THE DIFFERENTIAL RELATIONSHIP OF FEMINIST ATTITUDES AND FEMINIST IDENTITY TO SELF-EFFICACY

Feminist theorists have suggested that feminism provides a number of benefits for women, particularly regarding self-evaluations. However, most studies have conflated feminist attitudes and feminist identity. The main goal of this study was to assess the differential relationships of feminist attitudes and feminist identity to self-efficacy. Four hundred thirty-five students were surveyed at the beginning and end of their women's and gender studies (WGS) classes. In general, feminist attitudes and feminist identity were related to self-efficacy variables at pretest and to change in these variables over time. Feminist identity partially mediated the relationship between feminist attitudes and self-efficacy. Additionally, the results of this study generally support previous findings regarding the effect of WGS classes on students' feminist attitudes, feminist identity, and self-efficacy. Implications of these findings for the importance of feminist identity are discussed.     

Context dependent latent inhibition in adult humans

Learning the association between one stimulus (a condition stimulus, CS) and another (unconditioned stimulus, US) can be impaired by prior exposure to the CS alone—latent inhibition (LI). Current theories attempting to elucidate the cognitive deficit in schizophrenia have used the abolition of LI in schizophrenia as an indicator of attentional dysfunction. However, it has always been unclear if human and animal LI are measuring the same psychological processes. It is obviously important to clarify this relationship so that theoretical and experimental developments in the rat do not mislead the investigation of brain-behaviour relationships in schizophrenia. LI in the rat is strongly dependent upon context. Our aim was to examine the context specificity of LI in humans and specifically to: (1) investigate whether participants' belief that they are in a different context is sufficient to abolish LI, even though there is no physical change in the environment; (2) produce a context manipulation that is immune to alternative interpretation in terms of stimulus generalization decrement; and (3) investigate whether a "tonic" change of context reduces or abolishes human LI, thus complementing previous reports using a "phasic" change of context. In two experiments we manipulated context in either the real world or a virtual world, and showed that LI is abolished by a change of context in adult humans.     

PUTTING FEMINIST PEDAGOGY TO THE TEST

Critics of women's studies (WS) have charged that WS teaching overemphasizes students'personal experience and is overly politicized. They claim further that WS classes discourage critical, independent thinking and stifle open, participatory learning, causing student dissatisfaction. This study provides empirical evidence of the process of WS teaching from the perspective of 111 teachers and 789 of their students from 32 campuses in the United States. Contrary to WS critics, WS faculty and students reported strong emphases on critical thinking/open-mindedness and participatory learning and relatively weaker emphases on personal experience and political understanding/activism. In addition, student ratings of positive class impact were higher for WS than non-WS classes. The results support the pedagogic distinctiveness of women's studies.     

Method of Suicide in the Mentally Ill: A National Clinical Survey

Comparisons of psychiatric patients who die by suicide using different methods are scarce. We aimed to establish the methods of suicide used by those who are currently or have recently been in contact with mental health services in England and Wales (N = 6,203), and describe the social and clinical characteristics of suicides by different methods. We found that hanging, self‐poisoning, and jumping (from a height or in front of a moving vehicle) were the most common methods of suicide, accounting for 79% of all deaths. The implications of these and other findings are discussed.     

Psychological Masculinity amid Femininity: Relationship to Striving and Self-Concept in the Achievement and Interpersonal Domains

The relative influences of gender and individual differences in psychological masculinity and femininity on the achievement and interpersonal strivings, abilities, and self-concepts of 176 male and female college students were investigated. The results indicate that psychological masculinity and femininity are better predictors of strivings and self-concepts in the achievement and interpersonal domains than gender. Only with respect to subjects' expected and ideal financial responsibilities, an area which is governed by strong societal sex role norms, does the influence of gender surpass that of psychological masculinity and femininity. The results are discussed in terms of the personality strengths and social competencies that derive from masculine and feminine personality traits.