The Child Gender Socialization Scale: A Measure to Compare Traditional and Feminist Parents

This paper presents four studies conducted to develop a measure of parents’ attitudes about gendered behaviors in their children. Participants were US college students and community residents. It was expected that scores on the measure would distinguish between parents of sons and daughters, and between parents with traditional and feminist beliefs. To begin, we created a self-report questionnaire consisting of ratings of 84 gender-related behaviors, characteristics, and educational and occupational aspirations for children. Based on factor analysis and other analyses of scale scores to refine the measure, our final measure has 28 items on five scales. In keeping with expectations, the five scales consistently differentiated between boys and girls and/or traditional and feminist parents.     

The Eating Disorders Continuum,Self‐Esteem,and Perfectionism

Among 261 undergraduate women, increased severity of eating disorders along a continuum was associated with decreased self‐esteem, increased perfectionism, and increased scores on 7 subscales of the Eating Disorders Inventory‐2. Women with eating disorders differed from both symptomatic women and asymptomatic women on all variables, whereas symptomatic women differed from asymptomatic women only on self‐esteem, perfectionism, ineffectiveness, body dissatisfaction, and interoceptive awareness. Discriminant analysis correctly classified 45.2% of the women with eating disorders and 59% of the overall sample.     

Divine Foreknowledge and Freedom of the Will: Contemporary Work Revisits Calvinism

Books reviewed: Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski, ‘Recent Work on Divine Foreknowledge and Free Will’ in Robert Kane (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Free Will Millard J. Erickson, What Does God Know and When Does He Know It?     

Reevaluating Suicidal Behaviors: Comparing Assessment Methods to Improve Risk Evaluations

This study examined suicide assessment validity by comparing methods of measuring current risk associated with past suicidal behaviors. Three independent samples (Ns = 359, 1007, and 713; aged 18–76 years) all included participants covering a broad spectrum of suicidality. Information theory, item response theory, general linear modeling, and linear regression modeling tested seven competing methods/models of assessing past suicidal behaviors in relation to current suicidality. In contrast to contemporary theories, ANOVA results showed suicide plans can indicate higher risk than suicide attempts when intent to die is higher. Contrary to popular practice, evidence demonstrated that defining risk by suicide ideation (yes/no), attempts or serious attempts (yes/no), are false dichotomies, were the least valid models tested, and failed to explain substantial explainable variance in suicidality/risk. A newly proposed model, differentiating behaviors with or without intent to die, was the most efficacious dichotomous method. However, as predicted, continuous variables were superior to dichotomous. The proposed suicidal barometer model (SBM) exhibited robust evidence as the best available model for evaluating suicidal behaviors in all samples (100 % probability), explaining 47–61 % of suicidality variance and provided incremental improvement in risk evaluations. Findings were consistent by sample, sex, age-group, ethnicity, and psychiatric history. This study, and related evidence, demonstrate that there is a clear and present need for updating measures, clinical training and core competencies, for valid assessment and risk formulation.     

I Can't Wait to Get Married: Gender Differences in Drive to Marry

In this study we examined a new construct—the Drive to Marry (DTM). Young single men and women (149 men and 246 women) rated their desire to get married and completed measures of their valuing of marital, parental, and occupational roles; concern about others' views of them; and feminist attitudes. We found that women had a higher DTM than did men. In both genders, DTM was predicted by the value of parental role and by concern about others' views of them. In women, DTM was also predicted by traditional attitudes toward gender roles, and there was a trend for women who valued the occupational role to have a lower DTM. Conservative women, women who valued the parental role, and women with a higher DTM were also more likely to want to use the title “Mrs.” and to adopt their husband's surname. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association in May 2004.     

Perceptual biases in the horizontal and vertical dimensions are driven by separate cognitive mechanisms

Perceptual attention in healthy participants is characterized by two biases, one operating in the horizontal plane, which draws attention leftward, and the other operating in the vertical plane, which draws attention upward. Given that these biases are reliably found in the same individual, and appear similar at a surface level, a number of researchers have investigated the relationship between horizontal and vertical attentional biases. To date, these investigations have failed to find an association, and this may be due to the fact that one-dimensional vertical and horizontal stimuli were presented separately rather than being measured from a single, two-dimensional stimulus. Across three experiments, two dimensional stimuli were presented, and participants marked the centre of the stimuli. In addition, the shapes of the stimuli were manipulated to determine whether this produced the same modulation of the two biases. Across 13 stimuli and three experiments there were no correlations between the vertical and horizontal biases. In addition, manipulations of stimulus shape, which affected biases in one dimension, did not affect biases in the other dimension. There were, however, consistent correlations between the degree of bias within each dimension across the different stimuli. This study has produced converging evidence that horizontal and vertical biases in spatial judgments rely on separate cognitive mechanisms. To account for these results we discuss a model whereby horizontal asymmetries rely more on space-based mechanisms whereas vertical asymmetries rely more on object-based mechanisms.     

A Role for Biology in Gender-Related Behavior

We take the opportunity of the 35th anniversary of Sex Roles to examine the journal and the field of gender research from a biological perspective. We discuss the limited coverage of biological perspectives in the pages of the journal and likely reasons for it in light of historical perspectives on the role of biology in gendered psychological processes and behaviors, review briefly contemporary research on biological (especially hormonal) influences on gender-related behavior, advocate for greater attention to biological perspectives, and suggest ways to integrate biological and socialization approaches into questions of interest to gender researchers.     

Diagnostics of phonological lexical processing: pseudohomophone naming advantages,disadvantages, and base-word frequency effects

Phonological lexical access has been investigated by examining both a pseudohomophone (e.g., brane) base-word frequency effect and a pseudohomophone advantage over pronounceable nonwords (e.g., frane) in a single mixed block of naming trials. With a new set of pseudohomophones and non-words presented in a mixed block, we replicated the standard finding in the naming literature: no reliable base-word frequency effect, and apseudohomophone advantage. However, for this and two of three other sets of stimuli--those of McCann and Besner (1987), Seidenberg, Petersen, MacDonald, and Plaut (1996), and Herdman, LeFevre, and Greenham (1996), respectively--reliable effects of base-word frequency on pseudohomophone naming latency were found when pseudohomophones were presented in pure blocks prior to nonwords. Three of the four stimulus sets tested produced a pseudohomophone naming disadvantage when pseudohomophones were presented prior to nonwords. When nonwords were presented first, these effects were diminished. A strategy-based scaling account of the data is argued to provide a better explanation of the data than is the criterion-homogenization theory (Lupker, Brown, & Colombo, 1997).