The Bank Job: A Field Study of Sexually Discriminatory Performance on a Neutral-Role Task

Sixty-four checks were cashed in a field examination of sex role discrimination using a non-sex-role stereotyped (neutral role) task. Experimenter (customer) sex, subject (teller) sex, amount of the check, and bank branch were varied to produce a 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 design. Transaction times were longer for female customers than for male customers, and were longer with male tellers than with female tellers. Results were interpreted as supporting the hypothesis of greater sex role salience in cross-sex, as compared with same-sex dyads. Suggestions are made for further research using neutral-role tasks to better define certain role concepts.     

Bridging the HIV Divide: Stigma,Stories and Serodiscordant Sexuality in the Biomedical Age

At a time when advances in biomedicine have rendered people with HIV non-infectious under certain conditions, much public discourse on HIV remains stuck in a paradigm of ‘risk’, which does little to lessen the divide between people with and without HIV in society or challenge the way intimate relationships across this divide are typically stigmatised as undesirable and problematic. We rarely hear the stories of couples who live with mixed HIV statuses and how they themselves perceive and manage their so called ‘serodiscordance’. In this article, we examine such stories by mixed-status couples in Australia. In stark contrast to the dominant discourse, these couples invoked narratives of love, the everyday unimportance and manageability of HIV, and recent developments in HIV medicine, thereby challenging the way serodiscordant sexuality has been cast in public health research. Drawing on Ken Plummer’s work on hidden sexual stories, we consider not only the content of their stories, but the broader significance of stories to the world in which they are enacted, of storytelling as a rally for social and political recognition and legitimacy. Reflecting on our own role in the co-production of research stories, we argue that by moving marginalised sexual stories out of silence, stigmatised communities and researchers can conjointly and incrementally shape a new public discourse and new forms of ‘intimate citizenship’.     

Investigating cognitive transfer within the framework of music practice: genetic pleiotropy rather than causality

The idea of far transfer effects in the cognitive sciences has received much attention in recent years. One domain where far transfer effects have frequently been reported is music education, with the prevailing idea that music practice entails an increase in cognitive ability (IQ). While cross‐sectional studies consistently find significant associations between music practice and IQ, randomized controlled trials, however, report mixed results. An alternative to the hypothesis of cognitive transfer effects is that some underlying factors, such as shared genes, influence practice behaviour and IQ causing associations on the phenotypic level. Here we explored the hypothesis of far transfer within the framework of music practice. A co‐twin control design combined with classical twin‐modelling based on a sample of more than 10,500 twins was used to explore causal associations between music practice and IQ as well as underlying genetic and environmental influences. As expected, phenotypic associations were moderate (r = 0.11 and r = 0.10 for males and females, respectively). However, the relationship disappeared when controlling for genetic and shared environmental influences using the co‐twin control method, indicating that a highly practiced twin did not have higher IQ than the untrained co‐twin. In line with that finding, the relationship between practice and IQ was mostly due to shared genetic influences. Findings strongly suggest that associations between music practice and IQ in the general population are non‐causal in nature. The implications of the present findings for research on plasticity, modularity, and transfer are discussed.     

Burnout,empathy and their relationships: a qualitative study with residents in General Medicine

Some studies have shown that burnout may have a negative impact on clinical empathy during internship. However, clinical empathy may also be a protective factor, preventing residents from experiencing burnout. Although several quantitative studies have been conducted to examine these relationships between burnout and empathy, no qualitative studies have been carried out. To examine how residents in general practice evaluate the link between burnout and empathy, 24 of them participated in a semi-structured interview. A thematic analysis was carried out to examine residents’ discourses and answers to closed questions. The results indicated that residents thought that empathy and burnout were clearly related in different ways. They identified five types of relationship: regulation strategy, empathy as protection, psychological balance/imbalance, fatigue and moderating factors.     

Akrasia, Dispositions And Degrees

It is argued that the recent revival of theakrasia problem in the philosophy of mind is adirect, albeit unforeseen result of the debate onaction explanation in the philosophy of science. Asolution of the problem is put forward that takesaccount of the intimate links between the problem ofakrasia and this debate. This solution is basedon the idea that beliefs and desires have degrees ofstrength, and it suggests a way of giving a precisemeaning to that idea. Finally, it is pointed out thatthe solution captures certain intuitions of bothSocrates and Aristotle.     

Fostering social and emotional intelligence: What are the best current strategies in parenting?

This review focuses on parenting practices that are beneficial or antagonistic to the development of emotional and social intelligence in children. We start by reviewing the somewhat nebulous concepts of emotional and social intelligence. This is followed by an examination of the association between well‐known parenting styles such as authoritative, authoritarian, permissive, and directive parenting and various indicators of child emotional and social intelligence. The strategic emotion‐coaching parenting style is also examined for its connections to comparable child outcomes. Parenting practices such as inductive discipline and parental availability also appear to cultivate emotional and social intelligence in children. Finally, overparenting is discussed as a parenting practice that apparently corrupts the development of these traits in emerging adults. We conclude that best practices, where emotional intelligence and social intelligence are the benchmarks, blend parental care and concern with a degree of parental demands on children that are appropriate for their developmental stage.     

First-Year Maternal Employment and Adolescent Externalizing Behavior

Associations between first-year maternal employment and mother—and youth-reported externalizing behavior at age 15 were examined paying attention to potential mediating roles of home and child care environments by 36?months, effortful control at 54?months, and externalizing behavior at 54?months and middle childhood. We used data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (n?=?922 non-Hispanic White children) which is a prospective birth cohort study that followed children from birth to age 15. Full-time first-year maternal employment was associated with higher levels of externalizing behavior at age 15 through higher maternal depressive symptoms by 36?months, lower effortful control at 54?months, and higher externalizing behavior at 54?months and middle childhood. Part-time first-year maternal employment was not associated with higher externalizing behavior at age 15.