Gender Typed Advertisements and Impression Formation: The Role of Chronic and Temporary Accessibility

In this research, we tested the effects of chronic and temporary sources of accessibility on impression formation. Although some research suggests that chronicity amplifies temporary effects because of greater susceptibility to external primes, other research suggests that chronicity masks temporary effects because of redundance. We demonstrate in a thought listing study that in the domain of gender stereotypes, trait stereotypes may be routinely applied by those with a medium or high tendency to stereotype women, making external primes redundant. Based on this redundancy, we proposed that gender stereotypical primes will have little influence on subsequent judgments of those with a medium or high tendency to gender stereotype. In contrast, gender stereotypical primes will result in the classic assimilation effect for those with a low tendency to gender stereotype. We tested these propositions in the domain of female role portrayals in advertising and examined the effect of advertisements that feature women as homemakers (vs. do not feature women) on trait judgments of a target woman whose behaviors are ambiguously described. Results from 2 experiments show that, as predicted by the redundancy hypothesis, judgments of medium and high tendency to stereotype participants are not affected by advertisements portraying homemakers. Also as expected, judgments of low tendency to stereotype participants are assimilated to the homemaker prime. These results hold across tendency to trait stereotype (Experiment 1) and tendency to role stereotype (Experiment 2) and for trait judgments as well as gift choice. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Order or disorder? Impaired Hebb learning in dyslexia

The present study offers an integrative account proposing that dyslexia and its various associated cognitive impairments reflect an underlying deficit in the long-term learning of serial-order information, here operationalized as Hebb repetition learning. In nondyslexic individuals, improved immediate serial recall is typically observed when one particular sequence of items is repeated across an experimental session, a phenomenon known as the Hebb repetition effect. Starting from the critical observation that individuals with dyslexia seem to be selectively impaired in cognitive tasks that involve processing of serial order, the present study is the first to test and confirm the hypothesis that the Hebb repetition effect is affected in dyslexia, even for nonverbal modalities. We present a theoretical framework in which the Hebb repetition effect is assumed to be a laboratory analogue of naturalistic word learning, on the basis of which we argue that dyslexia is characterized by an impairment of serial-order learning that affects language learning and processing.     

The gendering of heterosexual religious young adults’ imagined futures

This article draws from a mixed-methods project that examined religion, youth, gender, and sexuality among young women and men aged between 18 and 25, from various religious traditions, and living in the UK. It charts how unmarried heterosexuals imagined their future lives in relation to marriage and parenthood. We deploy conceptual literature on ‘imagined future’, which is under-used in the sociology of religion, to explore what difference, if any, religious belonging makes to the futures the participants imagined. We assert that religion is part of their cultural tapestry, which broadly informed their values and actions. In other words, religion, as a component of culture, provides a ‘toolkit’ which they used in imagining futures that they deemed meaningful. This article contributes significantly to literature on gender and religious cultures and imagined future, highlighting the complex and interweaving role religion played in the way young adults in this study imagined their future gendered lives.     

Using individualism and collectivism to compare cultures--a critique of the validity and measurement of the constructs: comment on Oyserman et al. (2002)

Analyzing national and ethnic differences in individualism and collectivism, D. Oyserman, H. M. Coon, and M. Kemmelmeier (2002) showed that small differences in scales or samples produce markedly divergent results, challenging the validity of these constructs. The author examines the following limitations of research on individualism and collectivism: It treats nations as cultures and culture as a continuous quantitative variable; conflates all kinds of social relations and distinct types of autonomy; ignores contextual specificity in norms and values; measures culture as the personal preferences and behavior reports of individuals; rarely establishes the external validity of the measures used; assumes cultural invariance in the meaning of self-reports and anchoring and interpretation of scales; and reduces culture to explicit, abstract verbal knowledge.     

Additive impact of childhood emotional,physical, and sexual abuse on suicide attempts among low-income African American women

This study examines the association between exposures to multiple forms of childhood abuse (emotional, physical, sexual) and adult suicidal behavior in a sample of low-income, African American women. We hypothesized a linear relation between childhood abuse and risk for making a suicide attempt, such that the more forms of childhood abuse to which a woman was exposed, the greater her risk would be to make a suicide attempt. Logistic regression analyses revealed that, compared to women who did not report any experiences of childhood abuse, women who experienced one, two, or three forms of abuse were 1.83, 2.29, or 7.75 times more likely to attempt suicide, respectively (all statistically significant). Furthermore, compared to women who reported one or two types of abuse, women who reported all three types of abuse were statistically more likely to attempt suicide. These findings have implications for clinicians working with African American women who report either childhood abuse or exhibit suicidal behavior.     

Testing a positional model of the Hebb effect

In two experiments, we investigated the hypothesis that a strengthening of position-item associations underlies the improvement seen in performance on an immediate serial recall task, for a list that is surreptitiously repeated every third trial. Having established a strong effect of repetition, performance was tested on transfer lists in which half the items held the same position as in the repeated list (S-items) and the remainder moved (D-items). In Experiment 1, S-items showed a small advantage in order errors over control and D-items. A second experiment tested whether a design feature in Experiment 1 underlay this advantage. When the experimental design was better controlled, no improvement was shown for either S- or D-items over controls. These data were shown to be inconsistent with the results of computer simulations of a positional model. An alternative model is outlined.     

Attention to phobic stimuli during exposure: the effect of distraction on anxiety reduction, self-efficacy and perceived control

To replicate and extend the finding that distraction facilitates between session anxiety reduction (), 27 spider phobics underwent three 10-min sessions of in vivo exposure followed by one 10-min exposure session at a 4-week follow-up, while having either stimulus-relevant focused conversation or stimulus-irrelevant distracting conversation with the experimenter. Physiological arousal and subjective anxiety were measured during exposure, and self-efficacy, perceived control and performance on a behavioural task were measured at pre-treatment, post session-3, and follow-up. Monitoring and blunting coping styles were also measured at pre-treatment to assess their impact on treatment outcome. Despite equal physiological activation between the groups, those who underwent distracted exposure showed greater reductions in subjective fear within and between sessions, and showed greater increases in self-efficacy ratings, internal perceived control and performance on a behavioural task. Coping style did not interact with the effect of distraction or focusing during exposure, however blunters had less subjective anxiety reduction overall, particularly when they underwent focused exposure. Results are discussed in terms of the emotional processing model and self-efficacy theory.     

The effects of genotype, foraging role, and sucrose responsiveness on the tactile learning performance of honey bees (Apis mellifera L.)

We analyzed sucrose responsiveness and associative tactile learning in two genetic strains of honey bees under laboratory conditions. These strains differ in their foraging behavior. Bees of the "high" strain preferentially collect pollen. "Low"-strain bees mainly forage for nectar. Responsiveness to different sucrose concentrations and tactile learning were examined using the proboscis extension reflex. Acquisition, extinction of conditioned responses, and responses to an alternative tactile stimulus were tested. High-strain bees are more responsive to sucrose than low-strain bees. Regardless of genotype, pollen foragers are more responsive to sucrose than nectar foragers. In bees of both strains we find the same relationship between responsiveness to sucrose and acquisition. Bees responding to low sucrose concentrations show more often the conditioned response during acquisition than those responding only to higher sucrose concentrations. Extinction of conditioned responses depends on the response probability during acquisition. Discrimination between the two tactile stimuli is affected by genotype but not by responsiveness to sucrose. High-strain bees discriminate better than low-strain bees. Our experiments thus establish links between division of labor, responsiveness to sucrose, and associative learning in honey bees.