Examining gender differences in received,provided, and invisible social control: an application of the dual-effects model

The dual-effects model of social control not only assumes that social control leads to better health practices but also arouses psychological distress. However, findings are inconsistent. The present study advances the current literature by examining social control from a dyadic perspective in the context of smoking. In addition, the study examines whether control, continuous smoking abstinence, and affect are differentially related for men and women. Before and three weeks after a self-set quit attempt, we examined 106 smokers (77 men, mean age: 40.67, average number of cigarettes smoked per day: 16.59 [SD = 8.52, range = 1–40] at baseline and 5.27 [SD = 6.97, range = 0–40] at follow-up) and their nonsmoking heterosexual partners, assessing received and provided control, continuous abstinence, and affect. With regard to smoker's affective reactions, partner's provided control was related to an increase in positive and to a decrease in negative affect, but only for female smokers. Moreover, the greater the discrepancy between smoker received and partner's provided control was the more positive affect increased and the more negative affect decreased, but again only for female smokers. These findings demonstrate that female smokers' well-being was raised over time if they were not aware of the control attempts of their nonsmoking partners, indicating positive effects of invisible social control. This study's results emphasize the importance of applying a dyadic perspective and taking gender differences in the dual-effects model of social control into account.     

Diverse Routes to Civic Participation Across Ages and Cultures: An Introduction

Civic participation is a cornerstone of civil societies and a part of positive and productive individual development. Much is known about individual predictors of civic participation among ethnic majority Western adolescent and young adult samples. In this special issue, the authors aim to uncover the predictors of civic participation in less studied populations to better understand diverse routes to civic participation across ages and cultures. Framed by life-span and ecological perspectives, this special issue draws together studies that target different age groups, from adolescents to the old–old, as well as minority and immigrant populations and residents of diverse countries, including the United States, Australia, Eastern and Western European countries, and Turkey.     

Knowing Who Knows: Laypersons' Capabilities to Judge Experts' Pertinence for Science Topics

Because modern societies are built on elaborate divisions of cognitive labor, individuals remain laypersons in most knowledge domains. Hence, they have to rely on others' expertise when deciding on many science‐related issues in private and public life. Even children already locate and discern expertise in the minds of others (e.g., Danovitch & Keil, 2004). This study examines how far university students accurately judge experts' pertinence for science topics even when they lack proficient knowledge of the domain. Participants judged the pertinence of experts from diverse disciplines based on the experts' assumed contributions to texts adapted from original articles from Science and Nature. Subjective pertinence judgments were calibrated by comparing them with bibliometrics of the original articles. Furthermore, participants' general science knowledge was controlled. Results showed that participants made well‐calibrated pertinence judgments regardless of their level of general science knowledge.     

Gender-based rejection sensitivity and academic self-silencing in women

Building on prior work on rejection sensitivity, we propose a social-cognitive model of gender-based rejection sensitivity (Gender RS) to account for individual differences in how women perceive and cope with gender-based evaluative threats in competitive, historically male institutions. Study 1 develops a measure of Gender RS, defined as anxious expectations of gender-based rejection. Studies 2-5 support the central predictions of the model: Gender RS is associated with increased perceptions of gender-based threats and increased coping by self-silencing--responses that reinforce feelings of alienation and diminished motivation. Study 2 shows that Gender RS is distinct from overall sensitivity to rejection or perceiving the world through the lens of gender. Study 3 shows that Gender RS becomes activated specifically when gender-based rejection is a plausible explanation for negative outcomes. Study 4 provides experimental evidence that Gender RS predicts lower academic self-confidence, greater expectations of bias, and avoidance of opportunities for further help from a weakness-focused expert evaluator. Study 5 tests the Gender RS model in situ, using daily diaries to track women's experiences during the first weeks in a highly competitive law school. Implications for women's coping with the subtle nature of contemporary sexism are discussed as well as the importance of institution-level checks to prevent the costs of gender-based rejection.     

Optimal Designs for the Rasch Model

In this paper, optimal designs will be derived for estimating the ability parameters of the Rasch model when difficulty parameters are known. It is well established that a design is locally D-optimal if the ability and difficulty coincide. But locally optimal designs require that the ability parameters to be estimated are known. To attenuate this very restrictive assumption, prior knowledge on the ability parameter may be incorporated within a Bayesian approach. Several symmetric weight distributions, e.g., uniform, normal and logistic distributions, will be considered. Furthermore, maximin efficient designs are developed where the minimal efficiency is maximized over a specified range of ability parameters.     

Habitual self-regulatory orientation and ease-of-retrieval: Regulatory focus qualifies the impact of subjective experiences in judgment

Eager strategies of self-regulation, known as promotion orientation, and cautious or vigilant strategies of self-regulation, known as prevention orientation, have been found to be associated with distinct patterns of goal attainment and information exploration. Building on these findings, we hypothesize that self-regulation in a promotion versus prevention focus triggers specific patterns of information use in judgment. Specifically, we predict that reliance on ease-of-retrieval??the feeling of ease or difficulty associated with accessing information??is particularly pronounced with a predominant promotion- compared to prevention-orientation. Two experiments that manipulate ease-of-retrieval and assess habitual differences in regulatory focus orientation support this prediction. The current contribution thus extends previous research by documenting that habitual tendencies of promotion-oriented as compared to prevention-oriented self-regulation are associated with reliance on distinct information sources in judgment.