Race,gender, and the response to stress: Autoworkers' vulnerability to long-term unemployment

A three-wave panel study of auto plant closings focused on the mental health effects of unemployment on blue-collar workers. This paper explores how the impact of long-term unemployment varies across race and gender. We also examine whether other demographic factors can themselves modify the impactsof race and gender. Dependent variables include two measures of distress and two drinking measures. Results showed that the effect of long-term unemployment on distress and drinking was more severe among less educated workers, and responses of blacks were especially sensitive to level of education. In addition, men showed a greater association of long-term unemployment with depression (and to some extent anxiety) than did women. Marriage affected the responses of men but not of women, and of whites but not of blacks. Explanatory variables—the worker's experiences of financial hardship, other negative life events, and lack of a confidant—largely accounted for male-female differences. We conclude by discussing theoretical implications of these effects and address the limitations of the traditional term “vulnerability” in describing them. A prior version of this paper was presented at the North Central Sociological Association meeting in Dearborn, Michigan, April 25, 1991. Funds for the research were provided by the Michigan Health Care Research and Education Foundation and by the International Union-UAW. We are especially grateful to the men and women of the UAW, whose experiences and views form this investigation. We thank Kiseon Chung, Scott McKearney, David Rauma, and the anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts.     

The role of visual attention in saccadic eye movements

The relationship between saccadic eye movements and covert orienting of visual spatial attention was investigated in two experiments. In the first experiment, subjects were required to make a saccade to a specified location while also detecting a visual target presented just prior to the eye movement. Detection accuracy was highest when the location of the target coincided with the location of the saccade, suggesting that subjects use spatial attention in the programming and/or execution of saccadic eye movements. In the second experiment, subjects were explicitly directed to attend to a particular location and to make a saccade to the same location or to a different one. Superior target detection occurred at the saccade location regardless of attention instructions. This finding shows that subjects cannot move their eyes to one location and attend to a different one. The results of these experiments suggest that visuospatial attention is an important mechanism in generating voluntary saccadic eye movements.     

The perception of color from motion

We introduce and explore a color phenomenon which requires the prior perception of motion to produce a spread of color over a region defined by motion. We call this motion-induced spread of colordynamic color spreading. The perception of dynamic color spreading is yoked to the perception of apparent motion: As the ratings of perceived motion increase, the ratings of color spreading increase. The effect is most pronounced if the region defined by motion is near 1° of visual angle. As the luminance     

Effects of BIM-22015, an analog of ACTH4-10, on functional recovery after frontal cortex injury.

Male rats, 90-100 days old, with frontal cortex lesions were given either subcutaneous sterile water (SW) as a vehicle control or 1, 10, or 100 micrograms of BIM-22015 every other day for 20 days. Brain-injured subjects tested in the Morris water maze with either 10 micrograms BIM-22015 or SW took significantly more trials than sham-operated rats to locate a submerged platform eight consecutive times within 60 s. The animals given 1 or 100 micrograms BIM-22015 took significantly fewer trials to reach criterion than brain-injured animals in the other drug treatment groups. On a percentage of savings, measured 8 days after reaching criterion, the brain-injured subjects given 1, 10, or 100 micrograms BIM-22015 did not differ from sham-operated rats. In contrast, the brain-injured animals given SW took longer to find the submerged platform than they did during the initial training. To assess long-term effects of the ACTH analog treatment, rats were trained on a delayed spatial alternation task 30 days after receiving the last injection. On this task, brain-injured rats treated with the 10-micrograms dose performed significantly better than those given sterile water. Acetylcholinesterase (AChE)-labeled neurons counted in the nucleus basalis magnocellularis indicated that rats with frontal cortex damage given the 10-micrograms treatment did not differ from the sham controls and had significantly more AChE-positive neurons than injured counterparts treated with SW or 100 micrograms.     

Empathy and justice motivation

Empathic distress is defined as an aversive feeling contingent on another's physical, emotional, or economic distress. The paper (1) summarizes a developmental scheme consisting of four stages of empathic distress; (2) suggests that causal attributions may partly transform empathic distress into sympathy, empathic anger, feeling of injustice, and guilt feeling; (3) notes the evidence that these empathic affects often serve to motivate moral behavior, and therefore that they qualify as moral motives; (4) points up limitations of these affects/motives and the need to embed them in justice principles; (5) discusses links between empathic affects/motives and principles of distributive justice/ (6) argues that Rawls' theory of justice, which excludes empathy, may nevertheless require it for the difference principle to influence behavior in real life; (7) hypothesizes a functional equivalence between empathy and the veil of ignorance; and (8) speculates that the conjunction of empathic affect and justice-principle thinking — in life and in abstract didactic contexts like Rawls' original position — may produce a principle having the motivational and stabilizing properties of a hot cognition.     

Predicting behavior on a computer from intentions, attitudes, and experience

Research on computer attitudes has generally focused on describing the cognitive elements. The present study used the Ajzen and Fishbein model to predict intentions to work hard in a computer course and actual time on the computer. In addition, the influence of experience on predictions was examined. Results from 74 social science students showed that the Ajzen and Fishbein model is effective at predicting both intentions and behavior. Unlike previous findings, experience did not interact with attitudes. Finally, a short cognitive attitude scale was an additional significant predictor beyond intentions in explaining behavior variance.     

Behavioral community psychology: training a community board to problem solve

This study demonstrated the effect of training nine lower socio-economic adults participating as policy board members in a federally funded rural community project to make behaviorally defined statements to increase problem-solving behaviors in board meetings. A multiple-baseline design across subjects and skills was used to analyze the behavioral categories of: (1) stating the problem; (2) finding solutions to the problem, and (3) implementing the action to the solution. Problem-solving responses during board meetings increased for subjects following training and remained higher than baseline during follow-up.     

Gender differences in moral development

Sixty-nine Midwestern middle-class children and adolescents were tested on justice and care orientations when reasoning abstract and interpersonal moral dilemmas. Nona Lyons' (“Two Perspectives on Self, Relationships and Morality,” Harvard Educational Review, 1983, 53, 125–145) scoring method was used to score subjects' responses. A 2(sex)×2(age) analysis of variance run on the total justice and care scores, as well as each individual dilemma, supported Carol Gilligan's (In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982) theory that two distinct ways of thinking about moral problems exist — justice and care — and are differentially related to gender. Girls emphasized the morality of care significantly more than justice. Contrary to Gilligan (1982) and Lyons (1983), however, boys in both age groups emphasized the morality of justice and care equally. Data from the interpersonal dilemmas using Lyons's (1983) coding scheme are consistent with J. Piaget (The Moral Judgement of the Child, New York: Free Press, 1966) and Lawrence Kohlberg [“The Cognitive-Developmental Approach,” in D. A. Goslin (Ed.), Handbook of Socialization Theory and Research, Chicago: Rand McNally, 1969]: older subjects became more justice oriented and younger subjects emphasized the morality of care. Sex differences on Kohlberg's stage theory were not significant and the protagonist's gender in the Heinz dilemma had no effect on moral reasoning.     

The psychoanalytic process and the development of insight in child analysis: a case study

This paper describes a segment of the analysis of an aggressive latency-age child. The data demonstrate the relationship between the establishment of a psychoanalytic process (the analysis of transference, defense, and resistance), the development and nature of insight in the child, and the resulting therapeutic change. Examination of the process shows that the therapeutic gains were a result of insights acquired by the child, particularly his awareness of painful affects that had been warded off. This case is compared with Bornstein's treatment of a phobic child who manifested severely "out-of-control" behavior.