Interaction with a baby by young adults: A comparison of traditional and feminist men and women

Recently, researchers have examined college students' interactions with unfamiliar babies. Most of the studies have reported that men and women show equal level of interest in these babies. However, one researcher reported a sex difference, with women interacting with a baby more than men did. Perhaps the subjects in the discrepant study were a more conservative or traditional group. In order to examine this possibility, this study compared traditional and feminist young adults. The Attitudes Toward Women Scale was used to preselect feminist and traditional men and women who were videotaped during a period of interaction with a baby. It was predicted that a sex difference would be found among the more traditional subjects only. However, women interacted with the baby more than men did in both groups.This project was supported by a grant to the author from the University of Wisconsin — Eau Claire research grant program. The author would like to thank Rhonda Kienitz, who collected and coded the data; Kay Draeger, who served as reliability coder; and Tom Blakemore, Allen Keniston, and Blaine Peden for their helpful comments.     

Individual differences in the orienting response: Nonresponding in nonclinical samples

The complete failure of the electrodermal orienting response (OR), although widely studied in clinical samples, has received little systematic attention in work with healthy adults. The published studies of nonresponding using nonclinical samples are reviewed, with data from three unpublished studies pertinent to the question, to identify the characteristics of nonresponders. The most durable findings to date are that nonresponding shows both trait and state characteristics, and that nonresponders are more likely to be female than male, to show hypoarousal in the electrodermal system but not complete unresponsiveness in this system or low arousal in other systems, and to show higher scores on measures of impulsiveness and antisociality but not to differ from responders in terms of sensation seeking. Most of these data can be reconciled with two different accounts of the OR mechanism. One is that proposed by I. Maltzman which postulates a difference between voluntary and involuntary ORs, and the other is that of J. A. Gray which proposes that the OR is a function of activity in a Behavioural Inhibition System. Taken together, these accounts imply that the OR reflects attentional and affective processes, and that both cognitive style and temperamental differences in the appraisal of threat can lead to electrodermal nonresponding.     

Two Politicians in a Realistic Experiment: Attraction,Discrepancy, Intensity of Delivery,and Attitude Change1

The leader of the Socialists in the Dutch Parliament and his Liberal opponent participated in this realistic experiment. Identical TV interviews with the two politicians were recorded and shown to subjects of both parties. The intensity of delivery was also varied: emotional versus rational. Our findgins indicated that the experimental interveiw changed the attitude of the subjects. In addition, support was found for a second hypothesis: Attitude change was greater for the attractive source from the same party than for the less attractive source from the opposite party. Furthermore, our expectations were confirmed that attitude change would be greater with high than with low discrepancy. Although the intensity of delivery did have an effect on the credibility of the source–the emotional delivery scored lower–no effect on attitude change was found.     

A psychological approach to ethics

This article has the purpose of calling attention to C.G. Jung's archetypal concept of the Self as an approach to ethics. The distinction between simple morality and transcendent ethics is established. Comparison is made between the archetype of the Self and Kant's categorical imperative. Freud's superego, however, is assimilated to a natural outlook on morality, such as the notion of altruism in sociobiology. The superego is only the psychic effect of the current moral code—which could be explained either culturally or as a Lamarckian acquired characteristic of the unconscious. Jung's transcendent ethics is expressed in an ethical mandala.     

Bizarre imagery, interference, and distinctiveness

Previous studies have shown that bizarre and common images produce equivalent levels of recall in unmixed-list designs. Using unmixed lists, we tested the view that bizarre images would be less susceptible than common images to common sources of interference. In all experiments, subjects imaged a list of either bizarre or common sentences and then performed some kind of interfering task before recalling the initial list of sentences. Experiment 1 showed that bizarre images were better accessed than common images after imaging an intervening list of common sentences. Also, components of common images tended to be better recalled than those of bizarre images after imaging an intervening list of bizarre sentences. Experiments 2a and 2b showed that interfering tasks consisting of studying lists of common concrete nouns did not differentially affect memory for bizarre and common images. In Experiment 3, labeling and imaging an interfering list of common pictures produced higher recall of bizarre images. Generally, bizarre images appeared to be less susceptible than common images to interference from certain types of common encodings. Importantly, the superior recall of bizarre images was always due to greater image (sentence) access, whereas higher recall of common images was associated with greater recovery of the image (sentence) constituents. Explanation of the precise pattern of results requires consideration of the distinctive properties of bizarre images.     

The role of gender and taste class in the effects of stress on eating.

Participating in a laboratory study of the effects of stress on eating, healthy, nonsmoking men and women were shown a film about industrial accidents (stress condition) or a pleasant travelogue (control condition) and had access to sweet, salty, and bland snack food. Analyses of food consumption data revealed a significant interaction between sex of subject and the stress manipulation: Stress markedly and significantly decreased food consumption by men but resulted in some increased food consumption by women. Across the three food taste categories, men consistently ate less under stress than they did in the control condition. In contrast, women ate nearly twice as much sweet food and more bland food under stress than they did in the control condition, but these effects were not statistically significant. These results indicate that the relationship between stress and eating depends on the sex of the subject and may relate to type of food available. Contrasting generalizations about stress and eating reported in the archived literature can largely be reconciled by considering these interacting variables.