Situational antecedents of children's anger experiences and subsequent responses to adult versus peer provokers

The purpose of this study was to examine children's reported experiences of anger and their means of expressing anger in their interactions with high versus equal status individuals. Parents and teachers represented high status while siblings and peers represented equal status. Sixth grade children were asked to cite situations in which they experience anger in interaction with peers versus adults and to indicate their typical responses to these situations. We identified 13 categories of situations in which anger was experienced and 11 categories of response to these situations. Anger was experienced in interaction with both high and equal status provokers but of the situations that were identified as producing experiences of anger, nine were reported as occurring differentially in interaction with adults versus peers of the responses to the experience of anger, seven responses were cited differentially in interaction with peers versus adults. The typical responses to adult provoked anger were generally more passive than those to peer provoked anger. Girls more than boys indicated experiencing anger due to adult's task demands but tended to express less overt anger in their interactions with adults than did boys. These findings are consistent with the view that high status of the provoker servers only to inhibit the expression of anger but does not lessen the anger experience itself.     

Egocentrism versus protocentrism: the status of self in social prediction

In this article, the author discusses the limitations of the egocentric view of self in which self serves as an automatic filter, inhibiting access to alternative representations of others' thoughts and feelings. The author then outlines a protocentric model, the self-as-distinct (SAD) model, in which generic representations of prototypic others serve as the default; representations of self, specific others, or categories encode only distinctiveness from generic knowledge about prototypic others. Thus, self-knowledge is distributed both in generic representations in which self and prototypic others are undifferentiated and in a self-representation that encodes distinctiveness. The self-representation does not serve to make predictions about others because it encodes how self differs from the generic representation of others. Predictions that are the same about self and others are protocentric, based on generic knowledge that serves as the default. The SAD model parsimoniously accounts for many inconsistent findings across various domains in social cognition.     

Is Gender or Gender-Role Orientation a Better Predictor of Empathy in Adolescence?

To assess the relative contribution of genderand gender-role orientation to empathy and itsdevelopment, 8th and 11th grade Israeli adolescentscompleted Davis' empathy scale and Bem's gender-roleorientation inventory, which yields a femininity score anda masculinity score for each participant. Withmasculinity and femininity treated as a within subjectsvariable, masculinity/femininity interacted with grade, such that whereas masculinity in both boys andgirls increased with grade, femininity decreased ingirls and increased in boys. Empathy was unrelated tograde or to masculinity but was related to gender and to femininity. When the contribution ofmasculinity/femininity was covaried, empathy was foundto be unrelated to gender. This pattern was found forthree of the empathy subscales: Perspective Taking, Empathic Concern, and Personal Distress, whichwere positively correlated. On the basis of a mediansplit, participants were then classified as Masculine,Feminine, Undifferentiated, or Androgynous. Androgynous individuals did not differ from Feminineindividuals on any of the empathy subscales. Thefindings were discussed in terms of the socialization ofemotions and gender-role orientation.     

Children's Gender Orientation and Perceptions of Female,Male, and Gender-Ambiguous Animal Characters

The purpose of the current study was to examine the effect of preadolescent children's gender orientation on their social perception of animal characters whose gender was clearly female, clearly male, or gender-ambiguous. Nine- to 12-year-old middle-class Israeli children who had completed a Hebrew version of Boldizar's scale for gender orientation in children assigned gender to the animal characters and indicated their degree of liking for them. Children's gender orientation did not influence their perceptions of the gender of animal characters that are clearly female and clearly male, but did impact on their perceptions of the gender of ambiguous animal characters. Second, children's liking for animal characters of different apparent gender interacted with gender orientation such that children with an androgynous gender orientation did not evidence differential liking of animal characters on the basis of their apparent gender. Children's liking of the animal characters was only partly mediated by their perceptions of the gender of these animal characters. Finally, gender orientation interacted with gender in determining degree of liking for the animal characters. The findings are discussed in terms of the impact of gender stereotyping in social perception.     

Adolescent Females' Idolization of Male Media Stars as a Transition Into Sexuality

The purpose of this study was to test the contention that feminine media stars who are idolized by adolescent girls provide a safe target of romantic love in the period of time before girls start dating and become sexually active. Girls in heterogeneous 7th and 9th grade classes in an Israeli urban center responded to a questionnaire about media stars, attributed feminine characteristics to feminine, masculine, and neutral media stars, and answered questions about having and desiring a boyfriend. There were more consensual choices of feminine idols than of nonfeminine idols. Girls who have or want a boyfriend chose nonfeminine idols whereas girls who do not currently want a boyfriend chose feminine idols. Girls with a nonfeminine idol who want a boyfriend and girls with a feminine idol who do not want a boyfriend attributed greater femininity to masculine and neutral stars. Finally, girls who did not want a boyfriend and attributed feminine characteristics to movie stars evidenced more negative attitudes toward sex. Although the number of posters of both feminine and nonfeminine idols correlated with the amount of time spent talking about the idol, the less consensual the idol, the more time was spent talking about him. Girls with a nonfeminine idol who hang posters of their idol indicated greater excitement when thinking about the idol and more jealousy of their idol's real and on screen relations. The findings were interpreted in the context of feeling norms and the need to practice these norms on safe love-objects.     

The sense of self-continuity as a resource in adaptive coping with job loss

This study examined the relation between the sense of self-continuity, defined as the ability to perceive oneself as extending temporally backwards into the past and forwards into the future, and the adaptiveness of strategies of coping with job loss. We created a web site that was linked to several Israeli web sites dealing with unemployment in the high- tech sector. Respondents were 211 Israeli men and women, aged 18–58, both employed and unemployed, who answered some biographical questions and completed two questionnaires online: the Coping Strategies Questionnaire (Roger, Jarvis & Najarian, 1993) and a version of the Possible Selves Questionnaire (Markus & Nurius, 1986). The results indicated that individuals who had suffered job loss had a lower sense of self-continuity than those who had not suffered job loss and this did not differ by the field of their previous employment (high-tech or other) or length of unemployment. Those individuals with a higher sense of self-continuity evidenced greater adaptiveness in coping, independently of the number of months they had been unemployed. This study is important in demonstrating that the sense of self-continuity is a resource in coping adaptively at times of crisis, suggesting that enhancing the sense of self-continuity may be a beneficial means of helping individuals cope more effectively with job loss.     

Whose Genitalia Are Involved In The Dissolution Of The Oedipus Complex In Boys?

This paper addresses the issue of whose genitalia are involved in the dissolution of the castration complex in boys. Freud and his followers suggested several different possibilities which are elaborated herein, and these alternative models are discussed from the perspective of psychological research regarding children’s emergent gender identity and their awareness of genital differences. The reviewed data show that contrary to Freudian theory, preschool children’s emergent gender identity is not dependent on their awareness of genital differences. However, preschoolers with younger siblings, primarily opposite gender ones, evidence greater understanding of genital differences, as Freud suggested. The discussion emphasizes the importance of children’s family constellation and their awareness of self-other similarity and dissimilarity in the development of their gender identity.

     

Suppressing and Priming the Motivation for Motherhood

In study 1, 148 married and unmarried childless Israeli women (mean age?=?25) indicated how often they think about having a child, their desired age for having a child, and justified not being mothers, with or without being primed with photographs of babies. Priming and marital status impacted the motivation for motherhood and the justifications for not being mothers. In study 2, the same procedure was used with 137 unmarried, childless Israeli women (mean age?=?24) whose gender role orientation was assessed. The impact of gender role orientation and priming on the motivation for motherhood and the justifications for not being mothers were complex, with femininity playing a much greater role than masculinity. The findings were discussed in the context of the myth of motherhood and its influence on the lives of women.     

Judging toy breakers: Gender stereotypes have devious effects on children

Second-grade children listened to short stories about male or female children who accidentally broke neutral and sex-appropriate or opposite-sex toys. Children then rated the severity of punishment due to each toy breaker and provided justifications for their ratings. The justifications were coded for citing intentionality (or lack thereof) and toy ownership (or lack thereof). No differences were found between boys and girls in the punishment severity ratings of targets of either gender who broke neutral toys. In the punishment severity ratings of toy breakers of sex-appropriate and opposite-sex toys, gender stereotype effects were found only for girls; they suggested more severe punishment for toy breakers of opposite-sex toys, irrespective of their gender. The citation of toy ownership was found to be a significant variable in boys’ nonuse of gender stereotypes in their punishment severity ratings; with the impact of toy ownership removed, gender differences in punishment severity ratings were eliminated. Although the citation of intentions did not influence the punishment severity ratings of either boys or girls, boys referred to intentions primarily in same-sex targets. The data illustrate both the direct and the devious impact of gender stereotypes on children’s social cognitive processes. Portions of this paper were written while the first author was on sabbatical leave at Princeton University and Carnegie Mellon University. We would like to thank Dale Miller for his helpful comments on a previous version of this paper.