“Girl,” “woman,” “guy,” “man”: The effects of sexist labeling

An experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of sexist labeling. Sixty males and 60 females were asked to evaluate an artist and a series of paintings on a variety of cognitive and affective measures. For half the subjects, the artist was identified as a male with either a high status label (man), a low status label (guy), or a neutral label (person); for the other half of the subjects, the artist was identified as a female with either a high status label (woman), a low status label (girl), or a neutral label (person). The findings indicated that for the female artist, the low and high status labels had an equally negative effect on subjects' judgments; for the male artist, the low and high status labels had an equally positive effect on subjects' judgments. There were no significant differences between male and female subjects. The social and psychological implications of the findings are discussed.The present study is based in part on a paper presented at the meetings of the Western Psychological Association held in San Diego, California, April 1979, in collaboration with Ms. Julie Horowitz.     

ENTROPY AND EVIL

Abstract. This paper explores a possible relationship between entropy and evil in terms of metaphor. After presenting the various meanings of entropy in classical thermodynamics and statical mechanics, and the Augustinian and Irenaean theodicies, several similarities and dissimilarities between entropy and evil are described. Underlying the concepts of evil and entropy is the assumption that time has a direction. After examining the scientific basis for this assumption, it is hypothesized that, if evil is real in nature, entropy is what one would expect to find at the level of physical processes, and conversely that, if entropy is coupled to a physical arrow of time, one could expect to find dissipative yet catalytic processes in history and religious experience.     

Measuring the effects of demand characteristics on the Beck Depression Inventory responses of college students

To determine whether Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) responses could be influenced by an instructional set or by changing the item order, 198 college students were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: instructions designed to facilitate or inhibit responding, along with standard vs. reordered symptom questions. A 2×2 ANCOVA found a main effect only for the inhibitory message. The suppression of scores by the inhibitor instructional set suggests caution regarding possible demand characteristics when using the BDI with this population and should be further studied with clinically symptomatic samples.     

Cognitive abilities and left-handedness: An interaction between familial sinistrality and strength of handedness

The present study demonstrates that there are substantial differences in cognitive ability between different subsets of left-handers. The verbal and mathematical Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores of 86 left-handed undergraduates were examined as a function of familial sinistrality, strength of left-handedness, and sex. The results revealed that there was an interaction between familial sinistrality and strength of handedness in terms of aptitude: for the weakly to moderately left-handed there was no relationship between familial sinistrality and performance, whereas for the strongly left-handed a positive history of familial sinistrality (FS+) was associated with significantly lower aptitude when compared with subjects without a history of familial sinistrality (FS−). In addition, the strongly left-handed FS− group was superior to the other three groups, particularly in verbal aptitude.     

Effects of noise and attack on aggression and physiological arousal

Sixty male subjects were first given either 10 shocks or 2 shocks by an experimental confederate. Two-thirds were then stimulated with loud and aversive noise while the other one-third were not so stimulated. In one of the noise-stimulated conditions, the subject was free to terminate the noise. In the other condition, the subject had no control over the noise. Subjects in all conditions were then given an opportunity to aggress against the confederate. Measures of skin conductance, pulse rate, and blood pressure were made after the subject had been shocked and again after the noise had been given. Subjects who had been given 10 shocks followed by uncontrollable noise gave shocks of longer duration than subjects in any other condition. Subjects given uncontrollable noise also showed evidence of being more physiologically aroused than those given controllable noise or no noise.This research was supported by Grant GS 40171 from the National Science Foundation to the first author.     

Evaluation apprehension and the social facilitation/inhibition of learning

Sixty female subjects performed a paired-associates learning task either alone or under surveillance by the experimenter, who openly evaluated the subject's performance. To half of the subjects the experimenter described her evaluation as instrumental to the rendering of future help on a similar task; to the remaining half she gave no such promise. Subjects who were evaluated without the expectation of future help performed better than subjects who worked alone when the paired-associates list was easy, but less well when the list was difficult. For both types of list, evaluation with the added promise of future help produced performance no different from that of isolated subjects. Evaluation without the promise of help also produced a higher level of state anxiety than that observed in isolated subjects. The findings were discussed in terms of the effects of evaluation apprehension on the social facilitation and inhibition of learning.     

Structure of intelligence in intellectually precocious children and in their parents

Students representing the top 0.03% of their age group in intellectual ability, who were identified by the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (Benbow & Stanley, 1980), were tested along with their parents using a battery of specifically designed cognitive tests. These highly intelligent children had less intelligent, but yet quite bright parents. Vernon's (1961) model of intelligence best fits our results. His following two factors explained most of the variance in the performance of the students and parents: verbal-educational and practical-spatial-mechanical. Moreover, there was potential evidence for a general factor. Among the children, who were mostly past puberty, age related to development of verbal abilities, but not spatial or mechanical abilities. Sex differences favoring the males were found on the spatial ability and mechanical comprehension tests.     

The classification and integration of edges as critical to the perception of reflectance and illumination

A pattern of luminances equivalent to that of a traditional simultaneous lightness display (two equal gray squares, one on a white background and the other on an adjacent black background) was presented to observers under two conditions, and matches were obtained for both perceived reflectance and perceived illumination level of the squares and their backgrounds. In one condition, the edge dividing the two backgrounds was made to appear as the boundary between a white and a black surface, as in the traditional pattern. The squares then were perceived as almost the same shade of middle gray. In the other condition, a context was supplied that made the edge between the backgrounds appear as the boundary between two illumination levels, causing one square to appear black and the other white. These results were interpreted as a problem for local ratio theories, local edge theories, and lateral inhibition explanations of lightness constancy, but as support for the concepts of edge classification, edge integration, and the retinal image as a dual image.     

Visual spatial perception and paternal deprivation

College men and women who were father deprived for at least 1 year from birth to 18 years of age or non-deprived were compared on the Spatial Relations Test of the Differential Aptitude Tests (DAT), the Identical Blocks Test (IBT) and the Water Level Test (WLT). There was a significant sex difference favoring men—as expected—on the IBT and WLT but not on the DAT. There was no significant effect of father deprivation on the mean performance on any test but there was a correlation between years of deprivation and WLT performance for men (r = 0.48,P < 0.001). No other correlation between deprivation and test performance was significant.