Dimensions of the Male Gender Role: A Confirmatory Analysis in Men and Women

As researchers become more interested instudying the influences of the male gender role onpeople's physical and psychological well-being, measuresof several male role domains have been created,including psychological agency, traditional attitudestowards men, and masculine gender role stress (MGRS).These measures of the male gender role, however,typically have been constructed and validated using only samples of men. This restriction introducesquestions about the reliability and validity of theseinstruments in samples of women, leading to problemswhen generalizing findings to this group. The present study addressed these issues by examining thefactor structure, factor correlations, and latent meansof these three male role measures for a sample of mostlyCaucasian men and women, using multiple group confirmatory factor analytic techniques.Results showed only the dimensionality of the agenticpersonality traits differed significantly for men andwomen. The interrelationships among and latent means of agency, attitudes, and MGRS differed by sex.These findings demonstrate the utility of the currentconceptualization of sex and gender; in other words,that gender is not totally determined by sexand that men and women internalize many of the samegender cues, but differentially endorse them to varyingdegrees.     

Depression and coping in candidates for kidney transplantation: Racial and ethnic differences

Subjects were 288 adolescents and adults with end-stage renal disease who were candidates for kidney transplantation, a group identified at risk for noncompliance. The purpose was to examine racial and ethnic variations in coping—variables that may underlie noncompliance and impact upon health outcome. Secondarily, the relationship between depression and particular styles of coping was investigated. Race/Ethnicity was divided into three categories: Black/Non-Hispanic, White/Non-Hispanic, and Hispanic. Coping and depression were assessed using the COPE and Beck Depression Inventory, respectively. Results indicated that Hispanic and Black subjects were more likely to use maladaptive styles of coping and less likely to use adaptive coping than were White subjects and that Black subjects reported more physical symptoms of depression. These findings point to possible mechanisms underlying the occurrence of noncompliance and resulting poorer health outcome for individuals of different racial and ethnic groups.     

Control across the life span: A model for understanding self-direction

A comprehensive four-factor interactive model on physical, psychological, and environmental processes related to the sense of control is presented for adult development with an emphasis on later life. The four experienced components are (1) control from within oneself, (2) control over oneself, (3) control over the environment, and (4) control from the environment. Control over oneself and over the environment measure self-directed control, while control from within oneself and from the environment measure nonself-directed control. Coping (a bidimensional control scale) measures control from powerlessness and suicide to overcontrolling. Findings confirm a significant loss of coping in an older cohort group from a white, rural sample composed primarily of single subjects with low coping representing a significant drop in self-directed behavior. A discussion of the relationship between self-direction and health in the older cohort group follows.     

MACHINES, BRAINS, AND PERSONS

Abstract. This paper explores the suggestion that our conscious experience is embodied in, rather than interactive with, our brain activity, and that the distinctive brain correlate of conscious experience lies at the level of global functional organization. To speak of either brains or computers as thinking is categorically inept, but whether stochastic mechanisms using internal experimentation rather than rule-following to determine behavior could embody conscious agency is argued to be an open question, even in light of the Christian doctrine of man. Mechanistic brain science does nothing to discredit Christian experience in dialogue with God or the Christian hope of eternal life.     

Acquisition-test interactions between

The effects of changes in context on recognition memory were investigated in two experiments. In Experiment 1 target items were embedded in congruous or incongruous sentence frames and then tested in the original, new congruous, or new incongruous contexts. Experiment 2 included a third encoding condition; targets were also embedded in abstract definitional sentences. Both experiments revealed a reliable crossover interaction between the initial encoding condition and the mode of the changed context. Congruous items were recognized better in new congruous contexts, whereas incongruous items were recognized better in new incongruous contexts. Recognition of definitional items was equally impaired by both context changes. The results suggest the importance of the symmetry between acquisition and test encoding dimensions. These experiments also point out the need to distinguish between different ways in which the concept “integration” is used in current research.     

Semantic facilitation and lexical access during sentence processing

An experiment was conducted testing predictions derived from context-dependent and context-independent models of lexical access. Four types of unambiguous test sentences were constructed. The direct object of each test sentence was preceded by a verb that was either semantically related or unrelated to it, and by an adjective that was semantically related or unrelated. Context-dependent models predict that the speed with which the object noun is retrieved from the mental lexicon will be faster when the verb and/or the adjective is semantically related; context-independent models predict no such facilitation. Forty-four subjects each heard 32 test sentences and were asked to monitor within the sentence for a word-initial target phoneme. The target phoneme occurred on the word following the object noun. Reaction times to detect the targets were obtained. According to context-dependent models, these times should be shorter when related words precede the object noun, and that is what was found. It was also observed that the facilitation effects due to the related verbs and adjectives were additive. Implications of these results were discussed.     

Fear of success,achievement-related motives and behavior in black college women1

This study was designed to test the hypothesis, derived from past research, that Fear of Success should be an insignificant motivational determinant among black college women. Fifty-five black undergraduates from Radcliffe College participated in two one-hour sessions where motive and performance measures in a series of achievement-related situations were obtained. Among middle-class women, nAchievement was the major positive determinant of the achievement-related behaviors under investigation while Fear of Success, measured by Horner's new experimentally derived scoring system, facilitated rather than inhibited performance. For women of working-class origin, Fear of Success exerted the strongest influence on behavior and inhibited achievement-striving in nontraditional directions. The findings among middle-class women support the prevailing opinion that black women are more achievement-oriented than their white counterparts, but the results for working-class women challenge the findings of earlier studies based upon the original measure of Fear of Success imagery and suggest that an internalized conflict over achievement and feminine identity may be a salient motivation among some black women.