Perceived Influence of Male Sex Role Identity on Female Partner's Life Choices

The relationship between a man's sex role identity and his and his female partner's perceptions of his influence on her life choices was investigated in this study. Sex role identity was measured by the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI), and perception of influence was measured by the Interpersonal Influence Survey (IIS). The BSRI and IIS were administered by mail to 131 pairs of female graduate students and their male partners. Male and female perceptions of the man's influence were found to be related to the man's BSRI scores. Masculine men were not found to differ in their perceptions of influence from feminine or un-differentiated men, but they were found to have significantly lower perceptions of their influence than androgynous men. Feminine men were not found to differ in their perceptions of influence from masculine or undifferentiated men, but they were found to be lower in their perceptions of influence than androgynous men. Women with androgynous or feminine male partners perceived the man as being more influential than did female partners of masculine men, but they did not differ in their perceptions of male partner influence from women with undifferentiated male partners. Women with masculine or undifferentiated male partners did not differ in their perceptions of the male partner's influence.     

Form and Function in Motor Mimicry Topographic Evidence that the Primary Function Is Communicative

Motor mimicry is behavior by an observer that is appropriate to the situation of the other person, for example, wincing at the other's injury or ducking when the other does. Traditional theories of motor mimicry view this behavior as an indicator of a vicarious cognitive or empathic experience, that is, of taking the role of the other or of “feeling oneself into” the other person. However, Bavelas, Black, Lemery, and Mullett (1986) have shown that motor mimicry of pain is affected by communicative variables and acts as a nonverbal message indicating that the observer is aware of and concerned about the other's situation. This raises a more general question: Is communication its primary or secondary function? We propose (i) that motor mimicry functions as a nonverbal, analogic, relationship message about similarity between observer and other and (ii) that this message is encoded according to Gestalt principles of form, in that the observer physically mirrors the other. In other words, the observer maintains a relationship with the other. The special case of left/right leaning when observer and other are facing each other permits a test of our theory against two theories that treat motor mimicry as an indicator of vicarious experience. The results of three experiments showed that when motor mimicry by an observer facing someone who is leaning left or right occurs, it is both displayed and decoded in the form consistent with a communication theory; this form is called reflection symmetry. We conclude that, because of the topography of the response, the primary function of motor mimicry must be communicative and that any relationship to vicarious processes is secondary. A similar analysis of other nonverbal behaviors may well reveal that they are also expressions to another person rather than expressions of infrapsychic states.     

Issue-Event Extensions and Interaction Involvement Text-Based and Meaning-Based Discourse Strategies

Prior research focusing on textual features in the talk of high and low-involved speakers has characterized the discourse strategy of low-involved speakers as text-based and that of high-involved speakers as meaning-based. This study examined the extensions of issue-event structures by high-involved and low-involved participants to determine if this characterization of discourse strategies held on a pragmatic level as well. Results indicated that low-involved communicators extended the event significantly more directly than high-involved communicators. Furthermore, the issue extensions of low-involved communicators were shown to be more sensitive to the comprehensibitity and information value of the stimulus utterance than the issue extensions of high-involved communicators. The results confirm that low-involved communicators have more difficulty than high-involved communicators in responding to the flow of conversation and that low-involved communicators compensate by relying on a text-based discourse strategy.     

THE NATURE OF TESTIMONY

Abstract:  I discuss several views of the nature of testimony and show how each proposal has importantly different problems. I then offer a diagnosis of the widespread disagreement regarding this topic; specifically, I argue that our concept of testimony has two different aspects to it. Inadequate views of testimony, I claim, result either from collapsing these two aspects into a single account or from a failure to recognize one of them. Finally, I develop an alternative view of testimony that captures both aspects of the nature of testimony and thereby provides the basis for an illuminating theory of testimony's epistemological significance.     

What Proportion of Adult Hispanics Are Catholic? A Review of Survey Data and Methodology

The proportion of Hispanics who are Catholic remains unclear, partly because of varying survey methods and limited understanding of how these variations affect estimates of Hispanic religious identification. We compare 12 national surveys conducted since 1990. Language use strongly predicts religious identification among Hispanics—more strongly than other indicators of assimilation—and evidence suggests English-only interviewing inflates Protestant identification. Additionally, identifying Hispanics through ancestry questions may inflate Catholic identification. We also explore effects of sampling bias, noncoverage bias, and weighting on religious identification. Analyses suggest that poststratification weighting is advisable, particularly for language use. However, weighting cannot fully substitute for extensive coverage of subpopulations such as recent immigrants and Spanish-only speakers. We conclude that 70 percent or slightly more is a reasonable estimate of the proportion of adult Hispanics who are Catholic, and 20 percent a reasonable estimate of the proportion who are Protestant or other Christian.