Correlates of relationship, psychological, and sexual behavioral factors for HIV risk among Indian women

The rate of HIV/AIDS among women in India is expected to rise yet few studies have examined factors related to HIV risk among Indian women. The objective of this prospective, cross-sectional study was to characterize similarities and differences in the relationships, psychological well-being, and sexual behaviors among Indian women (N=459). Both HIV positive (N=216) and negative (N=243) women from urban and rural areas in India were included in this study. Chi-square, analysis of variance, and logistic regression analyses revealed that in both geographic groups, HIV-positive women were significantly more likely to report marital dissatisfaction, a history of forced sex, domestic violence, depressive symptoms and husband's extra marital sex when compared to the HIV-negative women. Findings also indicate that specific factors related to the quality of the marital relationship such as domestic violence, martial dysfunction, and depressive symptoms may be related to HIV-related risks for women. Implications for future research and culturally relevant interventions are discussed.     

The effect of gender stereotype activation on entrepreneurial intentions

In this study, the impact of implicit and explicit activation of gender stereotypes on men's and women's intentions to pursue a traditionally masculine career, such as entrepreneurship, was examined. On the basis of stereotype activation theory, it was hypothesized that men and women would confirm the gender stereotype about entrepreneurship when it was presented implicitly but disconfirm it when it was presented explicitly. Hypotheses were tested by randomly assigning 469 business students to one of 6 experimental conditions and then measuring their entrepreneurial intentions. Results supported the hypothesis when entrepreneurship was associated with stereotypically masculine characteristics but not when it was associated with traditionally feminine characteristics. Men also had higher entrepreneurial intention scores compared with women when no stereotypical information about entrepreneurship was presented, suggesting that underlying societal stereotypes associating entrepreneurship with masculine characteristics may influence people's intentions. However, men and women reported similar intentions when entrepreneurship was presented as gender neutral, suggesting that widely held gender stereotypes can be nullified. Practical implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

The multidetermined nature of idiom processing

Models of idiom comprehension differ in their predictions concerning compositionality: Some claim that idiomatic meaning is the result of compositional analysis initiated at the earliest stages of comprehension, whereas others claim that compositional analysis occurs only at late stages, subsequent to direct retrieval--especially for idioms that are highly familiar. We evaluated these alternatives in four experiments by using a variety of online and offline comprehension measures. In Experiment 1, we analyzed the normative characteristics of 219 idioms with respect to these predictions. Dimensions of interest included several measures of decomposability, familiarity, and word frequency of the idioms' verbs and nouns. In Experiments 2 through 4, we determined how these dimensions relate to several online measures of idiom comprehension. High familiarity was associated with good comprehension across all experiments; however, facilitative effects of decomposability were found only for tasks that required an overt semantic judgment. Word frequency, but not semantic decomposability of the idiom-initial verb, was associated with comprehension for some measures. These data support a model of idiom comprehension, according to which figurative meaning arises from the time-dependent availability of multiple linguistic constraints, and in which decomposability plays a limited role in the earliest stages of idiom comprehension. Normative data for 210 of the idiomatic phrases may be downloaded from the Psychonomic Society Web archive at www.psychonomic.org/archive/.     

Expressive timing and interactional synchrony between mothers and infants: cultural similarities, cultural differences, and the immigration experience

The spontaneous vocal interactions of 30 mothers and their 2- to 5-month-old infants from India, France, and the United States were analyzed using an acoustic analysis method. Similarities and differences in vocal interactional patterns were highlighted between the three groups. On the one hand, in the three cultural contexts mother–infant vocal interaction was found to be organized around hierarchical temporal intervals of the same approximate length, had the same balance between regular rhythm and variation (“expressive timing”), and manifested the same coordination between mother and infant vocalization (“interactional synchrony”). On the other hand, the three groups also revealed cultural variability. The Indian mothers had more togetherness with their babies, as indexed by less space between vocal turns and more overlap of mother and baby vocalizations. They also produced a higher ratio of nonverbal to verbal vocalizations. The spontaneous vocal interactions of a group of 30 Indian immigrant dyads were also studied. With respect to culturally variable characteristics, the vocal interaction of immigrant dyads living in the United States showed signs of change in the direction of the host culture. With respect to characteristics shared by all three nonimmigrant groups, the immigrant dyads showed lower levels of expressive timing and interactional synchrony than the nonimmigrant group as a whole.     

Participants shift response deadlines based on list difficulty during reading-aloud megastudies

We tested the list homogeneity effect in reading aloud (e.g., Lupker, Brown, & Colombo, 1997) using a megastudy paradigm. In each of two conditions, we used 25 blocks of 100 trials. In the random condition, words were selected randomly for each block, whereas in the experimental condition, words were blocked by difficulty (e.g., easy words together, etc.), but the order of the blocks was randomized. We predicted that standard factors (e.g., frequency) would be more predictive of reaction times (RTs) in the blocked than in the random condition, because the range of RTs across the experiment would increase in the blocked condition. Indeed, we found that the standard deviations and ranges of RTs were larger in the blocked than in the random condition. In addition, an examination of items at the difficulty extremes (i.e., very easy vs. very difficult) demonstrated a response bias. In regression analyses, a predictor set of seven sublexical, lexical, and semantic variables accounted for 2.8% more RT variance (and 2.6% more zRT variance) in the blocked than in the random condition. These results indicate that response deadlines apply to megastudies of reading aloud, and that the influence of predictors may be underestimated in megastudies when item presentation is randomized. In addition, the CDP++ model accounted for 0.8% more variance in RTs (1.2% in zRTs) in the blocked than in the random condition. Thus, computational models may have more predictive power on item sets blocked by difficulty than on those presented in random order. The results also indicate that models of word processing need to accommodate response criterion shifts.     

Corporate Social Responsibility,Employee–Company Identification,and Organizational Commitment: Mediation by Employee Engagement

Contrary to the theory and research on employee engagement in the western countries, less consideration has been given to the importance of employee engagement in Asian countries wherein its need is felt more. As more and more companies in Asia realize the importance of a productive workforce, this research examines the mediating role of employee engagement in the relationships of corporate social responsibility (CSR), employee–company identification (E–C) and organizational commitment (OC). Structural analysis of 290 online responses of employees working for various Indian and foreign information technology enabled services (ITES) companies in India, confirms the presence of partial mediation by employee engagement in between its antecedents (CSR and E–C) and its consequence (OC). The proposed model was found to be a good fit. The study provides empirical support to the argument that CSR and E–C are distant antecedents of OC. The results may encourage managers of ITES companies to consider CSR as an investment rather than an expense.