Socialization and themes in popular drama: An analysis of the content of child-rearing manuals and Don Juan plays in sixteenth to twentieth centuries

A content analysis is reported of child-rearing manuals published in sixteenth to nineteenth centuries and of the themes of the Don Juan plays in seventeenth to twentieth centuries. The relationship between the content of the manuals and the themes of the plays supports the thesis that child-rearing patterns advocated in one century are reflected in the next in the attitudes expressed in popular cultural activities towards aggression, achievement and sex roles.     

Women and the Social Movements of the 1960s: Activists, Engaged Observers, and Nonparticipants

Many women in the generation that attended college during the 1960s have reported that they were influenced by the social movements of that era, even women who did not participate in them. In addition to political activists, social movements also appear to include "engaged observers"—individuals who are attentive to movement writings and activities, and express moral and even financial support for them, but who take no other action. Although activism in a movement may be the best predictor of future political action, engaged observation may be related to other indicators of political socialization, such as a powerful felt impact of the movement and well-developed political attitudes. Evidence to support this notion is drawn from studies of three samples of college-educated white and black women.     

What motivates men to offer sperm donation via the internet?

To investigate why men offer sperm donation via the internet, a questionnaire was disseminated via 39 Dutch-language websites thought to be visited by potential sperm donors. Nine internet donors completed the survey, men who typically knew the women they were donating to. Their responses were compared with those of a control group of 35 general sperm bank donors who were recruited using flyers in Dutch sperm banks, and who were typically unaware of the identity of the eventual recipients. The findings shed light on the motives and attitudes of internet donors. Both groups of donors indicated that their primary motivation for donating was altruism (>80% of all respondents). However, internet donors had a more pronounced desire to procreate than sperm bank donors (6 out of 9, i.e. 66 vs. 22%, respectively) and more often felt that they had good genes they wished to pass on (5 out of 9, i.e. 55 vs. 31%, respectively). The main reason internet donors gave for donating via the internet was that they wanted to know the prospective parents and be kept up to date on the progress of the offspring conceived from their donations. This distinguishes them significantly from sperm bank donors. A further finding was that they were not prompted to avoid the formal donation circuit for which, by law in the Netherlands, pregnancies resulting from donations have to be registered in a central database. This study is subject to several, in some cases inevitable, limitations, but it provides an interesting starting point that future studies can seek to confirm and extend.     

When knowledge is not enough: the phenomenon of goal neglect in preschool children

We argue that the concept of goal neglect can be fruitfully applied to understand children's potential problems in experimental tasks and real-world settings. We describe an assessment of goal neglect developed for administration to preschool children and report data on two measures derived from this task alongside the Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS) and an opposite color response inhibition task. The propensity to neglect initial task cues was uniquely linked to response inhibition, whereas neglect of a later cue was uniquely linked to the DCCS. Additional evidence suggests that recovery from neglect can occur and shows that goal neglect varies with the cognitive transparency of the signifying cue. Data demonstrate the importance of, and place constraints on, current theories of information regulation and foreground the notion of graded representations in working memory and executive functioning.