Gender and genius in japan: Feminine eminence in masculine culture

The number of distinguished women was hypothesized to fluctuate over consecutive historical periods according to concomitant changes in the dominant male culture. Three conjectures were evaluated using a sample of 2453 Japanese creators and leaders active between 580 and 1959. Applying generational time-series analysis to 69 consecutive 20-year periods, indicators gauged changes in female literary and nonliterary eminence along with male literary activity, power and aggressive behavior, and ideology. Although the emergence of gender-biased belief systems was negatively associated with female distinction in all domains, literary success of both men and women was linked to similar contextual factors, especially a negative association with male power and aggressive activities. The group-level results are interpreted in terms of possible individual and interpersonal processes.I thank Arakaki Makoto for his assistance on this project.     

Factors associated with Borderline pathology in school-age children

The Diagnostic Interview for Borderlines as revised (DIB-R) for use with children and chart review was completed using the records of 54 children, ages 6 to 12 years, who had been admitted to a public psychiatric hospital. Based on the results of the DIB-R, the children were grouped as borderline and nonborderline. The two groups were then compared with regard to 52 independent variables which have historically been associated with the borderline diagnosis. Stepwise logistic regression was used to identify the cluster of diagnostic and independent variables which best discriminated the borderline subjects. Self-destructive behavior, irritable affect, anhedonia, and an externalizing disorder diagnosis at the time of admission accounted for 95.4% of the borderline children. These findings are in contrast to previous studies which have found an assortment of neuropsychological and/or neurological deficits and stressed the importance of a tendency toward psychotic regression on psychological testing as discriminative variables. The authors underscore the idea that borderline pathology may represent a spectrum of disorders and the need for a more specific psychiatric nosology in describing and diagnosing these children.     

Resistance to yielding and the expectation of cooperative future interaction in negotiation

The expectation of cooperative future interaction (ECFI) encouraged especially high joint benefit (the total of the two bargainers' individual outcomes) when resistance to yielding was high, but especially low joint benefit when resistance to yielding was low. Process data suggest that this finding can be explained as follows: When resistance to yielding is high, ECFI encourages problem solving and reduced contentious behavior; when resistance to yielding is low, ECFI encourages a collapse of aspirations. The results support Filley's (1975) dualconcern model and cast doubt on Deutsch's (1973) blanket assertion that a cooperative process leads to constructive conflict resolution.     

On knowing when to quit: Task failure, self-esteem, advice, and nonproductive persistence

Past research has found the performance of persons with high self-esteem to improve after failure, especially on tasks for which persistence correlates positively with performance. However, persistence may be nonproductive in some situations. Experiment 1 used a task for which persistence and performance were uncorrelated; subjects high in self-esteem persisted longer but performed worse than did those with low self-esteem, particularly after prior failure feedback. Experiment 2 tested whether differential sensitivity to advice about the efficacy of persistence mediates nonproductive persistence. High self-esteem subjects who received explicit advice against nonproductive persistence on a puzzle-solving task still tended to persist longer on unsolvable puzzles than did low self-esteem subjects. The implications of high self-esteem subjects' tendency to engage in nonproductive persistence are discussed.     

Locus of control and control perceptions and the relationship between life stress and psychological disorder

Conclusion The deleterious effects of negative life events were demonstrated, even with a relatively restricted range of negative experiences and the inclusion of a number of statistical controls. Employing a conservative multivariate regression model and a prospective design, the present study found that negative life events were consistently positively related to measures of psychological disorder. There was, however, no evidence for the moderating effects of dispositional locus of control beliefs and control perceptions of experienced life events, and it seems that the field awaits more refined conceptualization and measurement of life experiences and hypothesized moderator variables before explanatory and predictive models will yield significant and consistent returns.The authors thank David M. Kuhlman who provided invaluable statistical consultation and helpful comments on an earlier version of this article. Susan Stout and Joani Wendell assisted in the collection and coding of the data.     

Central integration effects with stabilized afterimages

Prolonged patterned afterimages were used to study integration effects in stabilized images. Seven Ss were presented with various configurations of a pattern through a prism stereoscope, both monocularly and binocularly. Some of the fragmentations and regenerations reported in the binocular condition could only have resulted as a function of organization of the inputs to the two eyes, suggesting that postretinal processes are operative in stabilized image phenomena.