FEMALE PARTNERS OF BISEXUAL MEN What They Don't Know Might Hurt Them

Individual interviews with 350 behaviorally bisexual men aged 18–30 revealed that 71% of their female sexual partners and 59% of their steady female sexual partners in the past 6 months had not been aware of their homosexual activity. Rates of nondisclosure were higher for African-American than White men. Compared to nondisclosers, men who disclosed to all their female partners were less self-homophobic and perceived their friends, families, and neighbors as more accepting of their homosexual behavior. Compared to men who had disclosed, the nondisclosers had more female partners and used condoms less consistently with women.     

Gender differences in evaluation of performance and leadership ability: Autocratic vs. democratic managers

This laboratory experiment involved 290 undergraduate seniors (130 females and 160 males) who were taking the capstone course in business policy in the college of business at a large university. The population of business seniors from which the random sample was drawn consisted of approximately 3.7% African Americans, 7% Asians, 1% Hispanics, and 88.3% white Americans. The study investigated the impact of autocratic and democratic leadership styles on the perception of how well male and female managers perform as well as the leadership ability attributions made to them. It was found that, in general, democratic managers are perceived to be much higher performers, and superior leaders when compared to autocratic managers. There was some support for the gender contrast effect in that the autocratic female managers were perceived to be higher performers than autocratic male managers. Further, the study found support for the perceptual similarity thesis. Male subjects tended to evaluate other male managers higher while female subjects were partial to female managers in their evaluations. In particular, female subjects gave autocratic male managers very low evaluations on performance and judged them to be inferior leaders. The female subjects, however, gave female autocratic managers substantially higher evaluations in terms of both performance and leadership ability.     

Correlates of gender role orientation during pregnancy and the postpartum

This study was designed to examine the relationship between gender role orientation and psychological adjustment during pregnancy and the postpartum period in a large sample of French-speaking Caucasian mothers. Gender role was assessed with the Bem Sex Role Inventory, which classifies subjects into four categories: androgynous, masculine, feminine, and undifferentiated. A discriminant analysis showed a relationship between androgyny and the following measures of psychological adaptation: self-esteem, satisfaction with social support, and level of apprehension toward perinatal stressors. The masculine gender role was linked with self-esteem, work involvement, age, and severity of perinatal stress. No relationship was found between gender role and the level of antenatal or postnatal depressive symptomatology. Stress, marital support, and social support were among the predictors of postpartum depression, which underlined the importance of taking these variables into account when studying the well-being of mothers during the postnatal period. Results are discussed in light of previous literature on the association between gender role and motherhood. The limitations of Bem's model and inventory are also considered.     

A Grammatical Specific Language Impairment in Children: An Autosomal Dominant Inheritance?

The aim of this study is to provide further characterization of a subgroup of so-called “Grammatical specific language-impaired (SLI)” children. The Grammatical SLI children have a persistent and disproportionate impairment in grammatical comprehension and expression of language. Previous research has indicated that their language impairment may be characterized by a domain-specific and modular language deficit. This study provides an initial investigation as to whether there is a genetic basis underlying their disorder as has been found for other forms of SLI and for SLI in general. The incidence of familial aggregation of language impairment was investigated in 12 Grammatical SLI children (aged 9:3 to 12:10). A familial language impairment (LI) history was classified as positive if one or more of the probands' relatives had a history of a speech/language or reading/writing problem which required speech therapy or any other form of remedial help. Case history information provided an initial indication that the Grammatical SLI children had a significantly higher incidence of a positive familial LI history than could be expected by chance. A questionnaire provided evidence of a positive LI history in the first-degree relatives of the SLI probands and 49 normally developing control probands. The SLI probands had a clearly and significantly higher incidence of a positive familial LI history than the control probands (77.8 vs. 28.5%, respectively). The results are consistent with a genetic basis underlying Grammatical SLI. The pattern of impairment in the SLI probands' relatives is consistent with an autosomal dominant genetic inheritance. In contrast to the control probands, the SLI probands' impaired relatives did not show a male gender bias. Thus, the gene does not appear to be sex-linked. The data indicate that further research is warranted to investigate the nature of the LI in the relatives of the Grammatical SLI probands and the genetic characteristics of this subgroup. The implications for the biological, domain-specific, and modular bases to language are discussed.     

Failure, mistakes, regret and other subjugated stories in family therapy

This paper discusses the notions of failure and mistakes in family therapy, arguing that there are insufficient accounts in the literature which reflect the untidiness and disorder of everyday practice. The idea of dominant and subjugated stories is invoked to map the influence of notions of failure upon family therapy practice. It is argued that our practice would benefit if more accounts of our work routinely included stories of failure, mistakes and regret.     

Value Crisis: Affective Organization of Personal Meanings

The focus of this article is on the specific affective organization of the self in a value crisis. Whereas the self is conceptualized as an organized system of personal meanings, a value crisis is defined as a disorganization of this system. Personal meanings were investigated using a self-confrontation method that is sensitive to the affective properties of personal meanings and their organization into a composite whole. Three groups of students were compared, one high, one medium, and one low in value crisis. Results indicate that the high crisis group had a lower level of intensity of affect referring to self-enhancement, a lower intensity level of affect referring to contact and union with the other, and a lower level of positive affect in comparison with the other groups. In addition, negative meanings were more generalizing in the self of subjects in crisis, whereas positive meanings were more generalizing in the self system of those not in crisis. Moreover, people in crisis showed more discontinuity between their past and future than those not in crisis. Special emphasis was placed on the specific affective organization of subjects in crisis. Two idiographic case studies were presented to illustrate meaningful exceptions to the rule. It was concluded that value crisis is an “in-between state” involving the risk of disorganization of the self, but at the same time including opportunities for innovative self-development.     

Reaction-anticipation transitions in human perception-action patterns

We investigated the hypothesis that reaction and anticipation in human perceptual-motor performance are two coordinative modes of a single pattern-forming dynamical system, rather than separate behaviors. Subjects coordinated the onset of finger flexions with visual metronome flashes in each of three patterns: reactive, synchronized, or syncopated. The stimulus frequency was progressively increased (0.125–1.375 Hz) or decreased (1.375-0.125 Hz) in small steps (0.125 Hz) every 10 cycles. We observed qualitative transitions in both the time interval between stimulus and corresponding action (Δt) and their relative phase (ø) at critical values of the stimulus frequency, corresponding to changes from ‘reactive-to-anticipatory’ and ‘anticipatory-to-reactive’ performance. Such transitions provide evidence of a single, multifunctional system, which can be adequately described by the dynamics of collective variables characterizing the respective perception-action patterns.