"Feminine Protection": The Effects of Menstruation on Attitudes Towards Women

An experiment tested the hypothesis that reminders of a woman's menstrual status lead to more negative reactions to her and increased objectification of women in general. Participants interacted with a female confederate who ostensibly accidentally dropped either a tampon or hair clip out of her handbag. Dropping the tampon led to lower evaluations of the confederate's competence, decreased liking for her, and a marginal tendency to avoid sitting close to her. Furthermore, gender schematic participants responded to the reminder of menstruation with increased objectification of women in general, an effect we view as an effort to "protect" culturally sanitized views of the feminine. These findings are discussed from the perspective of feminist theory and a terror management perspective on the role of ambivalence about the human body in the objectification of women.     

Implicit Learning of an Invariant: Just Say No

Following exposure to 30 four-digit numbers containing an invariant “3”, subjects are found falsely to recognize novel four-digit numbers containing this invariant (positives) in preference to novel numbers that do not contain the invariant (negatives). Despite this false recognition, they are generally unable to report the rule relating test positives to the positives seen during the learning phase. This finding has been taken to show implicit learning of a rule. Two experiments are reported here which show that it is not necessary to learn this rule in order to perform at above-chance levels on this test. Most of the effect can be explained in terms of the rejection of particularly distinctive test items that are more prevalent in the test negatives. This rejection appears to be mediated by knowledge that is potentially explicit as opposed to implicit, and we present tentative evidence that it is rule-based as opposed to analogic.     

Psychometric Evaluation of the Parentification Inventory–Swahili Version With Kenyan Adults: Factor Structure,Reliability, and Validity

The immediate concerns and aftereffects of parentification in the United States are well documented. However, the correlates of parentification in international communities are less known. This psychometric study explored the validity of a Swahili version of the Parentification Inventory (PI; Hooper, 2009) with a sample of 279 Kenyan adults. Factor analysis produced a 3-factor structure, but with fewer items (N = 17) than in the original PI (N = 22). Recommendations for using the PI–Swahili Version are discussed. Las preocupaciones inmediatas y las secuelas de la parentificación en los Estados Unidos están bien documentadas. Sin embargo, las correlaciones de la parentificación en comunidades internacionales son menos conocidas. Este estudio psicométrico exploró la validez de una versión en suajili del Inventario de Parentificación (PI, por sus siglas en inglés; Hooper, 2009) en una muestra de 279 kenianos adultos. El análisis factorial produjo una estructura de 3 factores, pero con menos elementos (N = 17) que en el PI original (N = 22). Se discuten recomendaciones para el uso de la versión en suajili del PI.