The gender role journey measure: Scale development and psychometric evaluation

The Gender Role Journey concept was developed to help women and men explore their gender role changes and transitions. A 34-item Gender Role Journey Measure (GRJM) was conceptualized and developed through empirical methods. The construct validity of the five phases of the gender role journey is assessed. The GRJM and the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ) were given to a sample of women and men (N=878). The sample was predominantly Caucasian from a mixed ethnic background. Principle factor analysis indicated three meaningful factors: Acceptance of Traditional Gender Roles; Gender Role Ambivalence, Confusion, Anger, and Fear; and Personal-Professional Activism. Moderately high test-retest and internal consistency reliabilities were found for each of the factors. Gender differences and gender by PAQ interactions were found for all three of the factors of the GRJM. Implications for future research, teaching, and workshops are suggested.This article was presented at the 99th convention of the American Psychological Association, San Francisco, California, August 1991. It was supported by a grant from the Research Foundation of the University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut.     

Contributors to the Appraisal of Major Life Changes: Gender, Perceived Controllability, Sensation Seeking, Strain, and Social Support

This study investigated relationships between the appraisal of life events and gender, locus of control, social support, strain, and sensation seeking. In group sessions, undergraduate males and females completed self-report measures assessing life events appraisals and self-report measures for the above individual differences. Analyses supported the notion that a range of these variables, previously shown to serve as moderators of life stress, are significantly related to the appraisals of life events. Moreover, in addition to the gender differences obtained for the perception of life events, gender was found to influence several associations between the individual differences and life events appraisal.     

Personality Correlates of Confidence in One's Decisions

ABSTRACT Taylor and Brown (1988) hypothesized that certain illusions, such as unrealistic optimism, are predictably associated with positive affect, social skills, and intellectual functioning. To test this hypothesis, we obtained data from 162 students who first filled out a questionnaire containing dispositional measures of affect, social skills, and approaches to problem solving; in a second session they completed three tasks requiring difficult decisions, reporting their confidence in each decision. Accuracy of judgments was found to vary considerably from task to task, but confidence ratings showed a consistent pattern of individual differences. This result lent support to Taylor and Brown's hypothesis, as did other features of the data, most notably several small but significant Pearson r s between confidence ratings and dispositional variables. Removing the effects of accuracy from these r s reduced their magnitude very little; it yielded partial r s interpretable as evidence that illusory confidence is associated with personality traits which, in this case, load saliently on factors labeled ( a ) affective, and ( b ) cognitive/social.     

Choice between delayed reinforcers and fixed-ratio schedules requiring forceful responding.

This experiment measured pigeons' choices between delayed reinforcers and fixed-ratio schedules in which a force of approximately 0.48 N was needed to operate the response key. In ratio-delay conditions, subjects chose between a fixed-ratio schedule and an adjusting delay. The delay was increased or decreased several times a session in order to estimate an indifference point--a delay duration at which the two alternatives were chosen about equally often. Each ratio-delay condition was followed by a delay-delay condition in which subjects chose between the adjusting delay and a variable-time schedule, with the components of this schedule selected to match the ratio completion times of the preceding ratio-delay condition. The adjusting delays at the indifference point were longer when the alternative was a fixed-ratio schedule than when it was a matched variable-time schedule, which indicated a preference for the matched variable-time schedules over the fixed-ratio schedules. This preference increased in a nonlinear manner with increasing ratio size. This nonlinearity was inconsistent with a theory that states that indifference points for both time and ratio schedules can be predicted by multiplying the choice response-reinforcer intervals of the two types of schedules by different multiplicative constants. Two other theories, which predict nonlinear increases in preference for the matched variable-time schedules, are discussed.     

Unification of models for choice between delayed reinforcers.

Two models for choice between delayed reinforcers, Fantino's delay-reduction theory and Killeen's incentive theory, are reviewed. Incentive theory is amended to incorporate the effects of arousal on alternate types of behavior that might block the reinforcement of the target behavior. This amended version is shown to differ from the delay-reduction theory in a term that is an exponential in incentive theory and a difference in delay-reduction theory. A power series approximation to the exponential generates a model that is formally identical with delay-reduction theory. Correlations between delay-reduction theory and the amended incentive theory show excellent congruence over a range of experimental conditions. Although the assumptions that gave rise to delay-reduction theory and incentive theory remain different and testable, the models deriving from the theories are unlikely to be discriminable by parametric experimental tests. This congruence of the models is recognized by naming the common model the delayed reinforcement model, which is then compared with other models of choice such as Killeen and Fetterman's (1988) behavioral theory of timing, Mazur's (1984) equivalence rule, and Vaughan's (1985) melioration theory.     

Effects of alcohol and extended practice on divided-attention performance

The effects of alcohol and extended practice on divided attention were investigated using a visual tracking task and an auditory detection task. Subjects performed the tasks with and without alcohol, under single-task (S) and dual-task (D) conditions, both before and after they had received extended practice under single-task conditions without alcohol. Tracking accuracy improved with practice and was impaired under divided-attention conditions but was not affected by alcohol. Speed of detection was impaired by alcohol, improved by practice, and impaired by divided attention. Extended practice did not reduce the influence of alcohol. The effects of both alcohol and practice on speed of detection were significantly greater under dual-task conditions than under single-task conditions. Analysis of detection-task reaction times in terms of relative divided-attention costs, (D-S)/S, showed no effect of alcohol, but a highly significant reduction in costs with extended practice. It is concluded that (1) alcohol and practice can have quantitatively, but not qualitatively, similar effects on speeded performance, and (2) the effect of alcohol is not influenced by the attentional requirements of the task.     

Medical expertise asa function of task difficulty

This paper is concerned with factors that disrupt the pattern of forward reasoning characteristic of experts with accurate performance. Two experiments are described. In the first, the performances of cardiologists, psychiatrists, and surgeons in diagnostic explanation of a clinical problem in cardiology were examined. In the second, the performances of cardiologists and endocrinologists in diagnostic explanation of clinical problems within and outside their domains of expertise were examined. The performances of researchers and practicing physicians are also compared. The results of Experiment 1 replicated earlier results regarding the relationship between forward reasoning and accurate diagnosis. There were no differences in recall as a function of expertise. Experts did not show any bias toward using specific knowledge from their own areas of expertise. The results of Experiment 2 showed that the breakdown of forward reasoning was related to the structure of the task. In particular, nonsalient cues induced some backward reasoning even in subjects with accurate diagnoses. Some differences were also found between the types of explanation used by researchers and practitioners. The practitioners referred more to clinical components in their explanations, whereas the researchers focused more on the biomedical components.     

A feature model of immediate memory

A feature model of immediate memory is presented, and simulations are described. List items are characterized as multiattribute vectors that can be selectively overwritten by subsequent external events and by the ongoing stream of internal activity. Degraded primary memory vectors are compared with intact secondary memory vectors, and retrieval likelihood is computed as the ratio of similarities. The model is shown to account for the major modality-based phenomena of the immediate serial recall literature, including modality-based temporal grouping effects and the negative effects of phonological similarity.     

Changing contexts and the field of community psychology

Conclusion The legacy of the Swampscott conference 25 years ago is palpable. The scientific accomplishments have been substantial. The four agendas I have presented for the future development of the field depend upon psychologists as individuals and psychologists as participants in our departments, colleges, universities, professional societies, and peer review panels to reduce the constraints that limit the definition and study of psychological phenomena in community settings (Schneider, 1990). As these constraints are addressed, new social norms can be established to expand and diversify the research process. There are some explicit positive side effects that can occur. A new working social structure can be created for how universities and communities can be resources for each other.The four topics I have presented are agendas for keeping at the task of generating active and expanding scientific traditions. These topics when addressed in the context of collaboration with other disciplines and citizens can develop an empirical base of shared wisdom about how to carry out community psychology research. In these ways the benefits of community psychology research can become more empowering for the public and more and more systemic for the scholar.These comments were presented as an Invited Address at the 2nd annual meeting of the American Psychological Society, June 8, 1990, Dallas, Texas.The following persons took time to read and comment on earlier drafts of these comments. I have benefited very much from their appraisals. Eileen Altman, Daniel Cervone, Seeley Chandler-Kelly, Nancy Dassoff, Penny Foster-Fishman, Steve Goldston, Peter Graves, Kenneth Heller, Robert E. Hess, David Henry, Ira Iscoe, Chris Keys, Benjamin Kleinmuntz, Ed Lichtenstein, Philip Mann, Kyoung Oh, Julian Rappaport, Dan Romer, Lonnie R. Snowden, Joseph P. Stokes, Edison J. Trickett, Abe Wandersman, and Marc Alan Zimmerman.