Does cost–benefit analysis or self‐control predict involvement in bullying behavior by male prisoners?

The main aim of this study is to assess whether lack of self-control or the perceived costs and benefits of aggression provide the better predictors of bullying behavior and victimization, and direct aggression perpetration, in a sample of 122 male British prisoners. We also assessed whether bullying was associated with height and weight. Zero-order correlations showed that perceived benefits, self-control, and perceived costs were most closely associated with perpetration of bullying, and that lack of self-control was weakly associated with victimization. Height and weight were unrelated to bullying or victimization. In a standard regression analyses, perceived benefits was the strongest predictor of bullying perpetration, with lack of self-control contributing further; all three variables made a significant contribution when direct aggression was the criterion. Mediation analysis showed that a combined cost-benefit measure partially mediated the association between self-control and both bullying and direct aggression. The findings are discussed in relation to explanations of aggression based on impulse control or a cost-benefit analysis.     

Beyond sex differences: Family and occupational roles' impact on women's and men's dreams

The question addressed is: do recent changes in the occupational roles of women, with their indirect influence on men's lives, have an impact on the dreams of women and men? Three groups of parents (N=96) including in equal numbers, mothers at home, wage-earning mothers and fathers, kept a dream diary from which two dreams per dreamer were content analyzed. Assuming continuity between daytime and dream experiences, it was hypothesized that differences in manifest dream content would be a function of single versus dual role enactment, rather than sex. Contrary to predictions, statistical analyses performed on selected dream variables did not yield significant differences between groups for pleasant and unpleasant emotions, friendly interactions and aggression. Dream characters, and the concerns they reflect, were found to vary, though, according to social roles. Commitment to their family was reflected above all in the mothers' at home dreams, while commitment to their profession took precedence in those of the wage-earning mothers. Comparable commitment to work and family was found among the fathers. Findings suggest that as gender differences in waking life decrease, so may differences in dreams.     

A study of satisfactions and stresses of single women in midlife

Sixty single women 35 to 65 years old, previously married or never married, were interviewed about the satisfactions and stresses of the single status. Respondents were categorized as having high, medium, or low life satisfaction. Life satisfaction was found to be significantly correlated to such factors as good health, not being lonely, living with a female housemate, having many casual friends, and being invested in work. Half the women mentioned having sexual needs, which were or were not fulfilled. The other half stated that they did not have sexual needs. These two groups did not differ in life satisfaction. Regrets about not having had children occurred in one-quarter of the childless women, without necessarily implying low life satisfaction. Only 15% of the entire sample had low life satisfaction, a percentage similar to that found in the general population.The authors wish to express sincere appreciation to George Loewenstein for his aid with the computer analysis of the data.     

Lending a Helping Hand: The Effects of Gender Stereotypes and Gender on Likelihood of Helping1

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of gender and gender-role stereotypes on judgments of help-giving. As part of a 2 × 2 within-subjects design, 40 undergraduates read 4 different scenarios that described either a man or a woman needing help in either a stereotypically masculine or a stereotypically feminine situation. Although male participants felt more sympathy for men in stereotypically feminine situations and for women in stereotypically masculine situations, they were no more likely to help these individuals than they were to help those in gender-consistent situations. By contrast, women were more likely to help people in gender-inconsistent situations, despite feeling the most sympathy for people needing help in masculine situations. Implications for Weiner's (1980) attribution model of help-giving and Nadler & Fisher's (1986) threat-to-self-esteem model are discussed.     

Neuroanatomical and behavioral asymmetry in an adult compensated dyslexic

Individual differences in cortical anatomy are readily observable, but their functional significance for behaviors such as reading is not well understood. Here, we report a case of an apparent compensated dyslexic who had attained high achievement in visuospatial mathematics. Data from a detailed background interview, psychometric testing, divided visual field tasks measuring basic word recognition (word naming, nonword naming, and lexical decision), and more controlled word retrieval (verb, category, and rhyme generation), and measurements of his atypical brain structure are described. The findings suggested that enhanced "top-down" processing could provide the means to compensate for deficient "bottom-up" word decoding skills in this case. Relative to controls, this individual also evidenced unusually large asymmetries on several divided visual field lexical tasks, an extreme leftward asymmetry of the planum temporale, and a rare form of Sylvian fissure morphology (Steinmetz type 4, [Steinmetz, H., Ebeling, U., Huang, Y., & Kahn, T. (1990). Sulcus topography of the parietal opercular region: An anatomic and MR study. Brain and Language, 38, 515-533.]). We suggest that certain forms of brain organization may be associated with successful behavioral compensation for dyslexia, and that anatomical variations in the right hemisphere may be important contributors to individual differences in reading acquisition and achievement.     

Recategorization and subgroup identification: predicting and preventing threats from common ingroups

Much work has supported the idea that recategorization of ingroups and outgroups into a superordinate category can have beneficial effects for intergroup relations. Recently, however, increases in bias following recategorization have been observed in some contexts. It is argued that such unwanted consequences of recategorization will only be apparent for perceivers who are highly committed to their ingroup subgroups. In Experiments 1 to 3, the authors observed, on both explicit and implicit measures, that an increase in bias following recategorization occurred only for high subgroup identifiers. In Experiment 4, it was found that maintaining the salience of subgroups within a recategorized superordinate group averted this increase in bias for high identifiers and led overall to the lowest levels of bias. These findings are discussed in the context of recent work on the Common Ingroup Identity Model.     

Tobacco use, alcohol dependence, and cognitive performance

Chronic alcohol abuse has long been associated with a mild, generalized pattern of cognitive decrements. However, it is important to note that problem drinking rarely occurs in isolation from abuse of other drugs. For people dependent upon alcohol, tobacco is one of the mostly commonly coabused substances. Recent research suggests that individuals with alcohol dependency may gravitate toward tobacco use, in part, because of the positive effects of nicotine on aspects of cognitive performance that may be compromised as a consequence of chronic alcohol misuse. In this article, the author focuses on the effects of nicotine on behavioral and electrophysiological indexes of cognitive performance, and the impact of these effects on alcohol-related cognitive decrements. The author discusses implications of these findings in the context of treatment and recovery of people with alcoholism.     

Reexamining personal, social, and cultural influences on compliance behavior in the United States, Poland, and Hong Kong

Researchers have extended the literature on strategies of gaining compliance with a request to incorporate cultural variations into the analytic framework. In the present investigation, the authors sought to go beyond previous studies of the factors increasing compliance rates by reexamining how researchers conceptualize and measure personal, social, and cultural influences on compliance behavior in the United States, Poland, and Hong Kong. The authors found that different levels of compliance were affected by culture, principles of influence, and the individual's personal orientation of idiocentrism/allocentrism (I/A). In the present study, the authors extended previous cross-cultural work by decomposing the I/A into 2 separate individual difference variables: normative perceptions and evaluative perceptions. The interaction of person and situation on compliance showed the power of situational demands and the strength of different aspects of personal collectivism. Different patterns of compliance at the culture level revealed the importance of culture in shaping this behavioral tendency. Thus, the authors' integration of personal, social, and cultural influences provided an interactive model to help researchers explain compliance more comprehensively.