Wie der Fall des „Eisernen Vorhangs“ die innere Welt veränderte

Using exemplary events and personal experiences, the path of the author is described since the peaceful revolution of 1989 up to the present, as a migration without changing location. In doing this, the historic events are broken down at the personal level, individually analyzed and reflected on. The author describes that the soul needs many years, even decades, before it catches up with historic upheavals. Only after the successful integration into the altered social conditions is one liberated to responsible thinking and actions beyond one’s own horizon, a current topic of explosive nature.

Die Mauer Als wir sie schleiften, ahnten wir nicht, wie hoch sie ist in uns Wir hatten uns gewöhnt an ihren horizont Und an die windstille In ihrem schatten warfen alle keinen schatten Nun stehen wir entblößt jeder entschuldigung Reiner Kunze (1990, zitiert 2000)

     

Judgments About Sexism: A Policy Capturing Approach

Different definitions of sexism have been usedby different experimenters and little attention has beengiven to the possibility that participants' definitionsof sexism might vary across individuals and across situations, just as the definitions ofinvestigators vary. Judgments about sexism areinextricably based on individual perceptions, values,and beliefs. It would seem reasonable, therefore toexamine individual conceptions of what constitutessexism. A total of 95 primarily middle-class Caucasianparticipants (68 females, 27 males) participated inthree studies investigating what information people use in deciding whether or not a male actor issexist. Six specific categories of information (or cues)were examined: (1) comments (or lack thereof) by theactor on a female target's physical appearance, (2) unwanted or inappropriate physical contact(or lack thereof), (3) assumptions (or lack thereof)about the target's work, personality, etc., based on hergender, (4) the target being interrupted (or not) by the actor, (5) an apparent powerdifferential (or lack thereof) between the actor and thetarget, and (6) assumptions by the actor aboutappropriate gender role behaviors. A policy capturingmethodology was employed in which three different sets ofscenarios, each describing a number of interactions(called profiles) between a target and an actor, werepresented to male and female participants who rated the degree of sexism exhibited by the actor ineach scenario. Policy capturing represents anideographic approach to research in which the primaryfocus is on establishing statistical parameter estimates that describe each individual's behavior in avariety of environmental situations. Only when that isaccomplished does the researcher examine the possiblenomothetic aggregations across participants. Thus many fewer participants are required than intraditional nomothetic approaches. Each profile set useda different subset of the cues which contained eithersubtle (Study 1), overt (Study 2), or very overt (Study 3)levels of the cues. Multipleregression analysis revealed that when relatively overtacts of sexism were described, most participants hadreliable policies; that is, their judgments werepredictable from the cues. However, when relatively subtleacts of sexism were described, most participants did nothave reliable policies; that is, their judgments werenot very predictable from the cues. There were large individual differences in howparticipants weighted the importance of various cues,especially with subtle cue levels, and in participants'mean sexism ratings.     

A New Look at Gaze: Preschool Children's Understanding of Eye-Direction

This study challenges the consensus view that children can judge what someone is looking at from infancy. In the first experiment 2-, 3-, and 4-year-old children were asked to judge what a person in a drawing was looking at and which of two people was “looking at” them. Only 6% of 2-year-olds and young 3-year-olds passed both gaze-direction tasks, but over 70% passed an analogous point-direction task. Most older 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds passed all three tasks. Experiment 2 compared children's ability to judge what the experimenter was looking at with performance on the picture tasks. Three-year-olds performed significantly worse than 4-year-olds on the real life and picture gaze tasks. Performances on the two types of gaze task were highly correlated. Experiment 3 included stimuli with the additional cue of head-direction. Even the younger children performed well on these stimuli. These results suggest that, regardless of task format, children cannot judge what someone is looking at from eye-direction alone until the age of 3 years. Weaknesses in the evidence supporting the consensus view are highlighted and discussed.     

Children and Careers: A Longitudinal Study of the Impact of Young Children on Critical Career Outcomes of MBAs

The purpose of this study was to investigate theimpact of young children on the careers of men and womenwith MBAs who graduated between the years of 1973 and1982. The outcome variables studied were salary, months of non-full-time employment, andpromotions. We began our analyses by looking at the fullsample of 829 respondents. We found that men had highersalaries than women regardless of parental status. Women with young children experiencedsignificantly more months of non-full-time employmentand were more likely to drop out of the workforce thanmen and other groups of women. The spouses of men with young children and only older children workedin paid employment significantly fewer hours than allother groups of respondents. Those women with youngchildren who did remain continuously in the paidworkforce did not appear to experience any salary benefitbased on this decision. Interruptions to full-time workwere detrimental for women without children or thosewomen whose children were older. In general, having children was correlated with lowersalaries for women and higher salaries formen.     

A Field Study of Sex-role Attitude Change in College Women

Two field studies are presented which examine to what extent women's studies courses are effective in changing sex-role attitudes in college women. Factor analyses were performed on the questionnaire data to produce summary variables for the change analysis and to examine the structure of sex-role ideology. The results, consistent in both studies, showed the women's sex-role beliefs are comprised of definable areas and that awareness of sex discrimination and traditional beliefs regarding the proper roles for men and women are more susceptible to influence than are other types of variables.     

Attributions and sex differences in achievement: Problems and new perspectives

The status of research on sex differences in attribution is reviewed in light of the articles published in this issue. The authors conclude that several widely held beliefs about sex differences in attributions may be unwarranted. Various explanations for the lack of consistent results in studies exploring situational and dispositional effects on sex differences in attributions are offered. The authors conclude that alternative attributional questions need to be raised and investigated in order to understand sex differences in achievement.     

Assessing the theoretical models for sex differences in causal attributions for success and failure

Three basic models of attributional sex differences are reviewed: General Externality, Self-Derogation, and Low Expectancy. Although all of the models predict that women are unlikely to attribute their successes to ability, the models were quite different in other predictions. A meta-analysis of 21 studies examining sex differences in success-failure attributions was done to determine which of these three models had the most empirical support. Wording of attribution questions was also assessed. Results indicated only two consistent sex differences: Men make stronger ability attributions than women regardless of the outcome when informational attributional wording is used; and men attribute their successes and failures less to luck. Empirically, none of the models was well supported.     

Spatial problem solving by rats: Exploration and cognitive maps

Two experiments were performed in an attempt to examine the contribution of the exploratory experience to performance on Maier's 3-table spatial problem-solving task. In the first experiment, the runway configurations were altered between exploration and testing. It was found that following an initial impairment animals exposed to the altered runway configurations could perform as well as animals not confronted with an altered runway configuration on the test trial. In the second experiment, animals were allowed to explore only elements of the problem space. Exploration of either the runways only or the tables only led to unsuccessful performance on the 3-table task. The results of both experiments were related to current theory of cognitive mapping.     

Correlates of syntactic development in kindergartners: Deficiency vs. proficiency

In a search for correlates of oral language deficiency, a sentence imitation task (SOLST) was used to select 20 syntactically deficient and 20 syntactically proficient kindergarten subjects. The groups were compared on a battery of tasks measuring oral language comprehension and production, verbal and nonverbal intelligence, visual-motor skill, manual dexterity, right-ear advantage, reading readiness, and later reading achievement. On 8 of the 11 variables, the delayed group performed significantly less well than the controls, although Pearson correlation coefficients of other measures with measures of syntax were generally low to moderate. Negative correlations of some variables with right-ear advantage raise the possibility of reverse dominance in some of the experimental subjects. In addition, there was confirmation for poor performance on the Stephens Oral Language Screening Test resulting in subsequent reading difficulties.