What do men want? Male rituals of initiation in group psychotherapy

Men in mixed-gender psychotherapy groups form male subgroups that serve the cause of gender identity development. The resulting enhancement of masculine identifications allows men to more fully participate in the interactional work of the whole group. The author details four stages in the evolution of the male subgroup, and compares these stages to the structure and function of initiation ceremonies in traditional societies.     

A Comparative Analysis of Entrepreneur and College Business Student Values

ABSTRACT Both entrepreneurs and senior-level college business students were surveyed to determine similarities and differences in their values, under the premise that students who share similar values with those held by entrepreneurs may have promise of entrepreneurial potential. All respondents were administered the Rokeach Value Survey which, through a process of rank-ordering, is used to determine two hierarchies of value importance for individuals. The first hierarchy reflects an individual's terminal value system, or those values associated with end-states of existence. The second hierarchy reflects an individual's instrumental value system, or those values associated with modes of conduct. The resulting data provided a tabulation of medians, rank order composites and levels of significance for the terminal and instrumental values, respectively, of both samples. Rank order composites were used as general indices in comparing the position of a particular value in the total hierarchy of values and for comparing the position of a particular value across the two groups. Emphasis was placed on those values which were ranked very low or very high by the entrepreneurs. Comparisons of student value rankings relative to those values the entrepreneurs held highest and lowest were then conducted. The findings indicated that there were value differences between the total sample of entrepreneurs and students, as well as between female entrepreneurs and female student values, but there were few differences between male entrepreneur and male student values. In addition to the above comparisons, median analysis between entrepreneur and student terminal and instrumental values were conducted. An examination of the general population of entrepreneurs and students revealed that twelve of the eighteen terminal values of the entrepreneurs and students were significantly different at the (.05) level Only four of the eighteen instrumental values were significantly different (.05) level between the entrepreneurs and students. The median analysis between male entrepreneurs and male student values showed no significant differences. However, the median analysis between female entrepreneur and female student values showed that seven of the eighteen instrumental and eleven of the eighteen terminal values were significantly different at the (.05) level. Although not examined, it is likely that individual students in the sample do share the value profiles of the entrepreneurs. If so, and if generally accepted value profiles are established for entrepreneurs, such students might be counseled to consider the entrepreneurial life.     

Younger and older adolescents' thinking about commitments

One hundred and sixty-three adolescents listed factors they consider or would consider when choosing a career and a romantic partner, and defined "commitment" in an open-ended essay. Male and female ninth graders, twelfth graders, and college juniors, from public and private schools served as subjects. Gender, grade, and type of school differences were found in the types and number of different types of factors listed for the above commitments, but not in the number of factors listed. Conceptions of the nature of commitment became more complex with grade, and differed as a function of gender and of type of school. Females listed more "internal" factors than did males for romantic commitments. Males described commitment more contractually, women more affectively. Older students focused more upon long-term and internal concerns, and defined "commitment" more in terms of cognitive processing and emotional attachment than younger students. Implications for related areas of work are discussed.     

Short-term memory differences between children predict imagery effects when sentences are read

Children in Grades 4 through 6 read concrete sentences that they were asked to learn. Half the subjects were instructed to construct images representing the sentence meanings. The remaining participants were provided no strategy instructions (control condition). Individual differences in short-term memory were more highly associated with performance in the imagery than in the control condition. There was a clear positive effect of imagery instructions on learning efficiency among students with relatively greater short-term memory; there was no difference in learning efficiency between the imagery and control conditions among students below the median for short-term memory performance. All relevant analyses supported the conclusion that imaginal coding of sentences that are read is demanding of short-term memory capacity.     

Subsyllabic units in computerized reading instruction: onset-rime vs. postvowel segmentation

Previous studies suggest that adults and children divide spoken syllables into subsyllabic onset-rime units more readily than into any other kind of subsyllabic unit. We asked whether this same onset-rime segmentation might also be beneficial in teaching children to read. That is, can children learn more words segmented at the onset-rime boundary (e.g., CL-AP, D-ISH) than words segmented after the vowel (CLA-P, DI-SH)? In three experiments, first-grade students studied single words presented by a computer connected to a high-quality speech synthesizer. Experiment 1 used words of four letters but only three phonemes apiece (e.g., WHIP, DISH). In some of these words the onset-rime segmentation corresponded to the initial bigram (e.g., WH-IP); in some it did not (e.g., D-ISH). Experiments 2 and 3 used words of four letters and four phonemes (e.g., CLAP, CORN). In all three experiments, onset-rime segmentation proved more helpful than postvowel segmentation in short-term learning of the words.     

The interaction of criterion and feedback information in learning a drawing task

Experiments were designed to examine the influence of criterion and feedback information in the learning of a two-dimensional drawing task. Experiment 1 showed that when the task criterion is well known to the subject, the combined presentation of criterion information and information feedback facilitates the rate of acquisition of the skill but not its overall performance level of achievement. Experiment 2 showed that when the task criterion information is not well known to the subject, presentation of criterion information facilitates both the rate of acquisition and the overall performance level and, furthermore, is essential if configuration information feedback is to be utilized effectively. Experiment 3 showed that it is the combined presentation of criterion and configuration information feedback rather than the isolate presentation of either type of information alone, that facilitates learning and performance. Collectively, the findings from the three experiments suggest an interactive effect of prior knowledge by the learner and type of augmented information in facilitating the acquisition of skill, according to the constraints imposed in the task. The data are consistent with the proposal that the degrees of freedom in the information available to support motor skill learning must match the degrees of freedom to be constraint in the perceptual-motor workspace.     

Preload and isometric force variability

Two experiments are reported, which examined the relative contributions of preload (resting force level), change of force, and the time taken to achieve the force in determining isometric force variability. The findings showed that change of force is the strongest determiner of peak force variability but that preload and time to peak force have smaller though systematic effects. A formula that predicts peak force variability is proposed, with preload as an additive effect to the ratio between the change of force level and the square root of time to peak force. These findings confirm that these three impulse variables are significant in predicting force variability and that the impact of rate of force on peak force variability is nonlinear.     

Social Interactions of Obese and Nonobese Women

The stigma associated with obesity is likely to limit the opportunities obese women have to develop social skills. This hypothesis was tested by having obese (n = 15) and nonobese (n = 22) women converse on the telephone with college students who were unaware of the women's weights. Ratings made by judges who listened to the women's contributions to the conversations but who were unaware of their weights showed that obesity was negatively related to judgments about the women's likability, social skills, and physical attractiveness. The telephone partners of obese women rated the women and themselves more negatively than did the partners of nonobese women. Obese and nonobese women generally did not differ in their evaluations of their own and their telephone partners' behavior, and they also did not differ on a measure of social self-esteem. These findings suggest that there are real differences in the social behavior of obese and nonobese women and that these differences affect the impressions formed by those with whom they interact.     

Suspicion of ulterior motivation and the correspondence bias

Three studies examined the hypothesis that when perceivers learn of the existence of multiple, plausibly rival motives for an actor's behavior, they are less likely to fall prey to the correspondence bias than when they learn of the existence of situational factors that may have constrained the actor's behavior. In the first 2 studies, Ss who learned that an actor was instructed to behave as he did drew inferences that corresponded to his behavior. In contrast, Ss who were led to suspect that an actor's behavior may have been motivated by a desire to ingratiate (Study 1), or by a desire to avoid an unwanted job (Study 2), resisted the correspondence bias. The 3rd study demonstrated that these differences were not due to a general unwillingness on the part of suspicious perceivers to make dispositional inferences. The implications that these results have for understanding attribution theory are discussed.     

Interpersonal competition can cause individuating processes

Two experiments investigated whether competitors attend to and individuate opponents. Interdependence theories predict that people individuate others on whom their outcomes depend rather than stereotyping them; this has been tested for cooperative but not for competitive interdependence. Competition separates such phenomena as unit formation in cooperation from interdependence per se, posited to be the crucial variable. In two experiments, Ss expected to compete or not compete with a competent or incompetent fictitious subject. Ss commented into a tape recorder about the person's attributes, some inconsistent and some consistent with expectations. As predicted, competitors (a) increased attention to inconsistencies, (b) drew more dispositional inferences about inconsistencies, and (c) formed more varied impressions. The role of competition in undercutting expectancy-based impressions and intergroup vs. interpersonal competition are discussed.