The Psychology of Gender Differences in Religion: A Review of Empirical Research

This paper presents, discusses and evaluates empirical studies concerned with gender differences in religion. Within the psychology of religion two main groups of theories have been advanced to account for gender differences in religiosity. The first group of theories concentrates on social or contextual influences which shape different responses to religion among men and women. This group may be divided into two categories: gender role socialisation theories and structural location theories. The second group of theories concentrates on personal or individual psychological characteristics which differentiate between men and women. This group may be divided into three categories: depth psychology theories, personality theories and gender orientation theories. It is concluded that gender orientation theories provide the most fruitful source for further research.     

Reviews

Lois Raynor: The Adopted Child Comes of Age. National Institute of Social Services Library No. 36, 1980. George Allen and Unwin. Paperback, [euro]5.50.

W.R. Bion: The Long Weekend. Fleetwood Press, 1982 [euro]9.00.     

Major memory for microblogs

Online social networking is vastly popular and permits its members to post their thoughts as microblogs, an opportunity that people exploit, on Facebook alone, over 30 million times an hour. Such trivial ephemera, one might think, should vanish quickly from memory; conversely, they may comprise the sort of information that our memories are tuned to recognize, if that which we readily generate, we also readily store. In the first two experiments, participants’ memory for Facebook posts was found to be strikingly stronger than their memory for human faces or sentences from books—a magnitude comparable to the difference in memory strength between amnesics and healthy controls. The second experiment suggested that this difference is not due to Facebook posts spontaneously generating social elaboration, because memory for posts is enhanced as much by adding social elaboration as is memory for book sentences. Our final experiment, using headlines, sentences, and reader comments from articles, suggested that the remarkable memory for microblogs is also not due to their completeness or simply their topic, but may be a more general phenomenon of their being the largely spontaneous and natural emanations of the human mind.     

Magnitude and determinants of behavioral risk reduction: Longitudinal analysis of a cohort at risk for AIDS

The magnitude and predictors of longitudinal behavioral change are reported in a cohort of homosexual men at risk for AIDS. Self-reports of sexual behavior were obtained at two points in time separated by an interval of approximately six months. These self-reports were used to construct both dichotomous and continuous measures of changes in behavior consistent with reduction in the transmission of the AIDS virus (HIV). Although there was considerable variability in behavior. mean changes were consistently in the desired direction. Avoidance of anonymous sexual partners, monogamy, and modification of receptive anal sex to reduce exposure to semen by condom use or withdrawal prior to ejaculation appeared to be especially important in this cohort. Both multiple linear regression and multiple logistic regression were used to examine the relationship between a model of health behavior and these outcomes. Variables examined included knowledge of AIDS. perceived risk of AIDS. the perceived efficacy of behavior in reducing AIDS risk, difficulties with sexual impulse control, belief in biomedical technology to provide a prevention or cure, social norms supportive of behavioral change, and gay network affiliation. Of all these factors, only the availability of supportive peer norms was consistently, significantly and positively related to multiple measures of outcome. Differences between these analyses and longitudinal analyses reported elsewhere are discussed. These results suggest the policies regarding HIV antibody testing should be developed cautiously. taking account of the failure of a sense of risk to predict subsequent behavioral change. They also emphasize the important role of gay organizations in developing social norms supportive of behavioral risk reduction.     

Validation of a new multidimensional health locus of control scale (form c) in asthma research

Abstract

This study developed and validated an Asthma Multidimensional Health Locus of Control (AMHLC) scale using 186 asthmatics aged 13 to 55 years recruited from 46 pharmacies in the Hunter Valley, Australia. The construct validity and internal consistency of the scale were demonstrated using principal components factor analysis and Cronbach's alpha respectively. Although correlations were modest, findings indicate that asthmatics with higher “Powerful Others” locus of control perceived they had a better quality of doctor-patient relationship; the opposite was found for those with higher “Chance” scores. Powerful Others orientation was also associated with expectations and valuation of services doctors' provide. Knowledge of asthma was not related in the expected direction with the new scale, nor were clinical indices of asthma severity. Younger asthmatics had higher Chance scores while older asthmatics tended toward higher Powerful Others orientation. Overall, the AMHLC instrument achieved suitable measurement properties to allow further investigation of health care behavior in people with asthma.     

Development of decisional balance and self-efficacy measures for adolescent sedentary behaviors

Writing about traumatic events can produce health benefits, yet emotionally non-expressive or cognitively avoidant individuals may be unwilling or unable to express their emotions. This study examined non-expression, cognitive avoidance, response to writing, and subsequent health. As part of a larger study, participants ( N = 71) with asthma or rheumatoid arthritis (RA) wrote about traumatic experiences for 20 min on three consecutive days. Alexithymia, denial, behavioral disengagement, mental disengagement, focus on/venting of emotions, avoidant thoughts, and health status were assessed at baseline, health status again 4 months after writing. Essays were coded for how personal and how emotional they were, and for narrative structure. Non-expression and cognitive avoidance were neither related to how personal or emotional essays were, nor to affective response to writing. High levels of denial or avoidant thoughts predicted less narrative structure. Avoidant thinking marginally predicted health improvements in RA patients. Results suggest that non-expression and cognitive avoidance do not interfere with writing in terms of emotional engagement, but may influence narrative use.     

Relationship between the number of life events and memory capacity in children

Stressful life events can result into declined memory performance at later age. One hypothesis suggests that stress affects the hippocampus, a brain area important for memory functioning. This study explored a potential relationship between the number of negative stressful life events and hippocampus-dependent declarative but not hippocampus-independent procedural memory performance in a community sample of 255 children, aged 6–12 years. The findings revealed that negative stressful life events were negatively related to verbal declarative memory, but not to nonverbal declarative and procedural memory. The memory impairments could not be accounted for by attention and sleep disturbances, and parenting characteristics as perceived by the child did not influence the vulnerability for the stress-related memory impairments. These findings provide further insight into the deleterious effects of negative stressful life events on learning in school-aged children.