The Enjoyment of Sexist Humor,Rape Attitudes,and Relationship Aggression in College Students

The current study tested Freud's (1905/1960)theory that sexist humor may be associated withhostility toward women and extended previous researchshowing a link between hostile humor and aggression.Colleges students (N = 399 — approximately 92%white, 5% African American, and 3% other minorities)rated 10 sexist jokes on their perceived funniness.Results showed that the enjoyment of sexist humor waspositively correlated with rape-related attitudes andbeliefs, the self-reported likelihood of forcing sex,and psychological, physical, and sexual aggression inmen. For women, the enjoyment of sexist humor was only positively correlated with Adversarial SexualBeliefs and Acceptance of Interpersonal Violence. Womenalso found the jokes to be less enjoyable, lessacceptable, and more offensive than the men, but they were not significantly less likely to tell thejokes.     

Expectations regarding acquaintance sexual aggression among sorority and fraternity members

Among women, college is a high risk period for sexual assault by male acquaintances. Differences in expectations held by men and women may contribute to misinterpretation of social cues and subsequent sexual aggression and may impair women's ability to respond effectively. This paper presents findings from a predominantly Caucasian sample (85.9%) of college sorority (n = 66) and fraternity (n = 34) members regarding the social context within which they interact and their expectations regarding perpetration of and response to sexual aggression. Results showed differences in men's and women's expectations and responses, and in particular highlighted how men's expectations were related to women's resistance of unwanted sex. Understanding the cognitive processes that men and women draw upon in social interactions can be useful for developing sexual aggression prevention and resistance interventions.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Council on Social Work Education Annual Program Meeting, March 1995, San Diego. The authors would like to thank Robert D. Abbott, Kelly Cue, and Virginia Senechal for their input on earlier versions of this paper.This project was jointly supported by the University of Washington Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute, School of Social Work, and Addictive Behaviors Research Center. It was also supported in part by grants from NIAAA (AA05591 and AA07271) and NIMH (MH53702).     

Personal advertisements of male-to-female transsexuals,homosexual men,and heterosexuals

Transsexuals, because of their attempts at gender reversal, offer a unique opportunity to study self-presentation, social roles, and stereotypes. The present study is a content analysis of personal advertisements of male-to-female transsexuals (TM, N =99), homosexual (HoM, N =64) and heterosexual men (HM, N =99), and heterosexual women (HW, N =99). Advertisements were coded for the presence or absence of 11 characteristics either offered or sought, based on the 1984 work of Deaux and Hanna. The content of TM personal advertisements was significantly different from those of HW, HM, or HoM. TM mentioned physical characteristics and sincerity, and requested friendship most often; HoM mentioned sexuality most often; HM offered financial security and status in the form of occupation, and listed marital status most often; and HW offered personality characteristics and attractiveness most often. Several factors may contribute to the pattern of differences observed, including the fact that TM were more likely to be seeking friendship than sexual partners, in contrast to the other three groups.     

A comparison of multiple versus single examples of the correct stimulus on task acquisition and generalization by persons with developmental disabilities

In teaching discriminations to persons with retardation, we often presume we will improve acquisition and generalization if we use multiple examples of boththe correct and incorrect stimuli. Two experiments were conducted to test this hypothesis. In the first experiment, 7 persons with moderate retardation learned to discriminate between functional words under two conditions. In one condition, Multiple Example of S- Only,1 example of the correct stimulus (S+) and 10 examples of the incorrect stimulus (S-) were used during acquisition. In the other condition, Multiple Examples of S+ and S-,10 examples of the S+ and 10 examples of the S- were used. Results showed that the condition which presented only a single example of S+ was superior 16 times and inferior 4 times during acquisition, generalization, and maintenance. A second experiment was conducted to (a) replicate the methodology and procedures in Experiment 1 with different participants, (b) determine whether the results were replicable, and (c) obtain efficiency data. Results replicated the findings of the first experiment. The condition which presented only a single example of S+ was superior on measures of (a) trials to criterion, (b) percent correct during acquisition, and (c) minutes to criterion. On measures of generalization, the two conditions were relatively equal. Thus, the condition which presented only a single example of the correct stimulus was more efficient and was just as effective in generalization as the condition which presented multiple examples of both the S+ and S-. These surprising results were discussed in terms of stimulus control, why students performed just as well during generalization when only one example of the S+ was used, why acquisition was also poorer for this condition, and how future studies might address these points.     

Sensory modality and method of item information presentation in memory

Investigated were differences in paired-associate learning for auditory versus visual modalities and within each modality the anticipation and study test methods of item presentation were compared. Extant reports re these two sensory modalities and of the two learning methods had been inconsistent. In this study of 40 university students, the learning of CVC-CVC nonsense syllable pairs was significantly better with the visual than with the auditory modality. The study-test method was significantly superior to the anticipation method in the visual mode. With auditory presentations, however, acquisition levels for both methods were the same. Significant interactions were observed between sensory modalities and methods of presentation. At present the retention interval theory (Izawa 1972–1979b) appears to account best for the varied findings with respect to the two methods of presentation.     

The morphological asymmetry of the hemispheres and cerebral dominance for speech: A possible relationship

The asymmetry of the posterior Sylvian branches of the middle cerebral artery was examined on the carotid angiograms of 59 patients in whom the lateralization of speech representation was known from sodium amobarbital (Amytal) studies. The usual asymmetry of these vessels was found to be present in the group of patients with left-hemisphere speech representation but significantly reduced in patients with atypical cerebral dominance for speech. A model of the inheritance of handedness and cerebral dominance is extended to take account of these results.     

Vocational behavior and career development, 1980: A review

Papers were reviewed in the sections where their major findings seemed to have the most important implications. Since it typically was not possible to do justice to individual studies in a few lines of summary, readers are referred to the specific articles of their interest for further information regarding other findings.As has been the case in the past several years, the number of studies related to vocational behavior and career development appears to be expanding, along with perceptions of what is relevant to the field. As greater emphasis is placed on the working life of individuals after initial occupational choices are made, researchers on vocational behavior and career development will increasingly find it necessary to synthesize research findings from the areas of industrial/organizational psychology, organizational sociology, and organizational behavior and theory. This factor may suggest greater collaboration among researchers across these fields in the future. In any event, the broadening base of relevant research, while challenging, also is an exciting development with rich potential for increased knowledge of vocational behavior.As Walsh mentioned in his review of 1978 literature, there is a vital need for more work of a longitudinal nature. We see some increase this year, but we are too frequently forced to draw conclusions regarding long-term vocational development from studies which are mainly crosssectional and correlational in nature.Among the research directions of note this year is the increasing emphasis on information processing/decision-making frameworks as a means of studying the vocation development process. Other trends were the growing concern with the relationship between work and nonwork, interest in recruitment processes, and the emphasis on situational as well as individual factors in predicting vocational behavior.