Quantifying the Gender Gap: An Empirical Study of the Underrepresentation of Women in Philosophy

The lack of gender parity in philosophy has garnered serious attention recently. Previous empirical work that aims to quantify what has come to be called “the gender gap” in philosophy focuses mainly on the absence of women in philosophy faculty and graduate programs. Our study looks at gender representation in philosophy among undergraduate students, undergraduate majors, graduate students, and faculty. Our findings are consistent with what other studies have found about women faculty in philosophy, but we were able to add two pieces of new information. First, the biggest drop in the proportion of women in philosophy occurs between students enrolled in introductory philosophy classes and philosophy majors. Second, this drop is mitigated by the presence of more women philosophy faculty.     

More Than Two Choices: The Influence of Context on the Framing Effect

The framing effect demonstrates that two options with different risk levels affect people??s risk preferences, even if both options are logically equivalent. However, in reality we are almost always confronted with more than two choices, rather than a single manipulated message. In this paper, we simultaneously manipulate the framing effect and the context effect, including the attraction effect and the compromise effect, to examine the influence of context on framing. The results of two studies show that context influences the original choice preference arising from the framing effect. Moreover, the framing effect is reduced when context effects are introduced to the original choice set.     

Factor structure and item analysis of the yale food addiction scale in obese candidates for bariatric surgery

Converging research suggests phenomenological and neurobiological similarities between excessive food consumption and addictive behaviour in substance dependence. Recently, the Yale Food Addiction Scale (YFAS) has been proposed for the assessment of addictive eating behaviour. The German version of the YFAS was administered to obese individuals seeking bariatric surgery (N?=?96). Factor structure, internal consistency, and item statistics were analysed. Forty participants (41.70%) received a food addiction diagnosis. The one-factorial structure of the YFAS, which has been found in non-clinical samples, could be confirmed. All but three items had factor loadings >.50. Internal consistency was α?=?.82. Item analysis revealed that items related to unsuccessful attempts to cut down and consumption despite physical and emotional problems were endorsed by the majority of participants. Findings support the use of the YFAS in clinical populations, while applicability of some items differs between clinical and non-clinical samples. Copyright ? 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and Eating Disorders Association.     

Lay understandings of defence mechanisms: The role of personality traits and gender

This study looks at lay people's knowledge and use of the defence mechanisms. It focused on 21 of the better known "Freudian" defence mechanisms. A total of 208 participants (73 males and 135 females) completed a questionnaire regarding their knowledge and reported personal use of 21 defence mechanisms and a short personality test. Participants were required to state (1) whether they had heard of each mechanism, (2) how common they believed it to be and (3) whether they themselves used each of them. The defences were categorised into four levels: Pathological, immature, neurotic and mature. Two personality traits (Openness and Neuroticism) positively correlated with two of the levels but few gender or age correlations were identified. Regression analysis showed that Neuroticism predicted the three less mature defence levels; Gender was a contributing predictor of a pathological defence style and Openness and religiosity combined with Neuroticism predicted an immature defence style. Participants admitted using the more socially acceptable (mature) defences (i.e. humour, intellectualisation) than the less acceptable (pathological) defences (i.e. distortion, hypochondriasis). Implications for psychotherapy are discussed and the limitations of the study considered.     

Perceptions of physical and psychological aggression in close relationships: A review

This review of the literature examines the effect of contextual variables (i.e., characteristics of the perpetrator and victims, observer characteristics) on perceptions of physical and psychological aggression in close relationships. Observers view physical aggression as more serious, harmful, abusive, and more deserving of punishment than psychological aggression, male aggression as more serious than female aggression, and aggression in committed, exclusive relationships as more serious than aggression in casual ones. Victims of psychological aggression, however, perceive it as more harmful than physical aggression and consider the effects to be longer-lasting. The disparity between observer and victim perceptions of physical and psychological aggression extends to mental health professionals, who tend to judge the severity of aggressive behaviors based on frequency and duration of the actions instead of perpetrator intent. This difference of opinion may influence the reporting of and intervention in physically or psychologically aggressive situations, and how these types of aggression are treated by legal professionals, especially if those legal professionals are informed about aggressive romantic relationships by third-party observers whose opinions of the situation differ from those of the victims.     

Sex differences in estimating multiple intelligences in self and others: A replication in Russia

This was a crosscultural study that focused on sex differences in self‐ and other‐estimates of multiple intelligences (including 10 that were specified by Gardner, 1999 and three by Sternberg, 1988) as well as in an overall general intelligence estimate. It was one of a programmatic series of studies done in over 30 countries that has demonstrated the female “humility” and male “hubris” effect in self‐estimated and other‐estimated intelligence. Two hundred and thirty Russian university students estimated their own and their parents’ overall intelligence and “multiple intelligences.” Results revealed no sex difference in estimates of overall intelligence for both self and parents, but men rated themselves higher on spatial intelligence. This contradicted many previous findings in the area which have shown that men rate their own overall intelligence and mathematical intelligence significantly higher than do women. Regressions indicated that estimates of verbal, logical, and spatial intelligences were the best predictors of estimates of overall intelligence, which is a consistent finding over many studies. Regressions also showed that participants’ openness to experience and self‐respect were good predictors of intelligence estimates. A comparison with a British sample showed that Russians gave higher mother estimates, and were less likely to believe that IQ tests measure intelligence. Results were discussed in relation to the influence of gender role stereotypes on lay conception of intelligence across cultures.     

A facial expression for anxiety

Anxiety and fear are often confounded in discussions of human emotions. However, studies of rodent defensive reactions under naturalistic conditions suggest anxiety is functionally distinct from fear. Unambiguous threats, such as predators, elicit flight from rodents (if an escape-route is available), whereas ambiguous threats (e.g., the odor of a predator) elicit risk assessment behavior, which is associated with anxiety as it is preferentially modulated by anti-anxiety drugs. However, without human evidence, it would be premature to assume that rodent-based psychological models are valid for humans. We tested the human validity of the risk assessment explanation for anxiety by presenting 8 volunteers with emotive scenarios and asking them to pose facial expressions. Photographs and videos of these expressions were shown to 40 participants who matched them to the scenarios and labeled each expression. Scenarios describing ambiguous threats were preferentially matched to the facial expression posed in response to the same scenario type. This expression consisted of two plausible environmental-scanning behaviors (eye darts and head swivels) and was labeled as anxiety, not fear. The facial expression elicited by unambiguous threat scenarios was labeled as fear. The emotion labels generated were then presented to another 18 participants who matched them back to photographs of the facial expressions. This back-matching of labels to faces also linked anxiety to the environmental-scanning face rather than fear face. Results therefore suggest that anxiety produces a distinct facial expression and that it has adaptive value in situations that are ambiguously threatening, supporting a functional, risk-assessing explanation for human anxiety.     

The next generation: the value of reminding

In two experiments, we investigated the influence of repeated processing in the context of the generation effect. In both experiments, participants studied words once or twice. Once-studied words either were read or were generated from a definition. Twice-studied words were read both times, generated both times, or read once and generated once. Free recall was best (in order of decreasing performance) after generating twice, after generating plus reading, and finally after generating once; any generation was better than purely reading. Recognition showed a similar pattern, except that the benefit of generating twice was not as striking as in recall and that reading plus generating was just as effective as generating twice. The overall pattern of results is accounted for by a simple model in which a second encoding results in a reminding of the first encoding, and this additional encoding supports subsequent recollection. This reminding is, consequently, more effective in recall than in recognition, and it operates in accordance with the principles of transfer-appropriate processing.     

Saccade launch site as a predictor of fixation durations in reading: comments on Hand, Miellet, O'Donnell, and Sereno (2010)

An important question in research on eye movements in reading is whether word frequency and word predictability have additive or interactive effects on fixation durations. A fair number of studies have reported only additive effects of the frequency and predictability of a target word on reading times on that word, failing to show significant interactions. Recently, however, Hand, Miellet, O'Donnell, and Sereno (see record 2010-19099-001) reported interactive effects in a study that included the distance of the prior fixation from the target word (launch site). They reported that when the saccade into the target word was launched from very near to the word (within 3 characters), the predictability effect was larger for low frequency words, but when the saccade was launched from a medium distance (4-6 characters from the word) the predictability effect was larger for high frequency words. Hand et al. argued for the importance of including launch site in analyses of target word fixation durations. Here we describe several problems with Hand et al.'s use of analyses of variance in which launch site is divided into distinct ordinal levels. We describe a more appropriate way to analyze such data-linear mixed-effect models-and we use this method to show that launch site does not modulate the interaction between frequency and predictability in two other data sets.