Elimination of sex difference in direction giving

Past studies have shown that men provide more cardinal information and mileage estimates than women when describing routes learned from maps. In the current study, we examined whether this sex difference would persist if more legends were added to the maps. The participants looked at maps for 3 min and then wrote down directions from memory. Their usage of cardinal directions, mileage estimates, landmarks, and left–right directions was coded and analyzed. The results showed that men and women used cardinal directions equally for the 4-legend maps, whereas men used more cardinal directions than women for 1-legend maps as shown previously. Our results suggested that subtly drawing attention to cardinal directions successfully eliminated the sex difference in usage, although a different pattern was seen for mileage estimates. The underlying mechanisms are discussed.     

Explaining sex differences in mental rotation: role of spatial activity experience

Males consistently outperform females on mental rotation tasks, such as the Vandenberg and Kuse (1978) Perceptual and Motor Skills, 47(2), 599–604, mental rotation test (MRT; e.g. Voyer et al. 1995) in Psychological Bulletin, 117, 250–265. The present study investigates whether these sex differences in MRT scores can be explained in part by early spatial activity experience, particularly those spatial activities that have been sex-typed as masculine/male-oriented. Utilizing an online survey, 571 ethnically diverse adult university students completed a brief demographic survey, an 81-item spatial activity survey, and the MRT. Results suggest that the significant relation between sex of the participant and MRT score is partially mediated by the number of masculine spatial activities participants had engaged in as youth. Closing the gap between males and females in spatial ability, a skill linked to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics success, may be accomplished in part by encouraging female youth to engage in more particular kinds of spatial activities.     

Assessing knowledge-intensive work environment: General versus situation-specific instruments

The aim of the present study is to examine to what extent general and situation-specific work environment instruments capture the salient work characteristics in a knowledge-intensive context. We conducted qualitative open-ended interviews with 30 employees (24 men and six women) from a Norwegian university department. The information from the interviews was content-analysed and coded on the scales of five work environment instruments; two general instruments (the General Nordic Questionnaire for Psychological and Social Factors at Work [QPSNordic] and the Job Diagnostic Survey [JDS]) and three situation-specific instruments (Assessing the climate for creativity [KEYS], Situational Outlook Questionnaire [SOQ], and the Organizational Climate Measure [OCM]). The results showed that situation-specific work environment instruments covered significantly more statements about the work environment than the general instruments. More statements could be categorized on the organization and individual levels, compared to group and leadership levels. The situation-specific instruments covered more statements than general instruments at the organization level. These statements were mainly related to the organizational context, social and relational characteristics, and encouragement of creativity and organizational impediments to creativity. The findings support the value of situation-specific instruments for assessing the work environment in knowledge-intensive organizations.     

Reactions to the fate of one’s brain-child after its disclosure

After generating an idea we believe is original, we want it to be credited as original and receive recognition for it. So, we would be upset if its originality were questioned, or if our link to that intellectual self-extension were threatened, and we would cope with self-protective strategies. This rationale prompted an experiment with seventy-five female undergraduates. They (P) were to imagine drafting a paper for submission to a national creativity fair proposing a novel method for determining the structure of things, but then decided against submitting it. Fellow-participant, O, learning of P's decision to withdraw, borrows P’s draft. Later, P submits a revised, retitled draft that, unfortunately, goes astray. Still later P discovers that O, without P's knowledge and consent, submitted a copy of P’s original draft to the fair, listing O’s name, both names, or P’s name as author(s), and that the idea was or was not judged as original. Origination and recognition credit allocation had predicted effects on P’s emotional reaction, evaluation of the judges’competence, and of O’s trustworthiness. Unexpect-edly low self-evaluated creativity and sociability, and low desire for future collabora-tion, were obtained when recognition went to P and O jointly. We discuss the applica-bility of belief agreement-attraction and cognitive balance models, of imitation as flattery, of self-esteem as a moderator, and whether our results are culture-bound. Finally, we note how the reactions hint at conflict between inclinations toward altru-ism versus narcissistic self-interest when it comes to sharing one’s self-generated intellectual products with others.     

Memory for language organization in concrete and abstract sentences

Subjects were presented with concrete and abstract sentences equal in lexical complexity and comprehension rating and tested on their ability (1) to recognize the words used in the sentences when presented at a 3-sec rate and (2) to recreate the initial sentences when presented with a list of the words used. Only on this second task was there a significant concrete/abstract difference. In a second experiment, there was a significant concrete/abstract difference in word recognition when a 6-sec decoding rate was used. It was suggested that the best explanation of these results could be offered by a semantic analog model of language memory.

     

Scales of selected aspects of kinesthesis

Fifty male Ss made judgments of (1) thickness by finger span, (2) extent of arm movement, (3) heaviness of lifted weights, (4) force by handgrip, and (5) speed of arm movement. The method was fractionation: halving the magnitude of each stimulus. Comparisons were made in terms of the size of the exponent of the sensory scale.     

Self-Compassion and Predictors of Criminality

The main focus of this article is to conduct an exploratory investigation of self-compassion, a positive indicator of mental health, as a predictor of violence and criminality within a sample of prisoners. Correlation and regression analyses were used to explore the relationship that self-compassion has with self-control, self-esteem, and social connectedness. Associations between self-compassion and the subscales of self-control were also examined. Results from both correlational analysis and regression indicate that self-compassion is correlated with all 3 variables. Correlations revealed that self-compassion was related to all 6 subscales of self-control. Regression, however, revealed that impulsivity was the only predictor of self-compassion. Further analysis revealed problems with multicollinearity. Implications and limitations of these results are discussed.