Status incongruity and backlash effects: Defending the gender hierarchy motivates prejudice against female leaders

Agentic female leaders risk social and economic penalties for behaving counter-stereotypically (i.e., backlash; Rudman, 1998), but what motivates prejudice against female leaders? The status incongruity hypothesis (SIH) proposes that agentic women are penalized for status violations because doing so defends the gender hierarchy. Consistent with this view, Study 1 found that women are proscribed from dominant, high status displays (which are reserved for leaders and men); Studies 2–3 revealed that prejudice against agentic female leaders was mediated by a dominance penalty; and in Study 3, participants' gender system-justifying beliefs moderated backlash effects. Study 4 found that backlash was exacerbated when perceivers were primed with a system threat. Study 5 showed that only female leaders who threatened the status quo suffered sabotage. In concert, support for the SIH suggests that backlash functions to preserve male dominance by reinforcing a double standard for power and control.     

The experience of watching dance: phenomenological–neuroscience duets

This paper discusses possible correspondences between neuroscientific findings and phenomenologically informed methodologies in the investigation of kinesthetic empathy in watching dance. Interest in phenomenology has recently increased in cognitive science (Gallagher and Zahavi 2008) and dance scholars have recently contributed important new insights into the use of phenomenology in dance studies (e.g. Legrand and Ravn (Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 8(3):389–408, 2009); Parviainen (Dance Research Journal 34(1):11–26, 2002); Rothfield (Topoi 24:43–53, 2005)). In vision research, coherent neural mechanisms for perceptual phenomena were uncovered, thus supporting correlation of phenomenology and neurophysiology Spillmann (Vision Research 49(12):1507–1521, 2009). Correspondingly, correlating subjects’ neurophysiological data with qualitative responses has been proposed as a means to research the human brain in the study of consciousness (Gallagher and Zahavi 2008), with similar issues in clinical psychology Mishara (Current Opinion in Psychiatry 20(6):559–569, 2007) and biology Kosslyn et al. (American Psychologist 57:341–351, 2002). Yet the relationship between neuroscience and qualitative research informed by phenomenology remains problematic. How qualitative research normally handles subjective experiences is difficult to reconcile with standard statistical analysis of objective data. Recent technological developments in cognitive neuroscience have inspired a number of researchers to use more naturalistic stimuli, outside the laboratory environment, such as dance, thereby perhaps helping to open up the cognitive sciences to more phenomenologically informed approaches. A question central to our research, addressed here, is how the phenomenal experiences of a dance audience member, as accessed by qualitative research methods, can be related to underlying neurophysiological events. We outline below some methodological challenges encountered in relating audiences’ first-person accounts of watching live dance performance to neurophysiological evidence of their experiences.     

Women and Therapy: A Survey on Internship Programs

Two hundred and ninety-nine internship programs and selected psychology graduate schools were surveyed by mail regarding their opinions and practices relevant to training in psychotherapy for women. The 94 usable replies included 55% of all APA approved programs. The results indicated that only a minority of training facilities deal in a systematic way with issues of sex bias and sex-role stereotyping in psychological practice. About 20% of the respondents expressed a need to improve their programs. Respondents' answers are detailed and the suggestion is made that egalitarian group supervisory meetings afford more opportunity than individual sessions to deal effectively with issues of sex bias and stereotyping.     

Conducting a Multi Family Member Interview Study

Family researchers have long recognized the utility of incorporating interview data from multiple family members. Yet, relatively few contemporary scholars utilize such an approach due to methodological underdevelopment. This article contributes to family scholarship by providing a roadmap for developing and executing in‐depth interview studies that include more than one family member. Specifically, it outlines the epistemological frames that most commonly underlie this approach, illustrates thematic research questions that it best addresses, and critically reviews the best methodological practices of conducting research with this approach. The three most common approaches are addressed in depth: separate interviews with each family member, dyadic or group interviews with multiple family members, and a combined approach that uses separate and dyadic or group interviews. This article speaks to family scholars who are at the beginning stages of their research project but are unsure of the best qualitative approach to answer a given research question.     

Correction to: Secret Agent Society: a Randomized Controlled Trial of a Transdiagnostic Youth Social Skills Group Treatment

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology -     

The Possibility of Psychic Conflict in Seneca's De Ira

This paper explores the potential for psychic conflict within Seneca's moral psychology. Some scholars have taken Seneca's explicit claim in De Ira that the soul is unitary to preclude any kind of simultaneous psychic conflict, while other interpreters have suggested that Seneca views all cases of anger as instances of akrasia. I argue that Seneca's account of anger provides the resources for accommodating some types of simultaneous psychic conflict; however, he denies the possibility of psychic conflict between two action-generating impulses, thus rejecting the phenomena of genuine akrasia and enkrateia. Although superficially counterintuitive, Seneca's cognitivist account of anger, according to which anger is complex and requires assent to the propositions that ‘I have been wronged’ and ‘I ought to seek revenge’, renders his denial of akrasia and enkrateia more plausible.     

Judgments of learning and improvement

Can learners accurately judge the rate of their learning? Rates of learning may be informative when study time is allocated across materials, and students' judgments of their learning rate have been proposed as a possible metacognitive tool. Participants estimated how much they improved between presentations in multitrial learning situations in which n-gram paragraphs (in Experiments 1 and 2) or word pairs (Experiments 3 and 4) were learned . In the first experiment, participants rated improvement on a percentage scale, whereas on the second and third, judgments were given on a 0–6 scale. Experiment 4 used both a percentage scale and an absolute number scale. The main result was that judgments of improvement were poorly correlated with actual improvement and, in one case, were negatively correlated. Although judgments of improvement were correlated with changes in judgments of learning, they were not reliable indicators of actual improvement. Implications are discussed for theoretical work on metacognition.     

How useful are indices of personality pathology when assessing domestic violence perpetrators?

There has been considerable debate about profiling personality pathology when assessing and treating male perpetrators of domestic violence (DV). This study used the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI-III) to explore the severity and diversity of male perpetrator personality pathology and response bias in a group of DV perpetrators being assessed for a treatment program (N = 177). We analyzed the sample using the interpretive guidelines of White and Gondolf (2000); 54% of profiles in our sample fell into categories indicative of a personality disorder, and 37% of the total sample provided profiles indicative of severe personality pathology. These percentages were higher than White and Gondolf's findings but lower than some others. There was considerable diversity of personality pathology as well, supporting the contention that there is no one male DV perpetrator profile. Because of debate concerning the manner of responding on self-report instruments, we paid special attention to response biases in our sample. Twenty-six percent of our sample exaggerated (12%) or minimized (14%) their responses. We also found that response biases on the MCMI-III Modifying Indices were related to self-reported severity of psychopathology. This suggests that assessing severity of psychopathology is inadequate without reference to such biases.     

Sex differences in relational and overt aggression in the late elementary school years

Sex differences in relational and overt aggression among 3rd (n=176), 4th (n=179), and 5th graders (n=145) from three public schools (n=500; 278 girls) were examined. Nominations of relational aggression increased over time among 4th and 5th grade girls, but not among boys or 3rd grade girls. Among 3rd graders, boys received more nominations for relational aggression than girls. By the end of the 5th grade, girls received more relational aggression nominations than boys. There was also a significant rise in nominations of overt aggression among 5th grade girls, but not among 5th grade boys or younger boys and girls. As expected, boys were more likely than girls to be nominated for overt aggression at all grade levels. The findings are helpful for explaining inconsistencies of earlier research pertaining to sex differences in relational aggression and for advancing our understanding of the causes of aggression. Aggr. Behav. 36:282–291, 2010. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.