TOWARD A FEMINIST UNDERSTANDING OF WOMEN AND POWER

Both psychologists and feminists believe power is an important and ubiquitous concept, yet its definition and scope eludes both groups. In this introduction to a special issue on women and power, we suggest three points to help organize and interpret research in the area. First, definitions of power should center around the distinction between "power-over," the domination and control of one person or group over another, and "power-to" or personal empowerment. Second, power can be analyzed at different levels—societal, organizational, interpersonal, and individual—and, importantly, these levels interact. Third, power differences frequently underlie what appear to be gender differences in behavior; as society is currently configured, power and gender are never independent. Although the articles in this special issue often ask more questions than they answer, the present volume adds a feminist perspective to the psychological study of power.     

The borderline diagnosis and integration of self

To try to encompass what is meant by borderline with parameters that are too delineating can lead to conceptual difficulties and confusion for several reasons: The human psyche is too complex and probably has too much of the quality of a gestalt to be understood adequately by dichotomizing thinking; an individual does not experience himself as operating in discrete units, but as a unified whole; and the most characteristic manifest quality of the borderline picture is its tendency toward a chaotic functioning that somehow always spills over any defining boundaries which are set up to attain conceptual containment. If we then accept our limitations on the precision and order with which we can comprehend it, the understanding of borderline might be supplemented by seeing it in terms of the subjective experience of an integrated self. This offers a more holistic approach that tends not to be so subject to objectifying compartmentalization. It is more in tune with the subjective experiencing a person has of that which defines and moves him in the world. And it offers a referent axis along which the distance one has traveled in the borderline direction might be gleaned. Finally, the relationship of the borderline diagnosis to character disorder might be looked this way: The diagnosis does not refer to a particular character disorder or to a group of disorders. It emerges in all character pathology to the degree that the experiencing of an integrated and whole sense of self, which is at the heart of character structure, is diminished.     

Symbolic comparisons with and without perceptual referents: Is interval information used?

In an attempt to investigate the range effect obtained by Moyer and Bayer (1976), two groups of subjects were taught to associate colors with circles that differed in size by larger or smaller intervals and then participated in a symbolic comparison task, in which they determined which of two simultaneously presented symbols (the first letters of two colors) represented the larger magnitude. A third group of subjects, who merely learned an arbitrary ordering of the colors along the dimension of size, also participated in the symbolic comparison task. Despite the fact that no practice trials were given, there was no effect of interval size in either early or late blocks, and the circle-learning groups did not differ in performance from the group who only learned an arbitrary ordering of colors, even when pairs containing end terms were removed from the analysis. It is concluded that subjects do not use analogue codes in symbolic comparison tasks involving small, repeated sets of arbitrarily defined symbols.     

Are the times changing? An analysis of gender differences in sexual graffiti

This study examined the assumption that the gender gap has narrowed over time in the writing of sexual graffiti from male and female bathrooms of five colleges and universities in 1972 and 1984. In both studies, female graffiti, in relation to male graffiti, made fewer sexual references. In addition, female graffiti were more socially acceptable in regard to langauge and content. Overall, these results suggest that the decade of the 1970s may have had little or no impact on the pattern of gender differences in the sexual content and social acceptability of wall writings.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, August 26, 1985.     

Effects of inferiority and superiority in groups on recognition memory and confidence

Summary Three dependent variables were derived from an extended Signal-Detection paradigm: memory performance, confidence level, and response-bias. In the assessment of memory items, S and 2 confederates were exposed periodically to fictitious results which implied inferiority or superiority of S. Memory performance was generally better in group situations than when the subject was alone. Within groups, inferiority motivated S to improve. Significant confidence differences between correct and false judgments and, if S judged falsely, a high susceptibility to cognitions about S's relative performance, led theoretically to a distinction between internal and external cues and to the assumption that S wished to avoid uncertainty. Response-bias was found to be independent of motivation and very close to expected stimulus occurrence. The reward/cost theory of Thibaut and Kelley accounts for the motivation engendered and is linked to some theoretical considerations about processing objectively classifiable stimuli in social context.

---

Zusammenfassung Aus einem erweiterten Signal-Detection-Paradigma wurden 3 abhängige Variablen abgeleitet: Gedächtnisleistung, Sicherheitsniveau und Response-bias. Bei der Beurteilung von Gedächtnisaufgaben wurden einer Vp und 2 Mitwissern des Vl von Zeit zu Zeit fiktive Ergebnisse gezeigt, die entweder Unterlegenheit oder Überlegenheit der Vp induzierten. Verglichen mit einer Alleinsituation stieg die Gedächtnisleistung allgemein in Gruppensituationen. Innerhalb von Gruppensituationen wurde die Vp durch Unterlegenheit motiviert, sich zu verbessern. Signifikante Unterschiede in der Sicherheit zwischen richtigen und falschen Urteilen und hohe Beeinflußbarkeit durch Kognitionen über den relativen Leistungsstand der Vp bei Fehlerurteilen führte theoretisch zu einer Unterscheidung zwischen innerem und äußerem Aufschluß und zu der Annahme, daß die Vp Unsicherheit vermeiden will. Der gefundene Response-bias war unabhängig von Motivation und sehr nahe bei der Wahrscheinlichkeit des Auftretens der Reize. Die reward/cost Theorie von Thibaut und Kelley kann die erzeugte Motivation erklären und wird mit einigen theoretischen Überlegungen über die Verarbeitung objektiv definierbarer Reize im sozialen Kontext verknüpft.

---

---

This research was supported by research grants from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft allotted to the Sonderforschungsbereich 24 at the University of Mannheim, West Germany. We are grateful to Mary Madden, Pauline Sadler, and Jennifer S. Sentance for their cooperation on the English translation.

---

This article is partly based on a Diplom-thesis by the second author entitled Effekte von Überlegenheit und Unterlegenheit in Gruppen auf Gedächtnisleistung und Skalengebrauch.     

An inexpensive electro-fistular swivel for negative feedback control of self-stimulation

A swivel was developed for concurrent intraorganismic fluid injection and intracranial electrical stimulation of the unrestrained rat. Effects of various intragastric injections on bar-pressing maintained by electrical stimulation of the hypothalamus were studied. In some subjects, intragastric injections of either water or milk decreased the rate of responding. This decrease resulted from pauses in responding rather than from decreases in the local rates of responding. The decrement in responding occurred at a lower gastric volume during milk injection than during water injection. In other subjects, however, neither water, milk, nor 32% sucrose injections affected the rate of self-stimulation.     

The dead donor rule: should we stretch it, bend it, or abandon it?

The dead donor rule--that persons must be dead before their organs are taken--is a central part of the moral framework underlying organ procurement. Efforts to increase the pool of transplantable organs have been forced either to redefine death (e.g., anencephaly) or take advantage of ambiguities in the current definition of death (e.g., the Pittsburgh protocol). Society's growing acceptance of circumstances in which health care professionals can hasten a patient's death also may weaken the symbolic importance of the dead donor rule. We consider the implications of these efforts to continually revise the line between life and death and ask whether it would be preferable to abandon the dead donor rule and rely entirely on informed consent as a safeguard against abuse.     

Psychosocial predictors of stress associated with the male midlife transition

This study was designed to examine the correlates of developmental psychological stress for 36 middle-aged professional men. Based on sex role convergence and role adjustment theories, two sets of predictor variables were hierarchically entered into a multiple regression equation with a third set of variables entered to control for individual stressors. Controlling for individual stressors, midlife stress outcome was found to be influenced only by role adjustment (R²=.3593). The sex role convergence cluster did not account for a significant increase in variance. Controlling for individual stressors, the best univariate predictors of stress outcome associated with the midlife transition were (a) the quality of the parent-adolescent relationship and (b) marital satisfaction.