An Opposing Process Model of Benevolent Sexism

An Opposing Process Model outlining the pathways through which individual differences in Benevolent Sexism (BS) simultaneously enhance and attenuate support for gender equality of income and employment opportunity is presented. Results from a New Zealand electoral sample (N?=?336) indicated that BS predicted Hostile Sexism (HS), and thus indirectly opposition toward gender-related policies (a hierarchy-enhancing effect). For women, BS also directly predicted attitudes toward gender equality in the opposing, supportive direction (a hierarchy-attenuating effect). Analyses of a 9-month longitudinal sample of undergraduate women substantiated these results (Study II; N?=?170). In stable societies, the dual opposing effects of BS seem to form a system where hierarchy-enhancing and hierarchy-attenuating processes tend toward homeostasis or equilibrium within the population.     

Preschoolers' Understanding of Simple and Complex Emotions: Links with Gender and Language

In this study we assessed individual differences among preschoolers' emotion understanding, verbal ability, and gender role behavior. Fifty-three children (M = 3 years, 5 months; 26 girls, 27 boys) participated in task that used puppets to assess their understanding of simple (happy, sad) and complex emotions (proud, embarrassed) and a standard vocabulary task. Parents completed a questionnaire on the frequency of their children's gender-typed behavior. Results indicated positive associations between children's total emotion understanding and both general verbal ability (particularly for boys) and parents' perceptions of stereotypic feminine behaviors. Gender analysis revealed that, independent of vocabulary ability, girls scored higher than boys on emotion labeling and understanding of complex emotions, especially the concept of pride. Results are discussed in relation to individual differences and effects of sociocultural context.     

Attention, researchers! it is time to take a look at the real world

Theories of attention, too often generated from artificial laboratory experiments, may have limited validity when attention in the natural world is considered. For instance, for more than two decades, conceptualizations of "reflexive" and "volitional" shifts of spatial attention have been grounded in methodologies that do not recognize or utilize the basic fact that people routinely use the eyes of other people as rich and complex attentional cues. This fact was confirmed by our novel discovery that eyes will trigger a reflexive shift of attention even when they are presented centrally and are known to be spatially nonpredictive. This exploration of real-world attention also led to our finding that, contrary to popular wisdom, arrows, like eyes, are capable of producing reflexive shifts of attention—a discovery that brings into question much of the existing attention research. We argue that research needs to be grounded in the real world and not in experimental paradigms. It is time for cognitive psychology to reaffirm the difficult task of studying attention in a manner that has relevance to real-life situations.     

In the Beginning

In this paper, a survey is made of some of the contributionsto the interpretation of Hartle and Hawking's theory of thewave function of the universe and its beginning. It is arguedthat there are considerable difficulties with the interpretationof the theory, but that there is at least one interpretationhitherto not found in the literature which survives existingphilosophical objections.     

Parental Psychopathology and Paternal Child Neglect in Late Childhood

We aimed at determining the association of both severity of paternal and maternal substance use disorder (SUD) and psychiatric disorders with paternal child neglect severity during late childhood. The sample comprised 146 intact SUD (n=71) and non SUD (n=75) families with a 10–12 year old female or male biological offspring. The average age of fathers, mothers, and children was 44 (SD=5.9), 42 (SD=4.78), and 11 (SD=.79) years, respectively. The ethnic composition was 85% Caucasian and 15% African American. The results showed that paternal and maternal SUD and psychiatric disorders severity was correlated with paternal child neglect severity. However, paternal psychopathology failed to achieve significance in the regression analyses. Severity of maternal, especially severity of antisocial personality disorder symptoms was associated with paternal child neglect. These results are discussed within the framework of evolutionary psychology research examining paternal investment in the offspring. Implications for the necessity of identifying parental psychopathology and an integrated treatment approach are discussed.     

Social Dominance Orientation and Right-Wing Authoritarianism: Additive and Interactive Effects

The additive and interactive effects of Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) and Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) were examined using 16 independent samples of New Zealand European participants ( N =  2,164). Consistent with Duckitt's (2001) Dual Process Model, SDO and RWA displayed strong additive effects across various domains of intergroup-related attitude, including measures of racism, sexism, homosexual prejudice, and ethnic and religious ingroup identification. In each of these five domains, meta-analysis indicated that the statistical interaction of SDO and RWA accounted for an average of less than .001% variance in addition to their linear combination. It is concluded that the association between SDO and various discriminatory attitudes and beliefs is only extremely weakly dependent on RWA, and vice-versa, suggesting that these two ideological attitudes are primarily additive, rather than interactive, in nature.     

Making Sense of Heterosexuality: An Exploratory Study of Young Heterosexual Identities in Turkey

On the basis of the understanding that the shaping, experience, and meaning of sexual identities is informed by the social context, an exploratory study of sexual identities was done with a college sample in urban Turkey. Participants included 225 students taking an introductory psychology course at a private urban university in İstanbul (66.5% women, 33.5% men, age range: 18–30 years, M=20.1, SD=1.7, 98% heterosexual identified). A questionnaire was used to investigate how young people explain the development of their sexual identity and how it affects their lives. An overwhelming majority identified their sexual identity, feelings, and experiences as always having been the same and were quite confident that their sexual identity would remain the same into the future. Participants saw their heterosexuality as mostly having to do with ‘outside forces’ including general references to the role of society, culture, and social expectations and norms, family structure and socialization, peer relations, and modeling. Most perceived their sexual identity to have a positive effect on their lives. Results suggest some evidence of interest in and openness to considering issues of sexual identity among these young people, and are discussed in the context of previous research on heterosexual identity development, sociocultural factors, and with reference to the historical meanings of sexual identities and practices in Turkey.     

“Our Revolution Has Style”: Contemporary Menstrual Product Activists “Doing Feminism” in the Third Wave

An in-depth content analysis of five web sites and eight paper zines (self-produced and distributed magazines) was conducted to uncover the inspiration, content, and unique strategies associated with text -based contemporary menstrual product activism. Menstrual product activism is loosely defined as various attempts to expose the hazards of commercial “feminine protection” to both women's bodies and the environment and the promotion of healthier, less expensive, and less resource-intensive alternatives. This activism's discourse draws on many traditions to produce its resistance to mainstream menses management. The movement, first and foremost, is the legacy of several decades of related activism, dating to the mid1970s. Contemporary menstrual product activism updates and modifies this tradition with the “do it yourself” ethic and anti-corporate philosophy of Punk culture and Third Wave feminist ideals of anti-essentialism, inclusion, humor, irony, and reappropriation. To date, this activist agenda has received little scholarly attention, yet it promises to yield meaningful insight into so called Third Wave feminist theory and practice and reveal the resilience of a woman-centered modern history of resistance.