On the self-perpetuating nature of stereotypes about women and men

An experiment was conducted to investigate an interpersonal process that contributes to the perpetuation of stereotyped beliefs about women and men. Male-female pairs of unacquainted individuals interacted to negotiate a division of labor on a series of work-like tasks (that differed in their sex-role connotations) in a situation that permitted control over the information that male perceivers received about the apparent sex of female targets. The perceivers' beliefs about the sex of their targets initiated a chain of events that resulted in targets providing behavioral confirmation for perceivers' beliefs about their sex. Targets believed by perceivers to be male chose tasks relatively masculine in nature, and targets believed by perceivers to be female chose tasks relatively feminine in nature. Although this behavioral confirmation effect was initially elicited as reactions to overtures made by perceivers, it persevered so that eventually targets came to initiate behaviors “appropriate” to the sex with which they had been labeled by perceivers. The specific roles of perceivers and targets in the behavioral confirmation process are examined. Implications of these findings for the perpetuation of stereotyped beliefs about the sexes are discussed.     

EVOLUTION, HUMAN VALUES AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE: A PROCESS PERSPECTIVE

This essay sketches an interpretation of human experience utilizing the perspective of’ process philosophy. Beauty is a key notion, and emergent evolution is a central theme. The following topics are addressed: the emergence of modern evolutionary thinking and alternative responses to it; the nature of human nature in a process perspective; the place of humans in nature; the immanence of laws; emergent evolution on this planet; some implications of the hierarchy of nature for the interpretation of human life, human morality, and human values; and human religious experience.     

Perceived depth vs. structural relevance in the object-superiority effect

When subjects must identify a barely visible line in a briefly flashed display, their accuracy depends on the configuration of the context in which the target line appears. Weisstein and Harris (1974) found that accuracy is highest when the target is part of a pattern that resembles a unified, three-dimensional object, and lowest in a flat-looking pattern composed of disconnected lines; they labeled this phenomenon the object-superiority effect. In the three experiments reported here, identification accuracy was found to correlate highly and significantly (r =.78) with the judged depth of the patterns. Judged structural relevance of the target line to the pattern (McClelland & Miller, 1979) was uncorrelated with accuracy (r=?.28). Even when the target line appeared as an isolated fragment within the context pattern, a pattern perceived as three-dimensional yielded higher identification accuracy than one perceived as flat.     

Emotional Empathy in a Courtroom Simulation: A Person-Situation Interaction1

A pair of experiments were conducted using a simulated courtroom trial of a criminal case. In Experiment I subject-jurors were asked by defense counsel either to imagine themselves as the defendant (empathy-inducing appeal) or to pay close attention to evidence (nonempathy appeal). Later the judge delivered only general instructions or, in addition, charged jurors to give consideration only to the facts presented. When there was no Fact-focused judge's charge, juror-subjects who heard the empathy-inducing appeal rated the defendant's actions as more lawful and attributed less of the cause for the incident to his personality than did their counterparts in the nonempathy condition. Experiment II included individual differences in the tendency to empathize as an additional mediating variable. The original pattern of effects found for the manipulated variables in Experiment I appeared again, but were overshadowed by the stronger effects of the individual difference variable and of subject sex. Subject-jurors who scored high on the empathy individual difference measure rated the defendant less guilty, assigned less cause to him, and showed corresponding mood shifts when they heard the empathy-inducing appeal. In addition, male subjects empathized more strongly with the male defendant and viewed him more favorably.     

BEHAVIORAL ASSESSMENT FOR PEDIATRIC INTENSIVE CARE UNITS1

Two studies were conducted to analyze behaviors of staff and patients on a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU). In the first study, behavioral observation procedures were employed to assess patient state, physical position, affect, verbal behaviors, visual attention and activity engagement, and staff verbal behavior. On the average, one-third of the patients were judged to be conscious and alert but markedly nonengaged with their environment. In the second study, a member of the hospital staff provided alert patients with individual activities to determine whether a simple environmental manipulation could positively affect behavior of children in intensive care. Employing a reversal design, the activity intervention was found to increase attention and engagement and positive affect, and to decrease inappropriate behavior. Both studies demonstrate that behavioral assessment procedures can provide an empirical basis for designing PICU routines affecting children's psychosocial status, and, thus, complement current procedures designed to provide quality medical care.     

FI SCHEDULES AND PERSISTENCE AT GAMBLING IN THE U.K. BETTING OFFICE

This study reports on the direct observations of customers in two U.K. betting offices gambling on horse and dog races. These observations revealed that bets were more frequently placed in the last minutes just prior to the start (the OFF), and that this was caused by high-frequency gamblers (customers who had eight or more bets in a session) consistently placing their bets in the last two minutes prior to the OFF. Low-frequency gamblers (three or fewer bets/session) avoided this time period placing their bets earlier, or after the OFF, i.e., on a later race. It was argued that the betting behavior of the “gamblers” could not be explained either in terms of “skillful betting” or solely in terms of variable ratio schedules but was more adequately accounted for in terms of an interval schedule. It was further suggested that time-based schedules might be of heuristic value in generally understanding persistence at gambling while losing.     

Attitudinal effects of the use of evaluatively biased language

In an experiment to study the effects on attitudes of requiring subjects to use evaluatively biased language, 84 schoolchildren aged 13–14 years completed a questionnaire to measure their attitudes on the issue of adult authority over teenagers, before and after writing an essay on this issue in which they were either required to incorporate words from a list all of which implied a positive evaluation of a pro-authority position or a negative evaluation of an anti-authority position (pro-bias condition), or required to incorporate words where the implied evaluations were reversed (anti-bias condition), or were given no words to incorporate (control condition). Relative to controls, pro-bias subjects showed as a shift towards a more pro position and anti-bias subjects became more anti irrespective of their initial attitudes (pro-bias versus anti-bias comparison, p<.01). However, when tested 6 days later most of this effect had disappeared, particularly in the case of subjects whose initial attitudes were least pro. At this final session, subjects also rated attitude statements on the issue in terms of scales constructed from the pro-bias and anti-bias word lists. In accordance with previous research, the more pro subjects' attitudes, the more they showed greater polarization of judgement on the pro-bias than the anti-bias scales (p<.000l). It is concluded that a person's attitude may be related to the kind of evaluative language he will apply to an issue, and that when a person is induced to use language implying a particular evaluation of an issue, he may change his attitude, at least in the short term, so as to be more congruent with the language he has used.     

The effects of self-selection on trainees' verbal helping skills performance

Self-selected paraprofessional trainees enrolled in a helping skills training program participated in a 6-minute pretraining helping interview from which their frequency of continuing responses was obtained. Continuing responses allow helpees to present their concerns in a nonthreatening, supportive environment and are important in the relationship establishing stage of the helping process. For data analysis purposes only, trainees were divided into three groups, a high, medium, and low group, based on the frequency of continuing responses made. Following training, at posttest, no significant differences were found among the three groups on the amount of continuing responses made during a second identical 6-minute interview. Implications for various selection procedures and training are discussed.