Effects of sex of subject,sex of stimulus cue,and androgyny level on evaluations in work situations which evoke sex role stereotypes

This study examined the differential evaluation of male and female stimulus cues and the effect of subject's androgyny level on their evaluations. Male and female college students filled out the Bem Sex Role Inventory (1974) and responded to set of five in-basket tasks taken from the Rosen, Jerdee, and Prestwich (1975) study of male managers. Sex of subject, sex of stimulus cue in the in-basket tasks, and androgyny level were varied in a series of 2 X 2 X 3 analyses of variance. On some tasks, male and/or female subjects responded in a sex role stereotyped manner. There were no effects for androgyny level. The discussion focused on circumstances under which stereotyping occurs and implications of the study.     

Effects of sex and sex roles on the perceived maladaptiveness of DSM-IV personality disorder symptoms

This study investigated the influence of sex on the perceived maladaptiveness of DSM-IV personality disorder criteria based on previous findings that inconsistency of symptoms with sex roles affects the perception of personality disorder symptoms. The effects of rater characteristics (i.e., sex, sex role) were also examined. A total of 161 undergraduates (65 men, 96 women) rated the diagnostic criteria according to how maladaptive they were for males (male condition), females (female condition), or without regard to sex (neutral condition that served as a baseline) using a 7-point scale. Participants' sex role was determined using the Bem Sex Role (1981a) Inventory. Dependent and depressive personality disorder criteria (trend for borderline) were rated more maladaptive for females than males, whereas obsessive-compulsive personality disorder criteria were rated more maladaptive for males than females. Participant sex and sex role had little or no significant effects on the ratings. Results are compared with those of previous research. Methodological issues and implications for the diagnosis of personality disorders are discussed.     

Valence-specific laterality effects in vocal emotion: interactions with stimulus type, blocking and sex

Valence-specific laterality effects have been frequently obtained in facial emotion perception but not in vocal emotion perception. We report a dichotic listening study further examining whether valence-specific laterality effects generalise to vocal emotions. Based on previous literature, we tested whether valence-specific laterality effects were dependent on blocked presentation of the emotion conditions, on the naturalness of the emotional stimuli, or on listener sex. We presented happy and sad sentences, paired with neutral counterparts, dichotically in an emotion localisation task, with vocal stimuli being preceded by verbal labels indicating target emotions. The measure was accuracy. When stimuli of the same emotion were presented as a block, a valence-specific laterality effect was demonstrated, but only in original stimuli and not morphed stimuli. There was a separate interaction with listener sex. We interpret our findings as suggesting that the valence-specific laterality hypothesis is supported only in certain circumstances. We discuss modulating factors, and we consider whether the mechanisms underlying those factors may be attentional or experiential in nature.     

Effects of participants' sex and targets' perceived need on supermarket helping behavior

A field experiment was focused on whether participants' sex and targets' perceived need influenced helping behavior. Confederates approached 332 (166 women, 166 men) same-sex participants in a supermarket and asked for 25 cents to help purchase one of three randomly assigned food items: milk which was defined as a high-need item, frozen cookie dough which served as a low-need item, or alcohol, which was a low-need item with negative social connotations. The dependent variable was whether a participant provided help. Participants' sex was not associated with helping behavior as equal proportions of men and women provided assistance to the confederate; however, perceived need strongly influenced whether the confederate received help. Specifically, the high-need item produced more helping behavior than did either of the low-need items, and the socially acceptable low-need item of cookie dough produced more helping behavior than the socially unacceptable low-need item of alcohol. This may be interpreted as showing that what one buys and how deserving of help one appears to be influence whether one is helped by others.     

Influence of perceived emotion and gender on social motor coordination

Theorists have long postulated that facial properties such as emotion and sex are potent social stimuli that influence how individuals act. Yet extant scientific findings were mainly derived from investigations on the prompt motor response upon the presentation of affective stimuli, which were mostly delivered by means of pictures, videos, or text. A theoretical question remains unaddressed concerning how the perception of emotion and sex would modulate the dynamics of a continuous coordinated behaviour. Conceived in the framework of dynamical approach to interpersonal motor coordination, the present study aimed to address this question by adopting the coupled-oscillators paradigm. Twenty-one participants performed in-phase and anti-phase coordination with two avatars (male and female) displaying three emotional expressions (neutral, happy, and angry) at different frequencies (100% and 150% of the participant's preferred frequency) by executing horizontal rhythmic left-right oscillatory movements. Time to initiate movement (TIM), mean relative phase error (MnRP), and standard deviation of relative phase (SDRP) were calculated as indices of reaction time, deviation from the intended pattern of coordination, and coordination stability, respectively. Results showed that in anti-phase condition at 150% frequency, MnRP was lower with the angry and the female avatar. In addition, coordination was found to be more stable with the male avatar than the female one when both displaying neutral emotion. But the happy female avatar was found to elicit more stable coordination than the neutral female avatar. These results implied that individuals are more relaxed to coordinate with the female than the male, and the sensorimotor system becomes more flexible to coordinate with an angry person. It is also suggested social roles influence how people coordinate, and individuals attend more to interact with a happy female. In sum, the present study evidenced that social perception is embodied in the interactive behaviour during social interaction.     

Effects of different motion characteristics on perceived motion in depth

Abstract.— The effect of different velocity characteristics on type of perceived motion were tested with three different stimulus patterns, each representing a certain case of relative motion vectors derived from a vector model for perceived motion in space. The oscilloscope generated patterns, displayed onto a translucent screen, consisted of two dots moving back and forth in their motion paths. The subjects described the perceived motion verbally. The reports were classified into four response categories, i.e. perceived translation in depth, rotation in depth, translation and rotation in depth, and finally, perceived motion in a frontoparallel plane. It was found, first, that no type of relative motion vectors consistently yielded the same distribution of responses for the different velocity conditions. Second, there were no main effects of type of velocity functions (sinusoidal, hyperbolical, and constant) on perceived motion. Third, the position of maximum velocity of the dots affected perceived motion, maximum velocity at the center of the motion path favoring perceived rotation in depth and maximum velocity at the end points of the paths favoring perceived translation in depth. Finally, patterns with continuously repeated motion cycles favored perceived rotation in depth. When the continuity was broken down by pauses at the center and the end points of the motion paths and a small spatial gap at the center of the path, perceived translation in depth was favored.     

Effects of stimulus context on magnitude estimations and category ratings of perceived loudness--the spacing of intensity intervals

Effects of stimulus context on magnitude estimations and on category ratings were examined for a range of stimulus intensities of a 1-kHz tone. The stimuli were distributed in equal-interval steps of energy so they formed a perceptual cluster of high-intensity tones with a perceptual outlier at the lowest intensity. According to the Invariance Principle, the shape of the response function should not be affected by the distribution of stimulus intensities. However, neither magnitude estimations nor category ratings yielded the linear functions predicted from the Invariance Principle when plotted on log-log axes. Instead, both procedures yielded concave-upward response functions for the group data as well as for the individual data sets of the six subjects. Moreover, unlike previous reports of a nonlinear relationship, we found a linear relationship between magnitude estimations and category ratings. Rather than implying an equivalence of the underlying sensory scales, however, our results may imply subjects used a similar attention strategy for both procedures. We consider some theoretical suggestions, including an attention-band concept, for modification of a multistage stimulus-response (S-R) transformation model.     

Personality characteristics,parent behaviors,and sex of subject in relation to cheating

College students were given the opportunity to falsify self-reported scores on a task to gain course credit. Personality and perceived parent behavior data were obtained in a counterbalanced design. Male cheaters were significantly higher in Aggression, Exhibition, Social Recognition, and Harmavoidance but lower in Autonomy (PRF scales) and ACT scores. Female transgressors were reliably lower in harmavoidance and higher in Impulsivity than noncheaters. Among males, no parent scales differentiated transgressors and resisters. Among females, parent scales reflecting reports of lower father warmth and fewer maternal equalitarian interactions but higher Hostile Control significantly differentiated cheaters from noncheaters. These findings were discussed, particularly in terms of the sex differences which suggest that males and females may cheat for different reasons.     

A comparison of observed and reported adult-infant interactions: Effects of perceived sex

Interactions of 16 adults (eight married couples whose youngest child was less than 2 1/2 years old) with a single actor infant, dressed as either a male or a female, were recorded and analyzed in four categories: direction of gaze, facial expression, physical contact with the infant, and toy used. After the interaction period, a 45-minute interview on child rearing was conducted with each member of the couple. Observed interactions were then compared with interview data. The results support previous studies which show that both male and female parents behave differently toward unfamiliar infants on the basis of perceived sex. However, parents, especially mothers, appeared unaware of their differential treatment of male and female infants. These results suggest subtle sex-typing of infants by adults.     

Note on stimulus error and the experienced subject in psychophysical research

Experienced subjects participate in some psychophysical research. While they may be more responsive to experimental stimuli than naive subjects, they may not be immune from stimulus error, the tendency for subjects to bias their responses given known physical characteristics of the stimulus. A brief examination of the literature concerning processing of changing sound-level and visual spatial frequency may support this contention.     

Gender moderates the relationship between emotion and perceived gaze

Recent evidence shows that gender modulates the morphology of facial expressions and might thus alter the meaning of those expressions. Consequently, we hypothesized that gender would moderate the relationship between facial expressions and the perception of direct gaze. In Study 1, participants viewed male and female faces exhibiting joy, anger, fear, and neutral expressions displayed with direct and averted gazes. Perceptions of direct gaze were most likely for male faces expressing anger or joy and for female faces expressing joy. Study 2 established that these results were due to facial morphology and not to gender stereotypes. Thus, the morphology of male and female faces amplifies or constrains emotional signals and accordingly alters gaze perception.     

Effects of stimulus probability and visual similarity on stimulus encoding

Visual similarity, stimulus probability, and stimulus contrast were manipulated in two memory-scanning experiments to determine how stimulus probability affects encoding. Two hypotheses were tested: The first, a featural facilitation hypothesis, localizes the effect of stimulus probability on feature extraction; the second claims that stimulus probability has its effect on stimulus recognition. In both experiments, visual similarity was found to slow encoding, particularly under low-contrast conditions. This effect was larger for low probability stimuli than for high probability stimuli and increased as the difference in probability between two visually similar stimuli increased. These results are inconsistent with the featural facilitation hypothesis, but can be explained in terms of differential priming of internal recognition responses for members of the stimulus set, such that more probable members are more easily recognized.     

Pupil dilation, sex of stimulus, and age and sex of observer

10-yr.-old, 16-yr.-old, and 20-yr.-old male and female observers (ns = 10; N = 60) rated a number of male and female faces for how 'good-looking' they were. Some of these faces were identical save that in one version the pupils were larger. Pupil dilation in the photographs of males produced no significant effects, whereas pupil dilation in the female photographs caused such faces to be rated as more good-looking by the two oldest groups of male observers. The 10-yr.-old boys and the 16- and 20-yr.-old women rated the female faces with enlarged pupils as significantly less 'good-looking' than the same faces with smaller pupils.     

Influence of expressed emotion and perceived criticism on cognitive-behavioral therapy for social phobia

This study examined significant others' expressed emotion (EE) and a closely related construct, perceived criticism, as predictors of cognitive-behavioral therapy outcome in a sample of 40 patients with social phobia (social anxiety disorder). Patients enrolled in group therapy for social phobia completed pre- and post-treatment questionnaire measures of perceived criticism and anxious and depressive symptoms. Designated significant others were assessed for the components of high EE (criticism, hostility and emotional overinvolvement) using the Camberwell Family Interview. It was hypothesized that these high-EE components and patients' perceived criticism would be associated with poorer treatment outcome, and results ran counter to these expectations. Controlling for initial social phobia severity, lower levels of perceived criticism predicted treatment dropout. There was also a nonsignificant trend for participants with a significant other rated as high in emotional overinvolvement to show less change on a composite symptom measure. Findings from this study suggest that close relationships impact the outcome of cognitive-behavioral interventions for social phobia.