Social Construction and Grounding

The aim of this paper is to bring recent work on metaphysical grounding to bear on the phenomenon of social construction. It is argued that grounding can be used to analyze social construction and that the grounding framework is helpful for articulating various claims and commitments of social constructionists, especially about social identities, e.g., gender and race. The paper also responds to a number of objections that have been (or could be) leveled against the application of grounding to social construction from Elizabeth Barnes (2014), Mari Mikkola (2015), and Jessica Wilson (2014).     

Social construction: big-G grounding,small-g realization

The goal of this paper is to make headway on a metaphysics of social construction. In recent work (forthcoming), I’ve argued that social construction should be understood in terms of metaphysical grounding. However, I agree with grounding skeptics like Wilson (Inquiry 1–45, 2014) that bare claims about what grounds what are insufficient for capturing, with fine enough grain, metaphysical dependence structures. To that end, I develop a view on which the social construction of human social kinds (e.g., race) is a kind of realization relation. Social kinds, I argue, are multiply realizable kinds. I depart from the Wilson by further arguing that an appeal to grounding is not otiose when it comes to social construction. Social construction, I claim, belongs to the “big-G” Grounding genus, but it is the specific “small-g” relation of realization at work in cases of human kind social construction.     

Improving Women's Self‐Compassion Through an Online Program: A Randomized Controlled Trial

The benefits of self‐compassion interventions have been well documented in the counseling literature. Despite these benefits, access to such interventions remains a considerable barrier for a range of populations. We addressed the issue of limited access by using a randomized controlled trial to evaluate an online, self‐guided course on self‐compassion specifically targeted toward women. Fifty‐seven women were randomly assigned to receive immediate or delayed access to a 10‐week course designed to increase self‐compassion and reduce self‐judgment, shame, and perfectionism. Analysis of the data revealed that participants in the treatment condition experienced significant increases in self‐compassion and decreases in self‐judgment, shame, and perfectionism compared with participants in the wait‐list group. Results provide evidence that self‐compassion can be fostered in a nonclinical population of women through participation in a self‐paced online course. Related findings and potential implications, including the use of such interventions to address accessibility concerns, are discussed within the existing literature.     

Can Social Supports Be Engineered? An Example from the Army's Unit Manning System1

The purpose of the study was to examine variables which lead to the perception of instrumental social support among military wives. More specifically, we were interested in two factors: (a) the Unit Manning System, a method of deployment which keeps groups of soldiers and their families together for long periods of time; and (b) husbands' ranks. Both factors were found to be significant predictors of support in a previous study. Using a path analytic model, we demonstrated that being an officer's wife was related to perceived social support only indirectly through its influence on degree of participation in wives' group activities. Participation in the Unit Manning System also had only an indirect influence on social support. Reasons for these findings are discussed with reference to theories about coping and coping assistance.     

Dimensions of perceptions of social-sexual behavior in a work setting

Although sexual harassment has become an important and controversial topic in social science research in recent years, little research has been done regarding the factors involved in the perception of a single ambiguous social-sexual incident. Furthering the analysis of Gutek, Morasch, and Cohen (1983), factor analytic, cluster analytic, and multidimensional scaling techniques were supplied to a set of 19 questions which were used to evaluate some ambiguous vignettes that could have been considered instances of sexual harassment. These analyses yielded four major clusters: (1) variables relating to the interpersonal relationship between the individuals in the vignette, (2) personal aspects of the incident, (3) questions relating specifically to sexual harassment, and (4) questions regarding the likelihood of the incident. Questions about sexual and harassing aspects of the incident were less central to its evaluation by college students than were those about the incident's personal qualities and about the relationship between the two people.The first author would like to thank Dr. Lawrence Hubert, Department of Education, University of California, Santa Barbara, for his inspiration and help with these analyses. The authors would like to thank Bruce Morasch and Paul Phillips for their help in the collection and preliminary analyses of these data. This research was in part assisted by support from the National Institute of Mental Health, Grant USPHS-MH-32606-01, to the second author.     

Training community residential staff: Evaluation and follow-up

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of a comprehensive residential direct-care staff training program on staff knowledge, record keeping, habilitation delivery, and turnover. A 40-hour training course was presented to 18 direct-care staff employed in three community residential facilities (CRF), while 18 staff in three other CRFs were placed on a waiting list. Sixteen of 18 trained staff (89%) increased use of habilitation activities, averaging 35.44% programming after training. Only six (33%) of the staff on the waiting list increased programming. The effectiveness of training was assessed against the gains of developmentally disabled (DD) consumers. In the training group, 31 of 36 (86.11%) residents increased on-task behavior while only 7 of 22 (31.6%) of the waiting list residents increased on-task behavior. Training also yielded improved client program records and a 50% decrease in staff turnover. Follow-up over 12 months showed behavior maintenance. Results suggest that training based on clear learner objectives, presented using behavioral procedures, and taught to the entire staff including managers improves staff performance and client benefit.     

Gender bias on the Thematic Apperception Test

Thirty male and 30 female college students generated stories to a set of nine Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) cards with either male or female stimulus characters. The Fine scoring system was factor analyzed to produce seven factor clusters plus three outcome variables. Multiple analysis of variance (MANOVA) revealed a main effect for type of card. The female TAT cards elicited significantly more responses on the General Concerns scale than did the male TAT cards. A main effect for subject gender showed the females gave more responses than males on the Interpersonal Relations scale. No differences were found on the outcome variables.     

Reactions of would-be helpers whose offer of help is spurned

An experiment was conducted to test the proposition that rejection of help by a needy recipient constitutes a negative expectancy violation for the would-be helper. The helper will react to this self-threat by expressing negative affect, unfavorable evaluations of the recipient, low attraction to the recipient, and causal attributions for the rejection that cast the recipient in an unflattering light. To test these hypotheses, college freshmen were prompted to offer rules for word construction to a same-sex recipient (a confederate) who was described as needing remediation on vocabulary and who "failed" a practice task. After rejecting/accepting the help, the recipient failed or succeeded on a comparable task. The results were consistent with these predictions. Dispositionally high expectations of interpersonal success served to amplify helpers' reactions to rejection/acceptance.     

The Experimental Analysis of Human Behavior: History,Current Status,and Future Directions

The Psychological Record - These papers were presented at a symposium held at the 93rd annual convention of the American Psychological Association, August, 1985, Los Angeles, CA. The papers, in...