereas game theory cannot provide a coherent understanding of these findings, the concept of sex status helps to interpret the behavior of all four player groups and shows how judgments about rationality and irrationality depend critically on the interpretive framework used.     

Defining features of natural kinds and artifacts

Two experiments investigated the role of three types of features (physical characteristics, functions, and chromosomal/molecular structure) in determining membership in natural kind and artifact categories. In the first, subjects decided if an object X would still be an X if it were different in one type of feature. A significant interaction was found between word type and change type, with the effects of chromosomal/molecular changes significantly greater for natural kinds than for artifacts, and the effects of functional changes significantly greater for artifacts than natural kinds. In the second experiment, subjects judged whether something would be an X if it were unlike instances of X in two of the above types of features, but like instances of X in one. There was again a significant interaction, with the effects of chromosomal/molecular features significantly greater for natural kinds than for artifacts, and the effects of functional changes significantly greater for artifacts than for natural kinds. These results suggest that chromosomal/molecular features define membership in natural kind categories and functional features define membership in artifact categories. The implications of these findings for the meaning of defining features are also discussed.The first experiment was conducted by the first author as part of a senior comprehensive exercise at Carleton College. We thank Kathleen Galotti, Matthew Gish, Neil Lutsky, and an anonymous reviewer for comments on earlier drafts of this article.     

Clients Helping Therapists Find Solutions to their Therapy

This paper is offered as a beginning toward including client perspectives on treatment and client participation in supervision. Rather than see therapists as technical experts who do things to people, many of us now see therapists as nonexperts who create conversations with people (Goolishian & Anderson, 1992). This new shift challenges the traditional training positions of supervisor and supervisee, respectively. Including clients' voices the supervisor participate from a nonexpert position.     

The Self Psychology of Heinz Kohut: What's It All About Theologically?

As a psychoanalytic thinker who offered by means of his self psychology a new paradigm of psychological development and functioning, Heinz Kohut was also a theologian manqué. With the help of the method of interpretation devised by Paul Tillich and David Tracy, Kohut's limit-concepts of tragic man, the self-object, and empathy, all set within his theory of narcissism, are elucidated as theological constructs. These are critiqued for adequacy from a Christian perspective. The conclusion is that Kohut's understanding of the human dilemma and of the way of salvation correlates well with Christianity, while his view of empathy as the means of salvation has created some confusion. Kohut has thus left an unfinished, profoundly important, agenda for theologians and clinicians.     

Male-female relationships in the workplace: Perceived motivations in office romance

A survey of 218 recent business school graduates confirmed prior studies of differential evaluation of women involved in workplace romances. The research addressed whether women are still perceived as entering into relationships for motives different from men, particularly in terms of exploiting sexuality for gain. Few instances were found where relationships were formed for personal advancement; however, motivations for personal gain were far more commonly attributed to women. Women were also more likely to be perceived as victims of the office fling. Attributions did not differ between male and female observers. Implications for working women are discussed.     

Work involvement among college-educated women: A methodological extension

This paper has two objectives: (1) to develop a more complex measure of work involvement than that typically used, and (2) to correlate this measure with selected lifestyle/family and work variables. The data were drawn primarily from a 1981 survey of 110 female graduates of a large Midwestern university who completed their undergraduate degrees in 1967. Respondents were categorized as high, moderate, or low on a work involvement index based on four variables: work continuity, work status, current or most recent occupation, and educational achievement. Findings in the area of lifestyle/family suggest that high work-involved women are more likely to be single and to marry later when they do marry, less likely to have children, and less likely to perceive conflicts between marriage/relationships and/or children and a career. Findings in the area of work suggest that high work-involved women are significantly more likely to work in male-dominated occupations and to earn salaries of $20,000 or more. High work-involved women are also significantly more likely to be supervisors, to report that most of the people in their work group or branch are below them in rank/position, to be working with all or predominantly men, to have men above them in rank, and to have experienced sex discrimination on the job. In the area of job satisfaction, the differences by work involvement are not as pronounced. High work-involved women are significantly more likely to be employed and not job hunting — one measure of job satisfaction. However, they are no more or less likely than moderate or low work-involved women to perceive their job as a compromise with what they expected or to report overall job satisfaction. Some directions for future research are discussed.Environmental Strategies, Inc.Preparation of this report was supported, in part, by the Providence College Fund to Aid Faculty Research. Thanks are due to the staff of The Henry A. Murray Research Center of Radcliffe College for access to the 1970 questionnaires, to Sharon R. Jenkins for data processing consultation, and to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions.     

Ambiguous Communication of Sexual Intentions as a Risk Marker of Sexual Aggression

Three studies are reported that explored the role of ambiguous communication of sexual intentions as a risk factor for sexual aggression and victimization. Two main forms of ambiguous communication were distinguished: token resistance (saying no when you mean yes) and compliance (saying yes when you mean no). Two samples of heterosexual men and women and a sample of homosexual men with a total N of 1284 completed a measure of sexual victimization or aggression and indicated whether or not they had ever shown token resistance or compliance in a sexual encounter. Moreover, the heterosexual male respondents indicated whether they had ever perceived token resistance or compliance in a female partner. Logistic regression analyses revealed that the risk of experiencing sexual victimization was significantly increased as a function of token resistance. Two of the three studies also showed compliance to be a risk factor for sexual victimization. For the male respondents, token resistance was consistently linked to a higher likelihood of perpetrating sexually aggressive acts in the three studies. Perceived compliance was also found to increase the risk of sexual aggression in three of four analyses. Support for a link between perceived token resistance and sexual aggression was found in the first study only. Overall, the findings suggest that the use of ambiguous communication in negotiating sexual encounters is associated with an increased risk of sexual victimization as well as perpetration of sexually aggressive acts in both heterosexual and homosexual contacts. The implications of the findings are discussed with respect to the issue of rape prevention.     

Implications of Individual Differences in Subjective Happiness for Perceiving,Interpreting, and Thinking About Life Events

Both anecdotal and empirical evidence suggest that characteristically happy and unhappy individuals seem to differ in the ways in which they respond to life events and daily situations. This paper reports two questionnaire studies and a laboratory study testing the hypothesis that happy people perceive, interpret, and think about the same events in more positive ways than do unhappy ones. The results of Study 1 showed that students nominated by their peers as very happy reported experiencing similar types of both positive and negative life events, as did peer-nominated unhappy students. However, self-rated happy students tended to think about both types of events more favorably and adaptively—e.g., by seeing humor in adversity and emphasizing recent improvement in their lives. This pattern of results was conceptually replicated in Study 2 using hypothetical events. In Study 3, self-rated happy students interacted with a female confederate in the laboratory, then watched a series of videotapes depicting a fellow (but unfamiliar) student in three different situations. Happy individuals liked the person they met, and recalled her in more favorable terms, more than did unhappy ones. The same pattern of results, albeit weaker, was found for liking of the videotaped target. Implications of our findings for the question of how happiness (or unhappiness) is maintained are discussed.     

Gender Differences in Depression: The Role Played by Paternal Attitudes of Male Superiority and Maternal Modeling of Gender-Related Limitations

A reanalysis of a large multi-generational,predominantly Caucasian sample of adults found a largegender difference in self-reported depression involvinganxiety, appetite and sleep disturbance, and fatigue (anxious somatic depression) butnot in pure depression unaccompanied bymany of these other symptoms, replicating earlierfindings on high school and college samples. Anxioussomatic depression was prevalent among women whosefathers reported attitudes of male superiority and amongwomen whose mothers reported emphasizing the importanceof professional success but feeling that the jobs they held were not respected by others. Anxioussomatic depression, but not pure depression, was foundto be prevalent among women who did not attend collegeand among those who attended college but felt that the jobs they held were not respected byothers.     

Computer content analysis of sex differences in the language of children

This study presents empirical procedures for the collection and content analysis of the oral language of kindergarten children. The analysis technique used material and machines available to most researchers. The results of the analysis of language samples of 144 randomly selected children from the entire kindergarten class of the Ithaca, New York, school system showed that boys produced significantly more language than did the girls as well as significantly more references to aggression, self, time, space, quantity, fears, good, act of oral communication, negation, and affirmation, and asked more questions of the examiner than did the girls. The girls made significantly more female references than did the boys. Implications for future research are discussed.     

Irrational beliefs and psychosomatic disorders

Irrational beliefs were related to psychosomatic disorders in an adult sample of 57 male and 68 female psychotherapy clients and 62 male and 38 female adult nonclients. The client and nonclient samples differed markedly in a number of ways, but nevertheless, in both samples those with relatively high frequencies of psychosomatic disorders scored as more irrational on 7 of the 10 scales of the Jones Irrational Beliefs Test (IBT) compared to those with relatively low frequencies of psychosomatic disorders. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses found Anxious Overconcern (AO) to account for 31.7% of the variance in the psychosomatic illness scores for the nonclient sample and 10.8% of the variance for the client sample. Subgroups within each sample formed on the basis of their AO scores (a B-level variable in RET theory) were subsequently found to be significantly different on the C-level variables of anxiety and psychosomatic disorders. It is argued that causal connections are implied and that the results are better understood in a monistic mind-body-unit conceptualization of the human organism.Paul J. Woods, Ph. D., co-editor of this journal, is a Fellow and an RET training supervisor of the Institute for Rational-Emotive Therapy, a professor of psychology at Hollins College, and is engaged in private practice in Roanoke, Virginia. Larry C. Lyons is a graduate student in the Masters' program in psychology at Hollins College.     

Tedium in the life and work of professional women as compared with men

The experience of tedium, its antecedents, and its chronic life and work correlates in professional women as compared to men, were the foci of the present study. Tedium was defined as a general experience of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion characterized by depression; emotional and physical depletion; burnout; and negative attitudes toward one's life, one's environment, and oneself. Women did not differ significantly from men in the experience of tedium. This is particularly noteworthy, since women reported less positive features and rewards and more negative features, pressures, and stresses in their work environments than men. There were far more significant sex differences in work features than in life-outside-of-work features, and many variables emerged as equally important tedium correlates for both sexes. For both sexes, life outside of the work sphere provided more positive aspects, while work presented more negative ones.     

On seeing oneself as “left out”: The chronically complaining patient in psychotherapy

A clinical observation regarding patients who complain about feeling left out and/or second best provides the framework for this paper. What is expressed is a form of separation anxiety coupled with a loser self-concept. It is suggested that these patients represent a milder form of the moral masochism. Early theoretical formulations include Freud and his emphasis on the superego and Reich's emphasis on the masochist's fear of being left alone. Kramer's little man phenomenon is an example of a more current theoretical formulation which takes account of the complexities of the ego, and composite self and identity in the clinical phenomena observed. A case of a latency-aged child is provided.     

The artist as transgressor in Mandel'štam's poetry

In Mandel'tam's writing, artistic creativity is described as based on the indispensable yet contradictory modes of compliance and deviation. The artist, by his artistic nature, must be an obedient disciple to the tradition that inspires him, and, at the same time, a violator who renders what inspires him in an individual form. Thus, art implies iterability through novelty. In the totalitarian state, this double nature of art acquires a sinister context and brings the artist to an unavoidable conflict with the state. He has a choice between a servile compliance with the state's command and artistic independence. If the artist complies, he loses his ingenuity; if, on the other hand, he has the courage to break away from the established order, his fate is martyrdom. The criteria of truth and falsehood, the issue of loyalty, of compromise and collaboration or resistance become most relevant. Such words as outcast or non-contemporary acquire the meaning of non-collaborationist or enemy of the people. In the totalitarian state a genuine artist is viewed as a law-breaker, and his art leads him to crime. The notions of compliance and deviation cease being merely aesthetic terms and assume in Mandel'tam's poetry complex, subtle and tragic overtones.I would like to express my gratitude to John Barnstead, Thomas Blakeley, James Doull, Elena Glazov-Corrigan, Gregory Glazov, Leonard Kazdan, Peter Kussmaul, Malcolm Ross, Detlev Steffen, and Ieva Vitins for their valuable criticism, suggestions, and revisions of my English.     

The double standard of aging and the social situation: Judgments of attractiveness of the middle-aged woman

Two hundred male and 200 female undergraduates judged pictures of middle-aged women and middle-aged men for their immediate emotional appeal. Pictures had been selected to be of middle attractiveness and to represent individuals who appeared to be between 35 and 55 years old. Subjects made judgments under one of the following social conditions: in private, or in small groups which were all male, all female, or half male and half female. Social condition and subjects' sex affected judgments significantly, and there were some significant complex interactions between these two variables and the sex of the stimulus picture. Male and female subjects privately judged middle-aged women to be more attractive than middle-aged men, but the effect was reversed when judgments were made publicly in groups. As predicted, members of all-male groups judged middle-aged women to be considerably less attractive than middle-aged men. Members of all-female groups, and both the men and the women in mixed-sex groups, judged middle-aged women to be only slightly less attractive than middle-aged men.The authors wish to thank Linda Andrews, Dayna Buskirk, Anne Grealy and Lori Monda for their assistance.     

The meaningful character of value-language: A critique of the linguistic foundations of emotivism

Conclusion The above arguments have not conclusively demonstrated the existence of value; nor have they sought to. Rather, they have focused primarily on value-language itself: what it is, what it means, and how men use it. In value-judgements, men intend to speak about reality, and not merely to manifest their feelings to influence others. The conceptual character of value-words gives them a formal objectivity lacking in mere manifestations of feeling; the meaning of value-words contains a claim to objectivity arising from the ontological claim to objectivity of value itself.These facts demonstrate conclusively that value-language differs essentially from emotive manifestations of feeling. Therefore, and in contradiction to both Ayer and Stevenson, even the most abstract of value-words can be used to form legitimate, conceptually meaningful value-judgements. As judgements, value-judgements can be true or false, not because of any factual content, but specifically as conceptually meaningful, pure value-judgements.I have deliberately restricted these investigations to consideration of language, without seriously arguing the ontology of value itself. Thereby, I have met the emotivists on their own ground. Even without demonstrating the existence of value, I have shown their analysis of value-language to be flawed. Further, I have identified a unique claim to objectivity in value-language which argues strongly in favor of the real existence of value as its ultimate foundation.For the simplest, most obvious explanation of this claim to objectivity is that it refers to value, which actually exists. That proof is logically the next step in my argument. A good place to begin would be a more careful, detailed analysis of the structure of human responses such as admiration, love, enthusiasm, etc., seeking to determine what they ontologically presuppose. Proof of the real existence of value would demonstrate the ontological grounds for the claim to objectivity of value-language. It would show that value-language is rooted in the real world, speaking of reality as it is. This would be the last, and most important sense in which value-language is meaningful and objective.

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