College men's and women's reactions to hypothetical sexual touch varied by initiator gender and coercion level

A sample of 152 men and 152 women (mostly Caucasian) rated their reactions to a vignette in which the subjects were to imagine receiving an uninvited genital touch from a college acquaintance. The vignette was varied so that the acquaintance was of the opposite or the same gender as the subject, and the touch was either gentle or forceful. Results indicated that women anticipated strong negative effects from receiving opposite- or same-gender touch, whether gentle or forceful. Men anticipated almost no negative effects from either a gentle or forceful touch from a female acquaintance, but expected strong negative effects from a gentle or forceful touch from a male acquaintance. Regression analyses revealed that women's reactions to opposite-gender touch were mediated by beliefs in a male norm promoting casual sex, and feelings of violation and fear of harm. Men's reactions to opposite-gender touch were influenced by feelings related to sexual arousal. Men and women's reactions to same-gender touch were related to feelings of violation and harm.     

Social likeability,conformity, and body talk: Does fat talk have a normative rival in female body image conversations?

Fat talk, dialogues among women involving negative body-focused discussions, was studied as a function of conformity and social likeability through the use of four vignettes depicting young women in conversation. Using a 2 (body presentation style of the group: negative or positive) × 2 (body presentation style of the target, Jenny: negative or positive) factorial design, 215 college women (92.1% non-Hispanic Caucasian) read one of four vignettes in a classroom setting and made ratings on a social likeability scale. Participants’ personal ratings of Jenny's likeability were higher when she spoke positively about her body, whereas they expected the other group members in the vignette to like Jenny more when she conformed to the group's body presentation style. This study is the first to support two competing norms for women's body image—the existing norm to fat talk versus a newly documented norm that some women like others who express body acceptance.     

Depression and empathic accuracy in couples: an interpersonal model of gender differences in depression

We examine the link between depression and empathic accuracy, the ability to infer other people's thoughts and feelings, as a possible mechanism underlying gender differences in the association between depression and interpersonal difficulties within intimate relationships. Fifty-one heterosexual couples completed questionnaires assessing depressive symptoms and participated in both a lab and a daily diary procedure assessing empathic accuracy. In the lab measures, women's (but not men's) higher levels of depressive symptoms were associated with lower empathic accuracy regarding partners' thoughts and feelings. In the daily diary data, women's depressive symptoms were specifically associated with lower levels of empathic accuracy for negative feelings but not for positive feelings, and with lower levels of their partners' empathic accuracy for the women's negative feelings. Men's depressive symptoms were again unrelated to levels of empathic accuracy. Our findings suggest that depressive symptoms may have a stronger impact on interpersonal perception in intimate relationships among women than among men.     

Unwanted Identities: A Key Variable in Shame–Anger Links and Gender Differences in Shame

The present study examined the role that unwanted identities play in accounting for extant findings concerning gender differences in shame-proneness. The construct of unwanted identities was also used to explain why powerful associations have been found between shame and anger. College students (48 men, 84 women) rated their feelings of shame, guilt, anger, and unwanted identities in response to the TOSCA-2 scenarios, known to yield robust gender differences in shame, and to new scenarios, meant to be more threatening to men's than women's identities. Even after accounting for shared variance between shame and guilt, evidence supported the conclusion that women's greater shame-proneness than men's could be an artifact, reflecting the more threatening nature of previous situations to women's identities. Mediational analyses also confirmed that unwanted identities elicit shame, which, in turn, is a powerful instigator of anger. Discussion focuses on inconsistencies between the present results and expectations based on previous theory and research.     

The relation between women's body esteem and friendships with gay men

Women who associate with gay men are often portrayed as physically unattractive and lacking in both self-confidence and attention from straight men. However, many women report enhanced self-esteem and feelings of attractiveness as a result of attention from their gay friends. It is well established that body esteem can be negatively impacted by certain peer processes, yet there is a dearth of quantitative research on positive peer influences on women's body esteem. We tested two hypotheses: (a) women with gay male friends have poor body esteem and are rejected by heterosexual men, and (b) more contact with gay men is positively related to body esteem. Participants were 154 heterosexual women, who completed measures of their friendships with gay men, straight men and women, body esteem, relationship involvement and break-ups. Results supported the hypothesis that women's body esteem, specifically feelings of sexual attractiveness, is positively associated with friendships with gay men.     

Don't take another bite: how sociocultural norms for appearance affect women's eating behavior

Four studies tested the impact of exposure to thin images on women's eating behavior. In Study 1, women who were exposed to commercials containing thin models ate less in a taste test than women exposed to neutral commercials. The next two studies revealed that the impact of the thin images could be reduced by challenging the sociocultural norms for appearance. In Study 2, including images of relatively heavier women who have been successful in life (an indirect challenge to the norm) attenuated the impact of the thin images on women's eating behavior. Study 3 demonstrated that convincing women that their peers do not endorse the sociocultural norms also reduced the impact of the thin images. In Study 4, we found that exposure to thin images led to activation of an association between heaviness and rejection and that the more this association was activated, the less participants ate.     

Emotional communication in close relationships

Emotional communication patterns characterizing interactions between partners in close relationships were investigated by asking 29 couples who were married or living together to engage in a videotaped discussion of a problem they were having in their relationship. In a later experimental session, partners identified specific communications that they believed had an important influence on the discussion and then rated the communications in terms of the feelings the communicator intended to convey and the recipient's reactions. Partners attempted to reciprocate both the positive and negative feelings that they perceived their partner to express toward them. However, only negative feelings were actually reciprocated. This was because subjects were sensitive to differences in the negative feelings their partners reported expressing and interpreted those feelings correctly, but they were inaccurate in perceiving their partners' expressions of positive feelings. Men (but not women) interpreted their partners' failures to express love as an indication of hostility, whereas women (but not men) interpreted their partners' lack of hostility as an indication of love. These and other results were conceptualized in terms of a general model of emotional communication. Parameters of the model pertaining to the hostility of partners' communications were often related to women's satisfaction with their relationship and their beliefs about relationships in general. However, they were unrelated to men's satisfaction and general beliefs. This suggested that women are generally more adversely affected by overt expression of hostility than are men.     

The swimsuit becomes us all: ethnicity, gender, and vulnerability to self-objectification

Self-objectification theory posits and past research has found that Caucasian women's body image is negatively affected by a stigma of obesity and sociocultural norm of thinness that leads women to self-focus from a critical external perspective. However, research in this area is limited by its methodology and the restricted demographic composition of its study participants. The current study tested 176 men and 224 women of Caucasian, African American, Hispanic, and Asian American descent in a situation that induced a state of self-objectification (e.g., wearing a one-piece Speedo bathing suit) or that served as a control condition (e.g., wearing a sweater). Contrary to previous research, when put in a self-objectifying situation, men and women of every ethnicity experienced negative outcomes (e.g., lower math performance) that parallel those previously found for Caucasian women.     

The affective shift hypothesis: The functions of emotional changes following sexual intercourse

This article develops the Affective Ship Hypothesis, which suggests that women experience positive affective shifts following first‐time intercourse as a means to facilitate a longer‐term, more committed relationship. The hypothesis predicts a negative affective shift in men who pursue a short‐term mating strategy; this shift is hypothesized to function to curtail commitment by motivating the man to terminate the relationship. Study 1 (N= 177) documented sex differences predicted by the affective shift hypothesis. Study 2 (N= 203), using a somewhat different methodology involving reports of presex and postsex feelings, found that men with high numbers of sex partners, but not men with low numbers of partners, experienced a decrease in their partner's physical and sexual attractiveness following first‐time sexual intercourse. In contrast, women, more than men, experienced increases in feelings of love and commitment following first‐time sex.     

The Influence of Observed Alcohol Consumption on Perceptions of Initiation of Sexual Activity in a College Dating Situation

Corcoran and Bell (1990) found differences between men and women's expectancies for the likelihood of sexual intercourse on a first date depending on how much the other had to drink. The present study examined the subjects' perceptions of likelihood of male and female initiation of sexual intercourse in a story in which the drinking of male or female characters was varied. Subjects read a story of a first date in which one character. either the male or female, consumed a couple of cocktails. The other character either "also had a couple of cocktails.""drank soft drinks," or "became slightly intoxicated." A manipulation check showed that the subjects were responding to story variables in their ratings of characters intoxication. Men were perceived to be more likely than women to initiate intercourse across all drinking conditions, although results indicate that all subjects believed that sexual activity was more likely to be initiated when story characters consumed alcohol rather than soft drinks. These results further demonstrated that this expectancy for initiation of sex appears to be triggered by the presence of alcohol and did not significantly increase for a higher dose of alcohol. More research is necessary to clarify the role of alcohol in sexuality among adolescents and young adults.     

WOMEN'S RESPONSES TO UNWANTED SEXUAL ADVANCES: THE ROLE OF ALCOHOL AND INHIBITION CONFLICT

In this study we investigated how alcohol consumption affects women's responses to unwanted sexual advances in a hypothetical dating situation. Sixty female social drinkers participated in a 2 × 2 between-subjects experiment, which examined the effects of moderate alcohol intoxication and relationship characteristics on behavioral responses to unwanted sexual advances. Hypotheses were tested regarding the influence of inhibition conflict on intoxicated participants. As predicted, intoxicated women were more likely than sober women to consent to their dating partner's sexual advances in high conflict situations. Additionally, alcohol consumption increased women's estimated likelihood of responding passively. These findings aid in explicating the relationship between alcohol consumption and women's increased vulnerability to sexual assault.     

Anger, Blame, and Dimensions of Perceived Norm Violations: Culture, Gender, and Relationships

From a social cognitive perspective on anger, we attempted to examine the structure of perceived norm violations and their relationships with anger. We asked 884 university students from 4 countries (United States, Germany, Japan, and Hong Kong) to rate their experiences of being harmed in terms of norm violations, angry feelings, blame, and relationship with the harm doers. We found 2 culturally common dimensions in perceived norm violations (informal interpersonal norms and formal societal norms), and these dimensions substantially increased both angry feelings and blame in almost all cultural groups. The violation of interpersonal norms generally evoked anger more frequently than that of societal norms, but there were interactions between culture and relationship closeness and between gender and relationship closeness.     

Helping as a function of feeling state and nature of the helping behavior

The proposition that positive feelings increase helping because they increase the perception of personal power implies that if the person prefers not to help, positive feelings would decrease helping. This was tested in an experiment that varied feelings and pleasantness of the helping task. False meter feedback was used to manipulate feelings, and an indirect check on the manipulation showed that it was effective in varying feelings. As expected from the notion that positive feelings allow the person to feel free to refuse to help, there was an interaction between feelings and pleasantness of the helping task; positive feelings produced less helping than neutral or negative feelings when the helping task was unpleasant.This research was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.     

Adolescents' perceived ability to say "no" to unwanted sex

The authors examined the degree to which adolescents believe they can resist a dating partner's verbal pressure to have sex when they themselves really do not want to. 2472 10th-grade students of mean age 15.5 years from eight public high schools in Dade County, Florida, participated in the study. 49% were male, 27.8% White, 38.2% Hispanic, and 27.7% Black. 50.1% reported having ever experienced sexual intercourse. The female students were found to be more likely than males to believe that they could refuse unwanted sex. No consistent differences were found along ethnic and racial lines. The multivariate analysis identified the following as predictors of the ability to refuse sex: a less-permissive attitude toward sex, the low importance of peer influence, and, for females, a generalized sense of self-efficacy.     

SOCIAL CLASS, SOCIAL CHANGE, AND GENDER

This article explores the implications of social class background in the lives of women who attended Radcliffe College in the late 1940s and in the early 1960s. Viewing social classes as "cultures" with implications for how individuals understand their worlds, we examined social class background and cohort differences in women's experiences at Radcliffe, their adult life patterns, their constructions of women's roles, and the influence of the women's movement in their lives. Results indicated that women from working-class backgrounds in both cohorts felt alienated at Radcliffe. Cohort differences, across social class, reflected broad social changes in women's roles in terms of the rates of divorce, childbearing, level of education, and career activity. There were few social class-specific social changes, but there were a number of social class differences among the women in the Class of 1964. These differences suggested that women from working-class backgrounds viewed women's marital role with some suspicion, whereas women from middle- and upper-class backgrounds had a more positive view. Perhaps for this reason, working-class women reported that the women's movement confirmed and supported their skeptical view of middle-class gender norms.     

Setting the bar: divergent sociocultural norms for women's and men's ideal appearance in real-world contexts

Research suggests that exposure to sociocultural norms for idealized appearance can reduce both women's and men's body satisfaction. Despite comparable effects for both genders in the lab, in the “real-world” women's body satisfaction is chronically lower than men's. Real-world gender differences may arise from discrepancies in men's and women's everyday exposure to norms. Across eight studies using a variety of content analysis, survey, and experimental methods, we examine differences in sociocultural norms for ideal appearance pertaining to women and men in “daily life” contexts. We demonstrate that appearance norms encountered by women in daily life are more rigid, homogenous and pervasive than those for men, and that more messages implying the attainability of the ideal appearance are directed at women. Finally, experimental results show that homogeneous, rigid norms (like those typically encountered by women) are more harmful to body image than heterogeneous, flexible norms (like those typically encountered by men).     

ATTITUDES TOWARD WOMEN's BODY HAIR: RELATIONSHIP WITH DISGUST SENSITIVITY

We aimed to further investigate the "hairlessness" norm that is the common practice of body hair removal among women. A sample of 198 undergraduate students (91 men, 107 women) completed questionnaires asking about attitudes toward women's body hair and the reasons women remove this hair, as well as a measure of disgust sensitivity. It was found that the vast majority (98%) of female participants regularly remove their leg and/or underarm hair, most frequently by shaving, and attribute this to femininity and attractiveness reasons. However, the attributions that they and men made for other women were much more socially normative in nature. For the sample as a whole, negative attitudes toward body hair were related to disgust sensitivity. It was concluded that body hair on women, but not on men, has become an elicitor of disgust and its removal correspondingly normative.     

Attitudes toward consequences of pregnancy in young women attending a family planning clinic

This study examines the relationship between young women's knowledge and attitude concerning pregnancy and their sexual behavior. The study involved 78 young women (14-20 years of age) who had attended a midwestern family planning clinic. Primarily from a larger socioeconomic status, 70% of the participants said that they had never been pregnant. Adapting the testing methods of previous investigations, the study presented the participants with various exams intended to measure the following: 1) knowledge concerning "how babies are made"; 2) knowledge regarding intercourse and pregnancy; 3) anticipation of future consequences of adolescent childbirth; 4) anticipation of immediate consequences or fears of adolescent pregnancy. The study also examined the participants' contraceptive behavior and pregnancy history. The findings indicate that knowledge concerning understanding "how babies are made" does not influence sexual behavior, with no significant difference found between contraceptive users and non-contraceptive users. Also, the participants generally had accurate knowledge concerning intercourse and pregnancy. But the study did reveal significant differences in the evaluation of the consequences of pregnancy and childbirth. Those women who had previously been pregnant -- including those who had terminated their pregnancies -- showed a less negative attitude towards the consequences of pregnancy and childbirth than those who had never been pregnant. Furthermore, as the age of the women increased, the attitude became more positive. However, the study found that the attitude towards the consequences of pregnancy and childbirth had no impact on contraceptive behavior.     

Effects of peer group rejection and a new group's norms on children's intergroup attitudes

This study examined the effects of peer group rejection and a new group's norms on 7‐ and 9‐year old children's intergroup attitudes. Children (N =82) were rejected or accepted by an initial group, then accepted by a new group that had a norm of inclusion versus exclusion towards others. Results showed that rejected compared with accepted children had a more negative attitude towards the initial group, that they were equally positive towards their new group, but that the rejected children were more negative towards an outgroup. Results also revealed an age × target group × group norm effect that indicated that the younger children's attitudes towards the three groups were more negative in the exclusion versus acceptance norm condition. The older children were also more negative towards the initial and new groups in the exclusion condition, but their more positive attitudes towards the outgroup were unaffected by the group norms. The bases of the effects of peer group rejection and group norms are discussed.