Age and gender differences in college students' attitudes toward women: A replication and extension

This study replicates and extends earlier research on the Attitudes Toward Women Scale (J. T. Spence and R. L. Helmreich, The Attitudes Towards Women Scale: An Objective Instrument to Measure Attitudes Towards the Rights and Roles of Women in Contemporary Society, JSAS Catalog of Selected Documents in Psychology, 1972, 2, 66). The scale was administered to 382 college students to assess the reliability of the scale, gender and age differences in responses to the scale, and to make comparisons to past research with different samples. Age was positively associated with more liberal attitudes toward women. Females were more liberal overall than males; however, this depended on the particular item.     

Counselling glue sniffers and solvent abusers

This paper reviews the historical background and the current situation with reference to glue sniffing and volatile substance abuse practices by school children and young people. Various approaches to counselling are described and discussed with a view to encouraging the development of more caring services to treat those chronic cases who are urgently in need of help. It is emphasised that any response to volatile substance abuse should be directed more towards the person than the condition, which may be symptomatic of a whole range of personal problems requiring guidance and counselling.     

Classroom behavior of reflective and impulsive children

Seventy-nine children, nine or eleven years old, classified as reflective or impulsive by the Matching Familiar Figures (MFF) test, were observed in public school classrooms. A total of 15 behavioral categories were selected to capture activities often labeled “reflective” or “impulsive” in the literature. Children were observed in each of three classroom settings—Individual Work, Large Group instruction, and Small Group instruction. Thirty minutes of observational data on each child revealed substantial differences in the behavior of older and younger children and across the three settings. By contrast, there was only a minor difference in the behavior of reflective and impulsive children. These results suggest that the concept of reflection-impulsivity, as operationalized by the MFF, should be limited to tasks that involve response uncertainty, and should not be used to imply differences in the typical classroom behavior of children classified as reflective or impulsive by the MFF.     

Computer software patents: Some perspectives and misunderstandings

The importance that in-house software plays today in many organizations is without question. Perspectives of efficiencies, effectiveness, competitive advantage, and so on are but three areas where such applications exist. Many organizations have adopted measures to protect such software as a specific type of intellectual property. In the 1990s quite often the form of protection taken is software patents. The understanding and enthusiasm about software patents that is exhibited by organizations is not often shared by information systems researchers, however. For the most part, IS researchers dismiss software patents as an appropriate protective measure. This paper presents some background on patents and their applicability to software. Some US and international perspectives are also discussed to provide the reader with a somewhat broader perspective. We then discuss several IS research endeavors that either dismiss patents, or treat them incorrectly. We conclude with a research agenda for IS researchers. the Department of Computer Information Systems & Quantitative Analysis, University of Arkansas. She has conducted extensive research in the area of the law and information technology. Her published research has appeared in MIS Quarterly, Journal of Management Information Systems, and Knowledge and Policy. His research interests include examination of the strategic aspects of information systems and the relationship between the law and information technology. His research has been published in Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly, and the Journal of Management Information Systems. Her current research is focused on interogranizational systems and the human relationships that exist in parallel to these systems.     

Beliefs About the Outcomes of Extramarital Sexual Relationships as a Function of the Gender of the “Cheating Spouse”

A person perception experiment was conducted toexamine people's beliefs about the outcome of anextramarital sexual relationship involving ahypothetical single friend and a married person. Twohundred and eleven undergraduate students (80 males and129 females; most of whom were Caucasian) were theparticipants in the experiment. The married person inthe vignette was presented as either a man or a woman (and always the opposite gender of the singlefriend) and as having low or high investments in themarriage (as indicated by number of children and yearsmarried). Results indicated that the participants' perceptions of the outcome of this type ofextramarital relationship depended on the gender of themarried person/single friend. Participants were morelikely to believe that the married person loved the extramarital partner, was committed to theextramarital relationship, and would marry theextramarital partner, if the married person was a womanrather than a man. The investment manipulations had noeffect on participants' perceptions of therelationship. The results were discussed as they relateto other beliefs about male vs. femalesexuality.     

Self-Identity and Specific Vulnerability to Depressed Mood

ABSTRACT Four studies were conducted to test the hypothesis that experiencing a life event that disrupts the pursuit of self-defining activities would be associated with depressed mood. Across all four studies, a strong and exclusive identification with the athlete role was related to subjects' affective response to both hypothetical and actual athletic injuries. The results highlight the importance of assessing the match between specific cognitive diatheses and specific life events in predicting depressive reactions.     

Exercise Stage of Change and Self-Efficacy in Primary Care: Implications for Intervention

Multiple chronic diseases are caused or complicated by a sedentary lifestyle. Thus, an important and challenging application of psychology in clinical settings is changing the behavior of sedentary primary care patients. This study focused on exercise stage of change and self-efficacy in a sample of adult family practice patients recruited while waiting for their scheduled physician appointment. Regarding exercise stage of change, 15% of respondents were in the Precontemplation stage, 26% in the Contemplation stage, 50% in the Preparation stage, 7% in the Action stage, and 13% in the Maintenance stage. Mean self-efficacy scores for exercise were significantly higher among respondents in the Action and Maintenance stages of change. These cross-sectional data are consistent with the hypothesis that movement through the exercise stages of change could be encouraged by clinical interventions that increase exercise self-efficacy. The identification of multiple personal opportunities for increasing exercise self-efficacy may be clinically useful in this context. Recommendations for psychologists in primary care settings in their work with physicians are offered.     

Social Power in the Classroom: Student Attributions for Compliance

This study assessed university students' attributions for compliance after envisioning their instructors attempting to influence them through the use of social power. Differences in student attributions were hypothesized based on student gender, region of residence within the United States, and class standing (i.e., lower vs. upper division). Participants ( N = 326) completed a modified version of Raven, Schwarzwald, and Koslowsky's (1998) Interpersonal Power Inventory. The power dynamic between teachers and students differs from that of a more traditional supervisor-subordinate relationship. Support was not obtained for the hypothesis regarding student gender, while full support was obtained for the hypotheses regarding region of residence and class standing. Implications for instructors are discussed, as well as implications for future social power research.     

The impact of obesity on the social participation of older adults

Previous research (e.g., R. Puhl & K. P. Brownell, 2001) has indicated that stigma associated with obesity contributes to diminished social engagement for the obese, but there is evidence that this stigma is more pronounced in younger age groups. The present authors investigated whether the negative association between obesity and social participation that is apparent in younger age groups continues in older adulthood. The authors analyzed interview data from 1,439 participants aged 60-93 years (M age = 71 years, SD = 5.7 years) from the Changing Lives of Older Couples Study (D. Carr, R. Nesse, & C. Wortman, 2005). Regression results indicated that hypothesized interactions between age and body mass index (BMI) in predicting social participation were not significant after controlling for demographic variables, health status, depression, and self-esteem. In fact, higher BMI was associated with greater overall and formal social participation (i.e., organizations, volunteer work, church), suggesting not only that stigmatization against the obese appears to decrease with age but also that additional factors play a role.