GENDER DIFFERENCES IN REASONING ABOUT MILITARY INTERVENTION

The question of gender associations with moral reasoning and values has received a great deal of attention since Gilligan first published In a Different Voice in 1982. Various authors have argued that women are less hierarchical, more relational, more caring, more empathetic, and more concerned about not harming others than men. Yet, these claims have been questioned by other scholars. Data from a small survey of college students are used to address this question. We found that, in examining students' narrative justifications of their opinion on a particular question of military intervention, gender was related to the type of justification used in a manner consistent with the arguments of Gilligan. We argue that "objective" tests are less likely to detect this difference than content analyses of narratives. The different bases of judgments have implications for political opinions as well as interpersonal interactions.     

Student Response to Three Types of Orientation Programs

A high proportion of positive responses was obtained from students who participated in three different types of pre-college orientation programs. Small group approaches consistently elicited more favorable responses than assemblies or large groups. Greater faculty involvement resulted in participants' noting an increased academic emphasis. Participants believed they had benefited in some way from programs which varied considerably as to length, activities, organization, and purposes.     

BEHAVIORAL MOMENTUM IN THE TREATMENT OF NONCOMPLIANCE

Behavioral momentum refers to the tendency for behavior to persist following a change in environmental conditions. The greater the rate of reinforcement, the greater the behavioral momentum. The intervention for noncompliance consisted of issuing a sequence of commands with which the subject was very likely to comply (i.e., high-probability commands) immediately prior to issuing a low-probability command. In each of five experiments, the high-probability command sequence resulted in a “momentum” of compliant responding that persisted when a low-probability request was issued. Results showed the antecedent high-probability command sequence increased compliance and decreased compliance latency and task duration. “Momentum-like” effects were shown to be distinct from experimenter attention and to depend on the contiguity between the high-probability command sequence and the low-probability command.     

Reviews

Z oja , L uigi and H inshaw , P eter (eds) The Differing Uses of Symbolic and Clinical Approaches in Practice and Theory
D ieckmann , H ans . Twice-Told Tales: The Psychological Use of Fairy Tales
K ohon , G. (ed.) The British School of Psychoanalysis: The Independent Tradition
T ustin , F rances . Autistic Barriers in Neurotic Patients
W innicott , D. W. Home is Where We Start From
H all , J ames A. The Jungian Experience: Analysis and Individuation     

Effects of visual aids on acquisition of selected tennis skills

The study compared the effects of supplemental visual aids on the acquisition of selected tennis skills. The forehand and backhand drive placement tests of the Hewitt Tennis Achievement Test were used to pretest, midtest, and posttest 55 subjects who were assigned to one of three treatments: control (instructor's verbal feedback only), videotaped replay viewing (with instructor's feedback), and loop-film viewing (modeling, with instructor's feedback). Each received 1200 min. of instruction. There were no statistically significant differences among groups; however, empirical evidence suggested that the use of videotaped replay and loop-film technique has merit and might be given consideration for use in instructional settings.     

Effects of facial attractiveness and gender on causal attributions of managerial performance

The present study examined the effect of facial attractiveness and gender on raters' evaluations of and explanations for managerial performance. Results showed attractiveness to be a potential liability for both males and females. Good performance of attractive females was more likely than that of others to be attributed to luck or bias, while that of attractive males was viewed as occurring with little effort. In addition, the poor performance of attractive individuals was blamed on lack of effort (females) or lack of ability (males). Implications of these findings are discussed.An earlier version of this paper was published in the 1986 Proceedings of the Southern Management Association.