Sex role orientation and its relationship to the development of identity and moral thought

This paper examined the links among sex role orientation, ego identity development and moral reasoning. 76 female and 58 male students were assessed on Bern's sex role inventory, ego identity, care-based and justice-based moral thought. For women, identity was negatively related to femininity and positively related to androgyny. Also, high levels of care-based moral reasoning, i.e., a balanced concern for the welfare of self and others, was related to androgyny for women. There were no significant findings for men. No significant relationships were found between sex role orientation and justice-based moral reasoning. Thus, the results suggested that for women in particular, relinquishing the stereotyped sex role definition and becoming more androgynous is important for their ego identity as well as care-based moral development.     

Favourite objects of autistic children

Favourite objects (FOs) of autistic children were compared with the FOs of healthy preschool and school children as well as mentally handicapped children. Three clusters of objects were obtained for normal children (comprising primary transitional objects and their forerunners, secondary transitional objects, and non-cuddly toys). When autistic children and mentally handicapped children were included, a fourth cluster of deviant objects was found. Frequency distributions of the two handicapped groups in the clusters were similar. Similarities between the two handicapped groups were also found within each cluster. The occurrence of secondary transitional objects was rare in the handicapped groups. The characteristics of "autistic" FOs reported in earlier case studies (e.g. being hard, often having an exciting effect, not being used in their adequate functions) were typical only of objects in the fourth cluster.     

Preventing Contagion With Avian Influenza: Disease Salience,Attitudes Toward Foreigners,and Avoidance Beliefs1

Building on an evolutionary approach to out‐group avoidance, this study showed relations between perceived disease salience and beliefs in the efficacy of avoiding foreigners as protective measures in the context of a real‐life pandemic risk; i.e., avian influenza. People for whom avian influenza was salient and who held unfavorable attitudes toward foreigners were more likely to believe that avoiding contact with foreigners protects against infection. This finding suggests that individual differences in social attitudes moderate evolved mechanisms relating threat of disease to out‐group avoidance.     

Woman as Metaphor1

Women's activities and relations to men are persistent metaphors for man's projects. I query the prominence of these and the lack of equivalent metaphors where men are the metaphoric vehicle for women and women's activities. Women's role as metaphor results from her otherness and her relational and mediational importance in men's lives. Otherness, mediation, and relation characterize the role of metaphor in language and thought. This congruence between metaphor and women makes the metaphor of woman especially potent in man's conceptual economy.     

Generalization of ratings based on projective tests

Abstract.— A multivariable-multimethod analysis was performed on six professional clinical psychologists' ratings of 38 patients for the three variables, Intelligence, Ability to Establish Contact and Control of Affect and Impulses. The judges based their ratings of the patients performance on each of the three tests Rorschach, TAT, and Sentence Completion separately as well as on all tests together. The stability coefficients and the consensus among judges was rather high but decreased when the depth of interpretation of the response variable increased. The ratings showed both convergent and discriminant validity but the generality of the ratings was generally low. The results support the opinions held among clinicians, that tests give different kinds of information about individuals and that clinicians, to some extent, use the information from each test as a subvariable which is integrated into a more global variable.     

Construct validation of the Bern Sex Role Inventory

The purpose of this study was to assess the construct validity of the Bern Sex Role Inventory (BSRI), a questionnaire which measures pyschological androgyny. Psychological androgyny refers to the fact that a person may possess both traits traditionally considered feminine, and traits traditionlly considered masculine, i.e. that femininity and masculinity are two independent dimensions. Eight different groups, chosen because their androgyny scores were expected to differ, participated in the study. The groups differed as expected and this is taken as an evidence that the BSRI has construct validity and that it is valid for Swedish conditions.