Gender Identity and Adjustment in Middle Childhood

This article has two purposes. The first is to present a brief (and speculative) account of the developmental origins of the several components of gender identity featured in the multidimensional model of gender identity proposed by Egan and Perry (2001). The second is to offer additional empirical support for the construct and discriminant validity of the various gender identity dimensions. Children (M age = 11.5 years) were assessed for 4 components of gender identity: (a) felt gender typicality, (b) contentment with gender assignment, (c) felt pressure for gender conformity, and (d) intergroup bias (the sentiment that one's own sex is superior). Gender typicality, gender contentedness, and felt pressure (but not intergroup bias) related to indexes of psychosocial adjustment in specific and theoretically meaningful ways. The case for a multidimensional approach to gender identity is strengthened.     

What the Humean Should Say About Entanglement

Tim Maudlin has influentially argued that Humeanism about laws of nature stands in conflict with quantum mechanics. Specifically Humeanism implies the principle Separability: the complete physical state of a world is determined by the intrinsic physical state of each space‐time point. Maudlin argues Separability is violated by the entangled states posited by QM. We argue that Maudlin only establishes that a stronger principle, which we call Strong Separability, is in tension with QM. Separability is not in tension with QM. Moreover, while the Humean requires Separability to capture the core tenets of her view, there's no Humean‐specific motivation for accepting Strong Separability. We go on to give a Humean account of entangled states which satisfies Separability. The core idea is that certain quantum states depend upon the Humean mosaic in much the same way as the laws do. In fact, we offer a variant of the Best System account on which the systemization procedure that generates the laws also serves to ground these states. We show how this account works by applying it to the example of Bohmian Mechanics. The 3N‐dimensional configuration space, the world particle in it and the wave function on it are part of the best system of the Humean mosaic, which consists of N particles moving in 3‐dimensional space. We argue that this account is superior to the Humean account of Bohmian Mechanics defended by Loewer and Albert, which takes the 3N‐dimensional space, and its inhabitants, as fundamental.     

Peer-Reputational Influences and Academic Achievement: Exploring Gender Differences

This study explored the impact of peer-reputations for academic ability and affect/liking on academic outcomes in a sample of preadolescents. In light of the popular stereotypes regarding the differential academic abilities of girls and boys (favoring girls in English, and boys in math and science), it was hypothesized that peer-reputations in English would be more predictive of academic outcomes (measured via school-grades and standardized test-scores) for girls than for boys, while math and science reputations would be most predictive of boys’ academic outcomes. Further, it was also hypothesized that these links would be stronger for school-grades than for standardized test-scores. As expected, overall, peer-reputations were found to be predictive of school-grades but not standardized test-scores. Further, the results reveal that although ability reputations in most areas were predictive of grades for both sexes, gender differences were observed which were consistent with hypotheses. Results suggest that children’s peer-reputations may play an important role in their academic achievement, especially within domains most central to their gender identities.     

Pornography Use and Religious Bonding Among Heterosexually Married Americans: A Longitudinal Examination

Research suggests that frequent pornography use holds consequences both for the marital experiences of devoutly-religious Americans and religious commitment itself. Extending this line of research, this study considers how pornography viewing influences the religious bonding of heterosexually married Americans by affecting the frequency with which they pray with their spouses. Longitudinal data are taken from two waves of the nationally representative Portraits of American Life Study. Multivariate findings show the net effect of earlier porn viewing on the frequency with which married Americans pray with their spouses is curvilinear. Married Americans who never viewed pornography report praying with their spouses more often than the average; those who used pornography at moderate levels report praying with their spouses below the average; and a small minority of respondents who used pornography at the highest frequencies report praying with their spouses more than the average. These effects are robust to controls for respondents’ religious characteristics, moral beliefs about pornography, marital happiness, and sociodemographic factors. The study concludes by outlining the limitations and implications of these findings for research on religion, pornography use, and families.     

Friend or foe? Evidence that anxious people are better at distinguishing targets from non‐targets

Armed conflict necessitates the ability to quickly distinguish friend from foe. Failure to make accurate shooting decisions may result in harm either to oneself or to innocent others. The factors that predict such rapid decision making, however, remain unclear. Based on social defense theory, we contend that people high on attachment anxiety possess characteristics that are particularly advantageous in this domain such that anxiously attached individuals will show greater vigilance and accuracy in a realistic shooting paradigm in which they must quickly distinguish between militants (people holding a gun) and innocents (people holding an item with the same color and shape as a gun—Coca‐Cola bottle, black wallet, and black mobile phone). Using signal detection theory algorithms, we calculated sensitivity in performing the behavioral shooting task [D_(prime)]. Results indicate that as expected, anxious people demonstrated significantly better shooting accuracy. Implication for contemporary violent conflict is discussed.     

Psychological Androgyny and Children’s Mental Health: A New Look with New Measures

We evaluated Bem’s (1981, 1993) thesis that psychological androgyny—perceiving the self to possess characteristics of both genders—is associated with healthy adjustment and minimal gender-polarizing cognition. Prior studies testing Bem’s ideas have yielded ambiguous results, mainly because self-perceptions of gender-typed attributes have been inferred narrowly from self-perceptions of expressive and instrumental personality traits. We administered measures of gender identity (self-perceived similarity to a gender) that more clearly capture self-perceptions of attributes typical of a gender, and we examined conjoint influences of same-gender typicality and other-gender typicality on children’s self-esteem, internalizing problems, felt pressure for gender differentiation, and sexist ideology. Two studies were conducted with ethnically/racially diverse samples of preadolescent children in the southeastern United States. In Study 1 (N?=?305, M _age?=?10.8 years), androgynous children (i.e., children who saw themselves as similar to both genders) reported high self-esteem, evidenced few internalizing problems, and reported feeling little pressure for gender differentiation. In Study 2 (N?=?236, M _age?=?11.3 years), androgynous boys reported few sexist beliefs. Children with other patterns of gender identity (e.g., high same-gender typicality coupled with low other-gender typicality) sometimes showed similar correlates, but each other pattern of gender identity was associated with poor adjustment or strong gender-differentiating cognition on at least one dependent variable whereas androgyny never was. Results support Bem’s thesis that persons who perceive themselves as possessing characteristics of both genders enjoy mental health advantages over those who perceive themselves as possessing characteristics of only one.     

Is a Pink Cow Still a Cow? Individual Differences in Toddlers' Vocabulary Knowledge and Lexical Representations

When a toddler knows a word, what does she actually know? Many categories have multiple relevant properties; for example, shape and color are relevant to membership in the category banana . How do toddlers prioritize these properties when recognizing familiar words, and are there systematic differences among children? In this study, toddlers viewed pairs of objects associated with prototypical colors. On some trials, objects were typically colored (e.g., Holstein cow and pink pig); on other trials, colors were switched (e.g., pink cow and Holstein‐patterned pig). On each trial, toddlers were directed to find a target object. Overall, recognition was disrupted when colors were switched, as measured by eye movements. Moreover, individual differences in vocabularies predicted recognition differences: Toddlers who say fewer shape‐based words were more disrupted by color switches. “Knowing” a word may not mean the same thing for all toddlers; different toddlers prioritize different facets of familiar objects in their lexical representations.     

How to Be a Substantivalist Without Getting Shifty About It*

According to substantivalism, spacetime points and regions are real entities whose existence is not dependent on matter. In this paper, I motivate and defend a version of substantivalism which takes the totality of spacetime as fundamental, and show how this position avoids certain problem cases, in particular the objection from static Leibniz shifts, and better conforms to how we think about space in physics. I argue that, even though the static Leibniz shifts do not show ordinary substantivalism is committed to in‐principle undetectable physical structure (pace Dasgupta (2015a)), they do indicate something problematic about the modal profile of space‐time and its constituents. While the problem is modal, the solution cannot be solely a matter of revising the substantivalist's modal claims. Rather, I argue, the substantivalist must revise her background ontology of space‐time. I show how this can be done by developing substantivalist theory that rejects this picture in favor of an alternative ontology of space‐time in the spirit of priority monism.