Gender Stereotypes in the Family Context: Mothers, Fathers, and Siblings

Gender stereotypes of children and their parents were examined. Participants included 355 three-year-old children, their one-year-old siblings, and their mothers and fathers. Families were selected from the Western region of the Netherlands. Implicit gender stereotypes were assessed with computerized versions of the Action Inference Paradigm (AIP; both child and parents) and the Implicit Association Test (parent only). Parental explicit gender stereotypes were measured with the Child Rearing Sex-Role Attitude Scale. Findings revealed that mothers had stronger implicit gender stereotypes than fathers, whereas fathers had stronger explicit stereotypes than mothers. Fathers with same-gender children had stronger implicit gender stereotypes about adults than parents with mixed-gender children. For the children, girls’ implicit gender stereotypes were significantly predicted by their mother’s implicit gender stereotypes about children. This association could only be observed when the AIP was used to assess the stereotypes of both parent and child. A family systems model is applicable to the study of gender stereotypes.     

The association between bankruptcy and hospital-presenting attempted suicide: a record linkage study

The associations between admissions to an emergency department following attempted suicide and personal bankruptcy in the preceding and subsequent 2 years were evaluated. Records from a level 1 trauma center (June 1993-December 2002) in Seattle, WA, were linked with case files from the local U.S. District Bankruptcy Court (June 1991 onward). Univariable and multivariable logistic regression models were used to examine the risk of bankruptcy in (i) the 2 years after and (ii) the 2 years before a suicide attempt using a violent method, compared to patients admitted for any other reason. After adjusting for several confounders, patients who had attempted suicide were more likely than other patients to experience bankruptcy in the following 2 years (OR = 2.10, 95% CIs: 1.29, 3.42). A somewhat weaker association was seen with bankruptcy in the preceding 2 years (OR = 1.68, 95% CIs 1.06; 2.67). Attempted suicide is therefore associated with bankruptcy in the preceding and following 2 years. Changes to legislation, improved mental health counselling for those in financial difficulty, and provision of financial advice to those admitted to hospital following a suicide attempt may reduce future cases of serious self-harm and completed suicide.     

Spirituality,Religiousness, and Happiness in Children Aged 8–12 Years

The relation between spirituality and happiness was assessed in 320 children aged 8–12 from public and private (i.e., faith-based) schools. Children rated their own spirituality using the Spiritual Well-Being Questionnaire and 11 items selected and modified from the Brief Multidimensional Measurement of Religiousness/Spirituality which reflected the children’s practices and beliefs. Children’s happiness was assessed using self-reports based on the Oxford Happiness Scale short form, the Subjective Happiness Scale, and a single-item measure. Parents also rated their children’s happiness. Children and parents rated the children’s temperament using the emotionality, activity, and sociability temperament survey. Children’s spirituality, but not their religious practices (e.g., attending church, praying, and meditating), was strongly linked to their happiness. Children who were more spiritual were happier. Spirituality accounted for between 3 and 26% of the unique variance in children’s happiness depending on the measures. Temperament was also a predictor of happiness, but spirituality remained a significant predictor of happiness even after removing the variance associated with temperament. The personal (i.e., meaning and value in one’s own life) and communal (quality and depth of inter-personal relationships) domains of spirituality were particularly good predictors of children’s happiness. These results parallel studies of adult happiness and suggest strategies to enhance happiness in children.     

Universes of discourse: implications for counselling and psychotherapy

All individuals can be envisaged as living within a number of parallel universes of discourse, where different meanings and values may apply; these may be characterised by different language 'registers'. The process of counselling and psychotherapy itself constitutes such a universe. The inner and outer worlds of the client also constitute different universes that may themselves each consist of a number of distinct universes. Decisions made with respect to one universe may have different meanings or adverse consequences in another; it therefore beholds the therapist to be aware of, and alert to, these differences.     

The Effects of L-glucose on memory in mice are modulated by peripherally acting cholinergic drugs.

D-Glucose improves memory in animals and humans and in subjects with memory pathologies. To date, the accepted conclusion drawn from animal research is that D-glucose improves memory via alterations in central cholinergic systems. However, recent evidence suggests that a sugar which does not cross the blood-brain barrier also facilitates memory (Talley, Arankowsky-Sandoval, McCarty, & Gold, 1999). The present study examined the effects of peripherally administered L-glucose, a stereoisomer of D-glucose, in male mice. Intraperitoneal administration of L-glucose (300 mg/kg) before testing enhanced place learning in the Morris water maze. Mice injected with L-glucose had significantly shorter escape latencies than mice injected with saline (1 ml/kg). Effects were observed on both reference memory and working memory tasks. L-Glucose did not facilitate performance on either task when it was simultaneously administered with cholinergic antagonists that are excluded from the central nervous system. Thus, simultaneous administration of either methyl-scopolamine (0.3 mg/kg), a peripherally acting muscarinic receptor blocker, or hexamethonium (1 mg/kg), a peripherally acting nicotinic receptor blocker, reversed the effect of L-glucose on memory. These findings suggest that the memory effects of l-glucose may be mediated by facilitated acetylcholine synthesis and/or release in the peripheral nervous system.     

The Name Game: Employability Evaluations of Prototypical Applicants with Stereotypical Feminine and Masculine First Names

This study was designed to examine professional human resource managers recommendations and inferences about prototypical applicants who had identical qualifications, in which the presence of periods of unemployment and name (feminine, masculine) of applicants were manipulated. Results indicate that although overall income for female applicants was less than male applicants in some conditions, male applicants were penalized and evaluated more harshly than female applicants when they had experienced periods of unemployment. Specifically, male applicants with employment gaps were seen as less committed and as less hirable than their female counterparts. Overall, male applicants were less likely to be recommended for an interview, and, when they experienced multiple gaps, they were less likely to be recommended for further consideration.     

The Inducement of Meaningful Work: A Response to Anderson and Weijer

James A. Anderson and Charles Weijer take the wage payment model proposed by Neil Dickert and Christine Grady and extend the analogy of research participation to unskilled wage labor to include just working conditions. Although noble in its intentions, this moral extension generates unsavory outcomes. Most notably, Anderson and Weijer distinguish between two types of research subjects: occasional and professional. The latter, in this case, receives benefits beyond the moral minima in the form of “the right to meaningful work.” The problem is that meaningful work can itself be a form of inducement, and consequently, may in fact increase the incidence of inducement contrary to the intentions of the wage payment model.     

Conceptual and perceptual processes in prospective remembering: differential influence of attentional resources

Does prospective remembering rely on strategic, attentionally demanding processes? We report three experiments suggesting that the extent to which attentional processes are required varies according to the character of ongoing task processing. Study-test changes in the semantic context of targets had a negative effect on prospective memory performance when participants were engaged in a conceptually focused (sentence verification) task (Experiment 1). Similarly, prospective remembering was lower following study-test changes in perceptual format (font) in the context of a perceptually focused (readability rating) ongoing task (Experiment 2). However, although dividing attention at retrieval had a negative effect during the performance of an ongoing conceptual task (Experiments 1 and 3), it had no effect during an ongoing perceptual task (Experiments 2 and 3). Thus, both perceptual and conceptual process are implicated in prospective remembering, but the processing focus of the task in which remembering should occur may mediate the requirement for strategic processes. These findings suggest that more than one retrieval route is available for prospective remembering and that selection of the route depends on the nature of the task and the processing that occurs at encoding and retrieval.     

The representation of delayed intentions: a prospective subject-performed task?

To-be-enacted material is more accessible in tests of recognition and lexical decision than material not intended for action (T. Goschke & J. Kuhl, 1993; R. L. Marsh, J. L. Hicks, & M. L. Bink, 1998). This finding has been attributed to the superior status of intention-related information. The current article explores an alternative (action-superiority) account that draws parallels between the intended enactment effect (IEE) and the subject performed task effect. Using 2 paradigms, the authors observed faster recognition latencies for both enacted and to-be-enacted material. It is crucial to note that there was no evidence of an IEE for items that had already been executed during encoding. The IEE was also eliminated when motor processing was prevented after verbal encoding. These findings suggest an overlap between overt and intended enactment and indicate that motor information may be activated for verbal material in preparation for subsequent execution.     

Stay calm! Regulating emotional responses by implementation intentions: Assessing the impact on physiological and subjective arousal

Implementation intention (IMP) has recently been highlighted as an effective emotion regulatory strategy. Most studies examining the effectiveness of IMPs to regulate emotion have relied on self-report measures of emotional change. In two studies we employed electrodermal activity (EDA) and heart rate (HR) in addition to arousal ratings (AR) to assess the impact of an IMP on emotional responses. In Study 1, 60 participants viewed neutral and two types of negative pictures (weapon vs. non-weapon) under the IMP “If I see a weapon, then I will stay calm and relaxed!” or no self-regulatory instructions (Control). In Study 2, additionally to the Control and IMP conditions, participants completed the picture rating task either under goal intention (GI) to stay calm and relaxed or warning instructions highlighting that some pictures contain weapons. In both studies, participants showed lower EDA, reduced HR deceleration and lower AR to the weapon pictures compared to the non-weapon pictures. In Study 2, the IMP was associated with lower EDA compared to the GI condition for the weapon pictures, but not compared to the weapon pictures in the Warning condition. ARs were lower for IMP compared to GI and Warning conditions for the weapon pictures.