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.     

Role selection in the service of self-presentation

Two experiments were conducted to examine the general hypothesis that a person’s behavior in a social situation is a function of the kind of impression he wants to make on the other person, and that the kind of impression that he wants to make is influenced by the characteristics of the other person. Two experiments were conducted in which male subjects anticipated interaction with either an attractive female (attractive condition), an unattractive female (unattractive condition), or a female whose attractiveness was unknown (control). Each subject first chose either a high, medium, or low status role to enact during the interaction with the female. He then indicated the role which most closely corresponded to his true role. In Experiment I, role choices were significantly biased in the direction of higher status roles in the attractive condition but not in the unattractive or control conditions. These findings were partially replicated in Experiment II, but difference was shown to be a consequence of the fact that the experimenter was an attractive female. The subjects biased their reports of true role status in the direction of higher status, thus leaving little room for change in the selection of role to be enacted during the social interaction. These findings are consistent with the general hypothesis and with exchange theory predictions.     

The nature of connections: young fathers and their children

The purpose of this study was to examine the involvement of young fathers with their children at entry to a fatherhood program and at subsequent follow-up. Thirty-eight young fathers participated in this analysis. Using open-ended questions at intake and subsequent follow-up, they were asked to describe in their own words their relationships with their children. A thematic analysis was used to explore their self-reported statements. Three themes emerged from the analysis: Positive Emotionality, Accessibility, and Engagement. A comparison between thematic categories at intake and follow-up revealed that the most dramatic shift occurred in regard to Engagement. A third of the young fathers shifted from describing Positive Emotionality at intake to the more active process of Engagement at follow-up. The area that showed little change between intake to follow-up was related to Accessibility. These findings may suggest that for young fathers, becoming more involved with their children is a process which can be facilitated by participating in a fatherhood program.     

Physiologic and motor conditioning and generalization in children with minimal brain dysfunction

Twenty-six children diagnosed as having minimal brain dysfunctions (MBD) were compared with 26 controls in a conditinoing and generalization procedure. Skin resistance, heart rate, and muscle action potentials were monitored throughout. Success involved learning which of two tones signalled the accessibility of a penny. Whereas 92 per cent of controls reached the criterion of five successive correct responses, only 62 per cent of MBD’s did. Further, a third of the MBD’s were so maladaptive as to force procedural variations, while only a few minor irregularities occurred with the controls. Quality of performance was related to age, intelligence, and ability to discriminate and remember tones. Controls were more physiologically reactive than MBD’s, especially in skin resistance. Physiologic differentiation of the two tones was significant in both groups of children and appeared concurrently with motor differentiation. The only evidence of physiologic generalization was in the SR data of controls. The possibility that defective arousal structures, or defective coupling of arousal structures and other perceptual and motor structures, could account for the decreased physiologic reactivity, short attention spans, and poor concentration ofsome MBD’s is discussed. This research, in conformity with other laboratory studies of the brain, indicates that motivational as well as cognitive defects may be organically based.     

Demographic Variables Associated with Fear of AIDS and Homophobia

During the fall of 1985, over 500 introductory psychology students participated in a survey which employed different questionnaires to measure Fear of AIDS, Knowledge of AIDS, Homophobia, and Behavior Change. Opinions about public policy regarding AIDS and homosexuals, and background information such as sex and religious preference were also obtained. The results indicated that males who knew the most about AIDS were less fearful of the disease than were males who knew the least. No such relationship was found for females. In addition, respondents reported that they have been changing their behavior in light of the AIDS epidemic. This included some behaviors which were related to AIDS and some which were not. Finally, political and religious conservatives were generally more homophobic and fearful of AIDS than were liberals. In addition, conservatives generally preferred protection of the public as an approach to controlling the AIDS epidemic while liberals generally preferred to educate the public.     

Behavioral and Emotional Problems on the Teacher’s Report Form: A Cross-National,Cross-Clinic Comparative Analysis of Gender Dysphoric Children and Adolescents

For gender dysphoric children and adolescents, the school environment may be challenging due to peer social ostracism and rejection. To date, information on the psychological functioning and the quality of peer relations in gender dysphoric children and adolescents has been studied via parental report, peer sociometric methods, and social interactions in laboratory play groups. The present study was the first cross-national investigation that assessed behavior and emotional problems and the quality of peer relations, both measured by the Teacher’s Report Form (TRF), in a sample of 728 gender dysphoric patients (554 children, 174 adolescents), who were referred to specialized gender identity clinics in the Netherlands and Canada. The gender dysphoric adolescents had significantly more teacher-reported emotional and behavioral problems than the gender dysphoric children. In both countries, gender dysphoric natal boys had poorer peer relations and more internalizing than externalizing problems compared to the gender dysphoric natal girls. Furthermore, there were significant between-clinic differences: both the children and the adolescents from Canada had more emotional and behavioral problems and a poorer quality of peer relations than the children and adolescents from the Netherlands. In conclusion, gender dysphoric children and adolescents showed the same pattern of emotional and behavioral problems in both countries. The extent of behavior and emotional problems was, however, higher in Canada than in the Netherlands, which appeared, in part, an effect of a poorer quality of peer relations. Per Bronfenbrenner’s (American Psychologist, 32, 513–531, 1977) ecological model of human development and well-being, we consider various interpretations of the cross-national, cross-clinic differences on TRF behavior problems at the level of the family, the peer group, and the culture at large.     

Moral and angry emotions provoked by informal social control

Informal social control is the communication of disapproval by one individual to another individual (the perpetrator) who has transgressed a social norm. The present research examined the conditions under which social control provokes moral versus angry emotions in the perpetrator. The roles of perceived deviance and the appraisal of the legitimacy of social control as predictors of these emotions were specifically considered. In two studies, participants imagined themselves in situations in which they engaged in moderately uncivil acts and then received social control (or not). Perpetrators’ perception of the deviance of their behaviour (Studies 1 and 2), and their explicit appraisals of the legitimacy of social control were measured (Study 2). Moral and angry emotions were also assessed. Social control intensified moral and particularly angry emotions, compared to situations in which deviant acts were performed, but no social control was received. In addition, perceived deviance as well as the politeness of the social control importantly influenced angry emotions through their effects on appraised legitimacy.     

Ninian Smart

Mary Douglas has invited historians of religion to test her hypothesis about the social meaning of body symbols. Her view that body symbolism always points in the direction of social concerns and that efforts to separate body and spirit indicate sentiments of revolt and alienation has proved fruitful in several areas. Of course there is nothing particularly novel in the proposal that the body can be seen as a symbol of wider realities. The Stoics spoke of the universe as a body; Paul could describe individual Christian congregations as a body; and Priscillian referred to the human body in depreciating terms as a figura mundi. Victor Turner has shown that the body symbols of the Ndembu in Zambia are part of a wider pattern which uses ‘an aspect of human physiology as a model for social, cosmic and religious ideas and processes’, including, he adds, ‘the human body [as] … a microcosm of the universe,’⁵⁷ There is even a considerable literature on the subject.⁵⁸ Indeed, one cannot help but be struck by the fact that with the great abundance of work devoted to body symbols in general, so little has been done with early Christianity.

What distinguishes Douglas from other theoreticians of body symbolism is her Durkheimian orientation. By taking seriously the social dimension of body symbols and by positing the revolutionary character of symbols which separate body and spirit, she is able to uncover latent dimensions of doctrinal controversy and to restore flesh to the dry bones of theological debate. In her own preliminary studies, she has limited herself to one symbol, i.e. incarnation, and one controversy, i.e. the Arian. In extending her initiative to other symbols and controversies, I have proceeded on the assumption that body symbols of different sorts should reflect the same condensed message about society. I would argue that this effort has been largely successful. Expectations of imminent resurrection or views of the resurrection which deny the physical aspect are regularly associated in early Christianity with separatist-sectarian behaviour generally. The recession of hopes for an imminent resurrection accompanied the transition of Christianity from sect to church. Conversely, and this would warrant further study, subsequent sectarian movements within Christianity seem to be accompanied by a return of hopes for physical resurrection. Particular sorts of sectarianism, especially those which stress individualism and spiritualism, are prone to view the resurrection in other than physical terms. Even the mainstream of Christianity refused to abandon altogether the doctrine of a future resurrection. Orthodox believers could always point to the denial of resurrection as an unmistakable signpost of heresy. At one level we may treat this doctrinal survival as little more than a memory of Christianity's sectarian pedigree, as a vaguely disquieting memory. At another level, however, its very survival, against heavy odds, may also be seen as a permanent symbolic indicator of Christianity's ultimate refusal to identify itself completely with the secular order. Beyond this, the survival of belief in resurrection has meant the persistence of a latent symbol of protest, alienation and transformation. For in the final analysis, it is not the case that symbols merely reflect social reality. As symbols, they also possess the power to shape it.

In this observation lies perhaps an explanation for the fact that our effort has not been fully successful. We have not found it to be true in every case that statements of protest in one symbolic medium, say, asceticism, will inevitably be replicated in other media, say, incarnation and resurrection. This does occur often enough to be interesting and more than coincidental. The Testimony of Truth from Nag Hammadi is a paradigm case. Paul's Corinthians, Paul himself and Arius come close. The ascetics of Egypt are the most interesting ‘deviants’. The connection between their asceticism and the message of alienation and protest is clear. Their views of the resurrection have not been much studied, but in view of the symbolic function of their bodies and their view of ascetic practice as a means of restoring the natural state of Eden, it is not too much to suggest that their conception of resurrection would have emphasized the restored and purified nature of the resurrection body in contrast to the orthodox view of the absolute identity of that body with the present physical one. As for their views of the incarnation, there is some evidence of leanings in this direction. While those who held to docetic christologies generally favoured asceticism, the reverse was not always true. Part of the reason for the absence of docetic views of the incarnation among the ascetics—assuming, of course, that they should have been docetists—is that they say so little about doctrines of any kind. Part may also be due to the orthodoxy of those who wrote about the monks. Part may be due to the fact that the primary target of ascetic protest was not the physical universe, or matter as such, or even the world of social and political reality, but rather the church in and of the world—a differentiated and thus moderated protest. But part may also be due to a more or less conscious decision to draw a line between expressions of alienation, so to speak, a symbolic quid pro quo. The quid was the recognition by the church at large that ascetic piety could not be proscribed by the successor generations of the martyrs. The pro quo would then take the form of doctrinal orthodoxy. Thus the absence of docetic christologies among the ascetics would result not just from the imposition of episcopal authority but from the power of doctrine to shape reality.

Body symbols thus provide us with a new thread for tracing the transformation of Christianity from an obscure cluster of sects in Palestine to an institution of unparalleled spiritual and political power in the Roman empire. Of course, not everyone accepted this transformation as an act of divine providence. Some reacted by denying that God had taken on a human body in the person of Jesus; others tortured their bodies; and from time to time in succeeding centuries still others gathered in small communities to await the resurrection of the body and with it the birth of a new world.