“Subordination” and sensitivity to nonverbal cues: A study of married working women

Sex Roles - Women's superiority in decoding nonverbal cues of emotion has often been discussed as an adaptation to low status. To examine the relation of status to nonverbal sensitivity,...     

Indirect modes of aggression among women of Buenos Aires,Argentina

This study utilizes the construct indirect aggression to investigate aggressive behavior among middle class Argentine women and men by administering an attitude and self-report survey to 95 inhabitants of Buenos Aires and by analyzing ethnographic interviews and observations conducted over a nine month period in 1992. An examination of sex roles in Argentina, including machismo and marianismo, provide a cultural context for interpreting aggression. Factor analyses revealed the presence of indirect aggression (e.g., social manipulation, gossip, exclusion) in addition to verbal and physical aggression. Survey and ethnographic findings converge in suggesting that women employ more indirect aggression than men, while men utilize more physical aggression. While competition and aggression are salient elements of social life for both sexes, women and men tend to favor different approaches. The findings are compared with the literature on female aggression from other cultural settings. We conclude that cultural and evolutionary perspectives elucidate aspects of female aggression.We would like to thank the Ford Foundation for providing the financial support to make this research possible. We would also like to thank Patricia de Gyldenfeldt and Debbie Bandura for their endless contributions with translations, ideas, and help in general. Finally, we would like to thank Eckerd College, la Universidad del Salvador, and Michael Hobson for their base of support, all those in Argentina, especially Agueda, Andrea, Carmen, Cecilia, Claudio, Daniela, Heidi, Ingrid, Javier, Julio, María, Mariela, Roberto, and Victor, who offered their enthusiastic assistance and ideas, and Victoria Burbank, Ayala Gabriel, and the anonymous reviewer for their helpful suggestions.     

The Role of Asymmetrical Coding of Duration Samples in Producing the Choose-Short Effect in Pigeons

Pigeons were trained on two independent matching-to-duration-samples tasks; one involved 2- and 10-s durations and color choice stimuli, and the other involved 4.5- and 22.5-s durations and line choice stimuli. Accuracy was above chance on mixed-choice probes in which either of the short-duration samples was followed by the two short-associated stimuli. Following explicit training on mixed-choice trials involving choice between the two short- and the two long-associated stimuli, a choose-short effect was demonstrated with both sets of duration samples. These findings are inconsistent with the possibility that the choose-short effect reflects processes of asymmetrical-sample coding and default responding.     

CORRECTING THE 16PF FOR FAKING: EFFECTS ON CRITERION-RELATED VALIDITY AND INDIVIDUAL HIRING DECISIONS

The effects of correcting a personality measure for faking were evaluated within an organizational context. Two possible repercussions of score correction were studied using the 16PF personality inventory: the effect on criterion-related validity and the effect on individual hiring decisions (i.e., which applicants would or would not be hired). Results indicated that correction for faking had little effect on criterion-related validity. However, depending on the selection ratio, correction of scores would have resulted in different hiring decisions than those that would have been made on the basis of uncorrected scores. Implications for organizations using personality measures for selection and recommendations regarding the use of faking corrections are discussed.     

Orienting the finger opposition space during prehension movements

Two experiments are reported that examined the act of prehension when subjects were asked to grasp with their thumb and index finger pads an elongated object resting horizontally on a surface and placed at different orientations with respect to the subject. In Experiment 1, the pad opposition preferences were determined for the six angles of orientation examined. For angles of 90 degrees (object parallel to frontal plane) or less, no rotation of the wrist (pronation) was used; for angles 110 degrees or greater, pronation was systematically employed to reorient the finger opposition space. Only one angle, 100 degrees , produced any evidence of ambiguity in how to grasp the object: Approximately 60% of these grasps involved pronation and 40% did not. Using the foregoing grasp preference data, in Experiment 2 we examined the kinematics of the wrist and elbow trajectories during prehension movements directed at an object in different orientations. Movement time, time to peak acceleration, velocity, and deceleration were measured. No kinematic differences were observed when the object orientation either required (110 degrees ) or did not require (80 degrees ) a pronation. By contrast, if the orientation was changed at the onset of the movement, such that an unpredicted pronation had to be introduced to achieve the grasp, kinematics were affected: Movement time was increased, and the time devoted to deceleration was lengthened. These data are interpreted as evidence that when natural prehension occurs, pronation can be included in the motor plan without affecting the movement kinematics. When constraints are imposed on the movement execution as a consequence of a perturbation, however, the introduction of a pronation component requires kinematic rearrangement.     

Changes in spinal reflex excitability in a countermanded timed response task

Subjects (N = 8) performed a timed response task in which they attempted to synchronize an impulsive foot-press response with the last in a series of four regularly spaced tones. In Experiment 1, the response was countermanded on one third of the trials (stop trials) by a stop signal that appeared at a predetermined delay after the third tone. No stop signal appeared on the remaining trials (go trials). All subjects showed a systematic transition from withholding the response on stop trials in which the stop signal appeared shortly after the third tone to executing the response on trials in which a single stop signal delay had been chosen so that a response would be made on about 50% of the stop trials. We elicited Hoffmann (H) reflexes from the soleus muscle on all trials to determine whether the reflexes were augmented on occasions on which a response was prepared but withheld. Mean H-reflex amplitudes on go trials and on stop trials on which the response was executed were similar and showed a marked augmentation beginning about 250 ms before response onset; mean H-reflex amplitudes on stop trials on which the response was withheld showed less pronounced augmentation. Inspection of individual H-reflex amplitudes revealed that on stop trials on which the response was withheld the reflexes could be augmented to the same extent as on trials on which the response was executed. This dissociation of H-reflex augmentation and response execution shows that H-reflex augmentation reflects a controlled response process. Ballistic response processes therefore must be limited to a brief duration.     

Crossing without vision of path gaps

Two experiments considered the behavior of subjects who cross gaps in a pathway without benefit of vision. The first experiment contrasted visually and nonvisually guided locomotion, finding a significantly greater number of refusals under nonvisual guidance but no loss of appropriate modulation of step components to the salient dimensions of the actor and layout. Different components of crossing were modified under guidance of different sensory systems; the lengths of the crossing and support spans were primarily altered under nonvisual guidance, and the distance of the support foot to the near edge of the gap was the component of preference under visual guidance. In the second experiment, subjects crossed nonvisually, using probes that varied in length and moment of inertia. The adaptability of the step components to actor and layout dimensions was unchanged, but there was no effect of these mechanical manipulations on the components of crossing identified in Experiment 1.     

Begging the question as a pragmatic fallacy

The aim of this paper is to make it clear how and why begging the question should be seen as a pragmatic fallacy which can only be properly evaluated in a context of dialogue. Included in the paper is a review of the contemporary literature on begging the question that shows the gradual emergence over the past twenty years or so of the dialectical conception of this fallacy. A second aim of the paper is to investigate a number of general problems raised by the pragmatic framework.The work in this paper was supported by a Fellowship from the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS) and a Research Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Thanks are due to Erik Krabbe for discussions, and to the members of the NIAS Research Group on Fallacies as Violations of Rules of Argumentative Discourse: Frans van Eemeren, Rob Grootendorst, Sally Jackson, Scott Jacobs, Agnes Haft van Rees, Agnes Verbiest, Charles Willard, and John Woods.     

Exchange delays and impulsive choice in adult humans.

Choice responding by adult humans in a discrete-trial task was examined as a function of conditions that manipulated either the delay to point delivery or the delay between points and their exchange for money. In point-delay conditions, subjects chose between an "impulsive" alternative that provided a small amount of points immediately and a "self-control" alternative that provided a larger amount of points delayed by 15, 30, or 60 s. Points were exchanged for money immediately following the session. Subjects preferred the self-control alternative. In exchange-delay conditions, subjects chose between a small amount of points exchangeable for money immediately following the session and a larger amount of points exchangeable for money after 1 day, 3 weeks, or 6 weeks. A self-control preference observed for all subjects in the 1-day exchange-delay condition reversed to exclusive impulsive preference for 4 of the 6 subjects when choice conditions involved exchange delays of 3 or 6 weeks. These results show that human choice is sensitive to the manipulation of exchange delays and that impulsive preference can be obtained with exchange delays on the order of weeks.