SEX-RELATED ATTITUDES AND PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS IN THE UNITED STATES

First, differences in attitudes and beliefs towards masculine and feminine roles as well as legal and social facts in the U.S. are presented. Due to women's and civil rights movements those differences are changing now. However, inequalities and barriers for changing are still not completely overcome, often referring to differences in temperament and motivation between men and women which are assumed to be based on biological and/or socializing factors. In the U.S. sample, sex differences emerged on the following variables: Marriage importance (F> M), Masculinity score for self (M > F), Femininity score for self (F > M), Femininity score for ideal man (F > M), Masculinity score for ideal women (F > M) and Competitiveness (M > F). Academic orientation also influences the Educational Aspirations and Expectations (college > technical) and the Masculinity score for the ideal woman (college > technical). Suggestions are given for future research work: finding techniques to decrease sex stereotypes and focusing research on the conditions which were responsible in the past for the traditional masculine and feminine roles in the American Society and how these roles no longer are appropriate.     

Anatomy of a system accident: the crash of Avianca Flight 052

On January 25, 1990, Avianca Flight 052 crashed after running out of fuel following a missed approach to New York's John F. Kennedy Airport. Weather was poor on the East Coast of the United States that day, and the flight had experienced several holding patterns enroute from Medellín, Colombia, to New York. The accident is analyzed in terms of Helmreich and Foushee's (1993) model of crew performance and Reason's (1990) model of latent pathogens in system operations.     

National culture and flight deck automation: results of a multination survey

Attitudes regarding flight deck automation were surveyed in a sample of 5,879 airline pilots from 12 nations. The average difference in endorsement levels across 11 items for pilots flying automated aircraft in 12 nations was 53%, reflecting significant national differences in attitudes on all items, with the largest differences observed for preference and enthusiasm for automation. The range of agreement across nations was on average four times larger than the range of agreement across different airlines within the same nation, and roughly six times larger than the range across pilots of standard and pilots of automated aircraft. Patterns of response are described in terms of dimensions of national culture. Implications of the results for development of safety cultures and culturally sensitive training are discussed.     

Negative and positive components of psychological masculinity and femininity and their relationships to self-reports of neurotic and acting out behaviors

Negatively valued masculinity (M-) and femininity (F-) personality scales were developed to supplement the positively valued Masculinity (M+) and Femininity (F+) scales of the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ; Spence & Helmreich). M- consisted of traits that had been judged to be (a) more typical of males than females, (b) undesirable in both sexes, and (c ) agentic or instrumental in content. Two F- scales were developed, both containing stereotypically feminine, undesirable traits, one set of traits referring to communionlike characteristics (Fc-) and the other to verbal passive-aggressive qualities (FVA-). Significant sex differences in the predicted direction were found on all scales. In both sexes, low and typically nonsignificant correlations were found between parallel positive and negative scales, but highly significant negative correlations were found between positive and negative cross-sex scales. These findings provide additional evidence for the multidimentionslity of masculinity and femininity. Scores on a self-esteem measure were positively correlated with M+ and F+, uncorrelated with M-, and negatively correlated with the F- scales. Different patterns of scores were associated with two types of problem behaviors. In both sexes, neuroticism was most highly correlated (in a negative direction) with M+, and acting out behavoir was most strongly correlated (in a positive direction) with M-. The next highest correlation in both instances was with FVA-.     

Dexamethasone and stressor-magnitude regulation of stress-induced transcription of HPA axis secretagogues in the rat

Regulation of the production of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis secretagogues, corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) and arginine vasopressin (AVP), may be differentially sensitive to the negative feedback effects of glucocorticoids. We chose to study this phenomenon by examining the ability of dexamethasone to influence CRH and AVP heteronuclear RNA (hnRNA) levels in an escapable/inescapable (ES/IS) foot-shock stress paradigm. On Day 1, adult male rats were subjected to either ES or IS foot-shock; on Day 2, saline or dexamethasone (100 microg/kg) was administered 2 h prior to the stressor. We found that ES/IS foot-shock stimulated similar robust increases in plasma adrenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH) and corticosterone concentrations, and medial parvocellular division of the paraventricular nucleus (mpPVN) AVP and CRH hnRNA and c-fos mRNA levels in saline-treated ES/IS rats. Dexamethasone pretreatment suppressed ACTH and corticosterone levels similarly in IS and ES animals. Dexamethasone pretreatment also suppressed mpPVN CRH and AVP hnRNA levels at 30 min. However, by 120 min, the mpPVN AVP hnRNA levels in dexamethasone-treated rats were similar to those measured in the saline group. We also found that rats that received the most shocks on Day 1 had greater HPA axis activation on Day 2. We conclude that the magnitude of the foot-shock stressor, determined by learned and immediate cues, is important in determining the magnitude of the HPA response.