Aggression and Sociometric Status among Peers: Do Gender and Type of Aggression Matter?

The connections between the use of different types of aggression (direct physical, direct verbal, and indirect) and sociometric status among same-sex and opposite-sex peers were studied. The subjects were 209 ninth-grade adolescents. Although an adolescent's aggression in general was related to being rejected by peers, a different picture emerged when the shared variance between types of aggression was controlled: The partial correlations showed that when the level of direct (physical and verbal) aggression was kept constant, increases in indirect aggression did not explain variance in peer rejection scores. On the contrary, the use of indirect aggression contributed (especially among boys) to social acceptance by peers. The direct (physical and verbal) forms of aggression were unrelated to adolescents' social acceptance scores. No clear differences were detected between girls' and boys' acceptance or rejection of their aggressive peers, despite the finding that boys seemed to tolerate indirect aggression better than girls did.     

Video Games,Immersion, and Cognitive Aggression: Does the Controller Matter?

The influence of video game realism and controller naturalness on aggression was examined with an experiment that manipulated game realism and controller naturalness. Perceived controller naturalness increased perceptions of realism of the game and led to greater immersion. The more realistic game was perceived as such and led to greater immersion. Ultimately, greater immersion led to more cognitive aggression. Results are discussed in terms of a mental models approach and the process of model matching.     

Langhinrichsen-Rolling’s Confirmation of the Feminist Analysis of Intimate Partner Violence: Comment on “Controversies Involving Gender and Intimate Partner Violence in the United States”

This article makes four major points in response to Jennifer Langhinrichsen-Rolling’s (2010) review of the intimate partner violence literature. First, the evidence is clear that there is more than one type of intimate partner violence. Second, the feminists are right. Gender is central to the analysis of intimate partner violence, and the coercive controlling violence that most people associate with the term “domestic violence” is perpetrated primarily by men against their female partners. Third, different types of intimate partner violence have different causes, different developmental trajectories, and different consequences. They require different models to understand them. Finally, we need more qualitative research focused on the least understood types of intimate partner violence: violent resistance and situational couple violence.     

Partner Characteristics and Social Contagion: Does Group Composition Matter?

People's incorrect recalls can contaminate their collaborators' performance on subsequent tasks, referred to as the social contagion of memory. Research investigating how expectations about group members' abilities and affiliations relate to such contagion has given little attention to the mechanisms underlying any differential reliance on collaborators' contributions. In two experiments, we investigated whether expectations about a collaborative partner influence social contagion and whether source monitoring was related to any differential reliance. Contagion was reduced, for both accurate and inaccurate information, when participants worked with a partner perceived to be of low as compared with high credibility. Participants also showed reduced contagion after working with an out‐group as compared with an in‐group partner. These findings indicate that partner characteristics influence whether the information generated during a collaborative task is encoded and/or relied upon later. Expectations about potentially problematic sources can motivate resistance to misinformation through careful monitoring of partner contributions. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Correction to: Office Housework,Burnout, and Promotion: Does Gender Matter?

Journal of Business and Psychology - In the final version of the publication, the acknowledgement was missing. The data were supported by an ERC pilot grant, and they should be acknowledged.     

Testing the Extent of the Gender Trap: College Students’ Perceptions of and Reactions to Intimate Partner Violence

Prior research has explored perceptions of intimate partner violence (IPV), and how these perceptions differ based on gender of the participant, victim, and perpetrator. In the current study, 178 undergraduate students (n?=?88 males; n?=?90 females) attending a university in the Southwestern United States read a hypothetical IPV scenario, experimentally crossed by victim gender and perpetrator gender, and completed measures exploring gender (i.e., participant gender, victim gender, and perpetrator gender) and situational perceptions on participants’ intended responses to an IPV scenario. Results indicated that perceptions of the IPV situation and responses varied by genders of the participant, victim, and perpetrator. Specifically, males were more likely than females to hold the victim responsible for the violence, and ignore the situation; females were more likely than males to encourage the victim to seek professional help and seek help from another person regarding the IPV scenario as presented in the vignette. When the victim was a male, participants viewed the situation as less serious, the victim as more responsible, and were more likely to ignore the situation, than when the victim was female. Overall, results indicated that gender factors (especially participant gender) had a stronger and more consistent influence on responses to the IPV scenario than perceptions of the situation. The findings of the current study are discussed in light of implications for future research to expand an understanding of the role of gender and perceptions influencing anticipated helping behavior for victims of IPV, which will inform intervention.     

Self-Esteem, Narcissism, and Aggression: Does Violence Result From Low Self-Esteem or From Threatened Egotism?

A traditional view holds that low self-esteem causes aggression, but recent work has not confirmed this. Although aggressive people typically have high self-esteem, there are also many nonaggressive people with high self-esteem, and so newer constructs such as narcissism and unstable self-esteem are most effective at predicting aggression. The link between self-regard and aggression is best captured by the theory of threatened egotism, which depicts aggression as a means of defending a highly favorable view of self against someone who seeks to undermine or discredit that view.     

Does Criminal Propensity Moderate the Effects of Social Learning Theory Variables on Intimate Partner Violence?

Akers’ Social Learning Theory (SLT) is one of the predominant general theories of criminal behavior; it has been widely tested and is typically supported. Despite being a validated general theory, it is possible there are other factors such as criminal propensity that influence the effects of social learning constructs. This study examines the extent, if any, to which crime-specific operationalizations of SLT exert equivalent effects on a specific type of offense—intimate partner violence (IPV) (both perpetration and victimization)—across level of criminal propensity. Using self-report data on intimate partner violence among university students and specifically designed to test SLT, the results indicate that (1) the effects of differential associations and differential reinforcements exerted consistent effects across the various measures of IPV, (2) the effects of definitions and imitation are much less consistent, and, most importantly (3) the effects of SLT constructs on IPV were moderated by criminal propensity. These results suggest that SLT may be less general than claimed; that is, the effects of SLT vary both across measures of IPV and across levels of criminal propensity.     

Does Gender Matter in Personality Psychology?

In this essay, we assess whether gender is important to personality in the eyes of mainstream personality psychologists and in the eyes of feminist psychologists. We discover that these two perspectives are in fact widely divergent. Most research on personality published today in top‐tier ‘mainstream’ personality journals does not take gender seriously. Moreover, frequently‐used textbooks on personality – whether focused on theories or themes – pay little attention to issues of gender. In contrast, most research on personality published in journals focused on the psychology of women and gender treats gender as an important feature of personality. In that research, gender is fully theoretically integrated into the research, testable hypotheses are developed, and analyses include considerable attention to gender. The current segregation of perspectives on the relevance of gender to personality strikes us as deeply problematic for progress in developing a complete picture of personality in context.     

Assessing Children’s Exposure to Intimate Partner Violence

Child exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV) is widely acknowledged as a threat to the psycho-social and academic well-being of children. Unfortunately, as reflected in the literature, the specific link between such exposure and childhood outcomes is ambiguous. Based on a review of the literature, this article suggests that this state of affairs is due, in part, to the manner with which exposure to IPV is operationally defined. After reviewing the dominant strategies for operationally defining exposure to IPV and the problems associated with those strategies, this article reports original data contrasting three measures derived from maternal reports, three measures derived from child reports, and the limited concordance among those different indices of exposure to IPV. The implications of these findings for research on child outcomes and the clinical assessment of children who might have been exposed to IPV are discussed.     

Does Number of Children Moderate the Link between Intimate Partner Violence and Marital Instability among Chinese Female Migrant Workers?

Sex Roles - Intimate partner violence is a serious issue affecting migrant workers in China. The present study investigated the prevalence of intimate partner violence in a sample of Chinese female...     

Gender Ideology and Religion: Does a Masculine Image of God Matter?

A number of recent studies explore predictors of gender ideology due to its consistent influence on a range of outcomes. Another growing body of research investigates the effects of images of God on an assortment of attitudes. This study unites these two strands of research to provide an account of the association between religious belief and gender ideology. Using data from a national random survey and multivariate analysis, I examine whether a masculine image of God is significantly associated with a more conservative gender ideology. The results demonstrate that viewing God as a “he” is robustly associated with a more traditional gender ideology.     

Extramarital Sex and Marital Dissolution: Does Identity of the Extramarital Partner Matter?

Panel data from married adults (N = 1,853) in the General Social Survey, a probability sample of the adult household population of the United States, were used to evaluate (a) the longitudinal association between extramarital sex and marital dissolution 2 years later, (b) whether probability of marital dissolution differed as a function of the type of relationship people reported having with their extramarital sex partner, and (c) the degree to which these associations were incremental to participants’ level of marital satisfaction at baseline. Compared to people who reported not engaging in extramarital sex, those who reported engaging in extramarital sex at baseline were significantly more likely to be separated or divorced 2 years later. Furthermore, the association between having extramarital sex with a close personal friend and marital dissolution was particularly strong. These associations remained statistically significant after adjusting for marital satisfaction. Results suggest that the identity of the extramarital sex partner and the type of relationship a person has with him or her has important implications for probability of marital dissolution above and beyond the contribution of marital satisfaction.     

The Gender Gap in Delinquency: Does SES Matter?

Some researchers argue that the gender gap in delinquency will vary by socioeconomic status (SES); others argue instead for similarity in the gender gap in delinquency across SES. An important shortcoming of the existing research is the paucity of studies that disaggregate the data on delinquent outcomes to consider the possible impact of socioeconomic status on both the extent of overlap in predictors of females' and males' delinquency, and the extent to which these predictors help to explain the gender gap in delinquency. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this study addresses the shortfalls in empirical research by examining the gender gap for the juvenile population as a whole as well as across specific SES groupings, focusing on these key mediators of delinquency: grades, parental attachment, and delinquent peers. Data support the argument for similarity in the gender gap across SES, though the effect of predictors varies.     

Does Gender Matter? Relationship of Gender,Spousal Support,Spirituality, and Dispositional Forgiveness to Pastoral Restoration

We examined the relationship of gender, forgiveness, and spirituality to restoration attitudes expressed toward pastors who committed a transgression. In Study 1, participants’ restoration responses favored the opposite gender. In Study 2, men and women responded differently depending on the offense. Dispositional forgiveness was significantly associated with pastoral restoration following offenses of infidelity, anger, child abuse, and substance abuse. Measures of spirituality were primarily associated with forgiveness but explained little of the variance in restoration attitudes.     

What Do Medical Providers Need to Successfully Intervene with Intimate Partner Violence?

ABSTRACT

Increasingly, medical providers (physicians and mid-level providers) rely on research evidence to inform their medical practice. In order for medical providers to accept their role in diagnosing and intervening with IPV, they need clinical tools and institutional support. This paper explores the tools (prevalence rates, screening questions, intervention strategies) and support (educational, institutional, professional, research) needed to assist medical providers in successfully intervening with IPV. It also looks at the importance of guidelines and expert consensus panel statements to help establish best clinical practices when direct research evidence is lacking or conflicting.     

An Interactional Perspective on Coping with Intimate Partner Violence: Counterattack,Call for Help,or Give in and Obey Him?

This research reports on an investigation of if and how help-seeking women perceived that they had coped in intimate partner violence situations. Within a cross-sectional design, a representative sample of 157 help-seeking women in Norway was interviewed. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was conducted. Results indicated that exposure to psychological, physical, and sexual intimate partner violence, respectively, did elicit different coping strategies in one and the same woman. There were also significant differences between women who perceived they had effective coping strategies and those who did not. This research suggests that a multivariate design within an interactional perspective could inform and enhance our understanding of coping strategies in intimate partner violence situations as complex, heterogeneous, and dynamic phenomena.