Paradigmatic Assumptions of Disciplinary Research on Gender Disparities: The Case of Occupational Sex Segregation

Lips (2012) deconstructs the standard methodological approaches to understanding the gender wage gap and shows that issues of gender pervade nearly every assumption of these models. In this commentary, we call attention to paradigmatic assumptions and theoretical approaches of the three most relevant social-science disciplines that deal with a parallel issue—occupational sex segregation—to demonstrate that scientific progress is facilitated by transparency in our disciplinary approaches to addressing gender disparities. Accordingly, the neoclassical economic approach to occupational sex segregation posits, among other things, self-selection in the development of human capital, such as choice of college major, as well as women’s tradeoffs in marriage vs. work-related capital as the drivers of occupational disparities. Progressive sociological approaches, such as feminist and Marxist sociology eschew these “supply-side” explanations in favor of examining “demand-side” explanations, particularly social forces that shape both employers’ beliefs about desirable worker attributes as well as the institutional structures that are created to support these views. Psychological approaches tend to address both supply-side (e.g., vocational preferences) and demand-side (e.g., stereotypes and bias) explanations. The aim of this commentary is to elucidate the paradigmatic approaches that each of the major social-science disciplines takes in understanding gender inequity issues in order to advance integrated research on these important social topics.     

Televised Sexual Content and Parental Mediation: Influences on Adolescent Sexuality

Little research has been conducted to examine the influence of exposure to televised sexual content on adolescent sexuality or how parental intervention may reduce negative effects of viewing such content. This study uses self-report data from 1,012 adolescents to investigate the relations among exposure to sexually suggestive programming, parental mediation strategies, and three types of adolescent sexuality outcomes: participation in oral sex and sexual intercourse, future intentions to engage in these behaviors, and sex expectancies. As predicted, exposure to sexual content was associated with an increased likelihood of engaging in sexual behaviors, increased intentions to do so in the future, and more positive sex expectancies. Often, parental mediation strategies were a significant factor in moderating these potential media influences.     

Adolescent Decisional Autonomy Regarding Participation in an Emergency Department Youth Violence Interview

Much attention has been given to determining whether an adolescent patient has the capacity to consent to research. This study explores the factors that influence adolescents' decisions to participate in a research study about youth violence and to determine positive or negative feelings elicited by being a research subject. The majority of subjects perceived their decision to participate to be free of coercion, and few felt badly about having participated. However, adolescents who were alone in the room during the assent process were more likely to report that they chose freely to be a research subject. This study may influence the ways physicians communicate with adolescent patients around research assent within a clinical care environment.     

Response Inhibition and the Rorschach ‘M’ Response

Previous research indicated that a relationship existed between production of the Rorschach M response and inhibition of motor activity. The present study investigated this relationship under conditions which approximated those involved in the normal process of impulse control. Volunteer college students were used as subjects. Ss who engaged in a response inhibition task subsequently produced significantly more M responses than did Ss who had engaged in a noninhibitory task. This supported the hypothesis that M is an indication of the tendency to deal with impulses through fantasy.     

Disappearing Percepts: Evidence for Retention Failure in Metacontrast Masking

Results from a number of paradigms (including change blindness, inattentional blindness, integration over saccades, and backward masking) suggest that most of the visual information we take in is not retained, even for very short periods of time. This has led some to question whether such information is ever really perceived. We examine this issue using a variant of the classic metacontrast stimulus. When a briefly presented disk is followed by a briefly presented ring, observers may report not seeing the disk. Rather they report seeing the ring flicker as if the change in form from disk to ring is not recorded. This effect is highly dependent on the interval between the onset of the disk and the onset of the ring (the “stimulus onset asynchrony” or SOA). The maximum effect is usually found at a critical SOA of about 50 msec. Here we show that the ability of observers to distinguish such a disk/ring pair from a flickering ring is dependent also on how soon after the stimulus they respond. Early responses show a much smaller masking effect than late responses: Near the critical SOA accuracy improves when the observer responds more quickly (the opposite of the standard speed-accuracy trade-off), although at longer and shorter SOAs observers are less accurate on these early responses (a typical speed-accuracy trade-off). We interpret this finding as demonstrating that, at least in the case of metacontrast, retention of form information is disrupted, rather than initial access.     

Familiarity and sex based stereotypes on instant impressions of male and female faculty

To address the stranger-to-stranger critique of stereotyping research, psychology students $(n= 139)$ and law students $(n = 58)$ rated photographs of familiar or unfamiliar male or female professors on competence. Results from Study 1 indicated that familiar male psychology faculty were rated as more competent than were familiar female faculty, whereas unfamiliar female faculty were rated as more competent than unfamiliar male faculty. By contrast, in Study 2, familiarity had a stronger positive effect on competence ratings of female faculty than it did for male faculty. Among psychology students, familiarity increased sex bias against female faculty, whereas among law students familiarity decreased sex bias. Together, these studies call into question the stranger-to-stranger critique of stereotyping research. Our findings have direct implications for the context of student evaluations. In male-dominated disciplines it is important for students to be exposed to female instructors in order to reduce pre-existing biases against such instructors.     

Perseveration in Normal Aging: A Comparison of Perseveration Rates on Design Fluency and Verbal Generative Tasks

Three generative tasks (design generation, animal naming, words starting with m) from the Cognitive Linguistic Quick Test were administered to 73 healthy individuals in four age groups (18–39, 40–59, 60–74, 75–88) and scored for perseveration and productivity. Perseveration rates for design generation were significantly higher, and increased linearly as a function of age. The number of individuals who perseverated at least once on design generation also increased linearly, with highest prevalence in the oldest group. No age effects were found for perseveration on the verbal naming tasks. Perseverations across tasks were independent of one another. The design generation task may require multiple simultaneous processing skills, placing more demand on compromised executive processing in the elderly.     

Leisure activities,caregiving demands and catecholamine levels in dementia caregivers

This study examined whether satisfaction from leisure activities moderates the relationship between caregiving demands (i.e., hours per day spent caring for a spouse with dementia) and resting levels of the catecholamines norepinephrine (NE) and epinephrine (EPI). Spousal caregivers (n?=?107; mean age?=?73.95?±?8.12 years) were assessed in home for plasma levels of NE and EPI, amount of care provided, and leisure satisfaction. Regression was used to determine whether leisure satisfaction moderated the relationship between hours providing care per day and catecholamine levels. A significant interaction was found between hours caregiving and leisure satisfaction for NE, but not for EPI. Post hoc regressions were conducted for both NE and EPI. At low leisure satisfaction, time spent caring for a spouse was positively associated with plasma NE (β?=?0.41; p?=?0.005) and EPI (β?=?0.44; p?=?0.003). In contrast, at high levels of satisfaction, time caregiving was not significantly associated with plasma NE (β?=?–0.08; p?=?0.57) or EPI (β?=?0.23; p?=?0.12). These findings suggest that leisure satisfaction may protect caregivers from increases in catecholamines, which have been implicated in cardiovascular risk. Further support for these findings may impact psychological treatments for distressed caregivers.