Gendered norms for family size, employment, and occupation: Are there personal costs for violating them?

The present study investigated gendered stereotypes involving women’s family size, employment, and occupation. Eleven ratings of targets’ social and personality characteristics were ascribed by 400 undergraduates to a hypothetical married woman described as voluntarily childfree or the mother of one, two, or eight children, and as nonemployed or employed either part or full time in either a gender-appropriate or gender-inappropriate occupation. Women employed in gender-atypical occupations were considered less expressive and were socially distanced, but this factor did not interact with family size. Two-children mothers were regarded favorably as was employment. Prior findings denigrating single-child mothers and glorifying eight-children mothers were not replicated—both groups were rated similar to normative, two-children mothers. Consistent with prior research, childfree women were evaluated least favorably. Findings suggest that norms regarding both family size (two children) and employment exist among contemporary college students. The authors thank Pauline Beres for her help with data collection and entry. This paper was presented at the meeting of the American Psychological Association in New York in 1995.     

ACQUISITION AND GENERALIZATION OF COMPLIANCE WITH COMPLEX FIVE-COMPONENT INSTRUCTIONS1

A 7-yr-old bilingual boy of normal intelligence, judged by his school to be deficient in carrying out complex requests, was trained to comply with five-component instructions, e.g., “Give me/the chip/behind/the block/on blue”. Three interchangeable words or phrases were used for each component. Training proceeded in stages. First, the child was trained to identify all individual objects and actions; then to carry out requests involving only the first component, then the first two, then three, etc. On every trial, the visual setting permitted every possible response in the set. A test for generalization to nonreinforced instructions was given at each stage by giving no feedback for all instructions that included one preselected phrase. The phrase selected at each stage was one of the three that was introduced at that stage. As a further test for generalization, nonreinforced instructions were also given that included one additional component: the next to be trained (Probes Ahead). As a test for generalization across settings and instructions, several five-component instructions were presented each session in an unused classroom. These instructions used phrases, most of which were different from those being trained, and which referred to familiar classroom objects. Results showed: acquisition occurred for each stage of training, including the full five-component instruction; almost complete generalization of responding occurred to the subset of nonreinforced instructions; little or no generalization occurred to the Probes Ahead, where an additional untrained component was included; and little or no generalization was seen to the five-component classroom instructions, until training began on the five-component instructions in the training sessions. Performance was also examined for each component. Results showed that when a new component was introduced, correct performance to previously trained components declined, and was little if any superior to performance on the new component. In summary, transfer was found to untrained sentences of the same form as those being trained, even in another setting, where most of the components were different; but poor transfer was found to more complex sentences, and performance declined for previously trained components during training of a more complex sentence. Some features of the training procedure that may have affected the degree and form of transfer were discussed: the necessity for prior training in an appropriate response to the component phrases, the importance of intermixing of reinforced and nonreinforced trials, and the effects of the abruptness with which more complex sentence forms were introduced.     

Sex,wage-earner status,occupational level,and job satisfaction

This study attempted to investigate the relationship between wage-earner status, occupational level, and job satisfaction. It was proposed that wage-earner status was a more important determinant of job satisfaction than sex. However, the findings of this study suggested that sex was a more important determinant of job satisfaction than wage-earner status, and occupational level was a better predictor of job satisfaction than either sex or wage-earner status.     

Testing the reinforcing properties of S-: a replication of Lieberman''s procedure

A critical issue in testing theories of observing is whether the stimulus associated with extinction (the S-) reinforces observing responses. In previous experiments, subjects have been trained to make observing responses that produce both the S- and the stimulus correlated with reinforcement (the S+). Then, either the S+ or the S- has been withheld. Conflicting results have been attributed to differences among species. In the present experiments, pecking one key by master pigeons was reinforced with grain on a variable-ratio extinction schedule. Yoked pigeons received the grain on a variable-interval, extinction schedule controlled by the variable-ratio performances of the master birds. For both groups, concurrent pecking on a second key was reinforced on a variable-interval schedule with displays of discriminative stimuli. Subsequently, either the S+ or the S- was eliminated from the procedure. Omission of S+ produced a large decrease, as predicted by traditional conditioned reinforcement accounts of observing. By itself, S- did not maintain observing. A smaller and less reliable decrease, comparable to that obtained by Lieberman (1972) with rhesus monkeys, occurred when S- was eliminated. This replication with pigeons of Lieberman's results indicates that they are not species-specific, and the fact that observing was not maintained by S- alone suggests that the decrease obtained when S- was omitted is not attributable to the reinforcing power of S-.     

Laboratory control of toe-sucking in a young rhesus monkey by two kinds of punishment

Both response-contingent withdrawal of a visual reinforcement and response-contingent presentation of an aversive stimulus (loud noise) were found to be effective in suppressing toe-sucking in a young rhesus monkey.     

Female birds monitor the activity of their mates while brooding nest-bound young

Animal Cognition - In addition to food and protection, altricial young in many species are ectothermic and require that endothermic parents provide warmth to foster growth, yet only one...     

Effects of a Motivational Inducement on the Psychometric Properties of a Cognitive Ability Test

College students are often used in the development stages of cognitive ability tests that are designed to be used in business settings. One criticism of this strategy is that there are important motivational differences between these two settings that may limit generalization from one setting to the other. Research has not investigated the degree to which motivational inducements may enhance the psychometric properties of the tests with this population. In the present study, a 162-item cognitive ability test was administered to 320 undergraduate students, 160 of whom were given experimental credit for their participation (control group) and 160 of whom were given experimental credit but were also told that the top 25% of scorers each would receive $20 (experimental group). Results of differential item functioning and confirmatory analytic analyses suggested that the cognitive ability test was essentially equivalent across the two groups. Implications for cognitive ability test development and future research are discussed.     

To Balance or not to Balance: Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the Affect-Balance Scale

This study examined the psychometric quality of the Affect-Balance Scale (ABS) (Bradburn, 1969) using data collected from 292 middle-aged and older adults, living independently. The dimensionality of the scale was examined, the quality of individual items was tested, and the validity of the ABS was studied. Using a tetrachoric correlation matrix with the robust weighted least squares (WLSMV) estimation method of the Mplus program, we found that two moderately correlated (r = -0.37) constructs are needed to adequately account for the pattern of item scores in the ABS. Two of the 10 ABS items were found to be problematic. When raw sum scores were used in analysis, the correlation between the positive-affect and the negative-affect subscales was lower (r = -0.17), indicating that random and nonrandom measurement error masked the relationship between the two. While affect-balance correlated substantially with five criterion well-being measures, the negative-affect subscale (which constitutes half of the ABS) had a similar pattern of correlations, with only slightly lower magnitude. The theoretical construct of nobreak 'balance' is also questioned. The 'balance' scoring method (subtracting the negative-affect subscale score from the positive-affect subscale score) nets exactly the same score as does summing scores from both subscales together. Accordingly, the summed scores have the very same correlations with other variables as do the balance scores.     

The prevalence of compulsive hoarding and its association with compulsive buying in a German population-based sample

The aims of the study were to estimate the prevalence rate of compulsive hoarding, and to determine the association between compulsive hoarding and compulsive buying in a nationally representative sample of the German population (N = 2307). Compulsive hoarding was assessed with the German version of the Saving Inventory-Revised (SI-R; Frost, R.O., Steketee, G., & Grisham, J. (2004). Measurement of compulsive hoarding: saving inventory-revised. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 42, 1163-1182.). The point prevalence of compulsive hoarding was estimated to be 4.6%. Individuals with compulsive hoarding did not differ significantly from those without compulsive hoarding regarding age, gender, and other sociodemographic characteristics. Significant correlations were found between the compulsive hoarding and the compulsive buying measures. Participants with compulsive hoarding reported a higher propensity to compulsive buying than respondents without hoarding. About two thirds of participants classified as having compulsive hoarding were also defined as suffering from compulsive buying. In summary, these results suggest that compulsive hoarding may be relatively prevalent in Germany and they confirm the close association between compulsive hoarding and compulsive buying through the investigation of a large scale representative sample.