JUDGMENTS OF SEXISM: A COMPARISON OF THE SUBTLETY OF SEXISM MEASURES AND SOURCES OF VARIABILITY IN JUDGMENTS OF SEXISM

We compared the subtlety of four measures of sexism and sources of variation in male and female psychology students' judgments that beliefs from these scales and everyday behaviors were sexist. Participants judged traditional gender role and hostile sexist beliefs as more sexist than benevolent and modern sexist beliefs, indicating the latter were more subtle measures of sexism. Participants also judged traditional gender role behaviors as more sexist than unwanted sexual attention, suggesting the latter may less readily be identified as sexist. Variation in judgments of beliefs as sexist was related to differences in likelihood of endorsing such beliefs. This relation fully accounted for the tendency for men to be less likely to judge beliefs as sexist in comparison to women. Endorsement of Modern and Hostile Sexist beliefs was related to judgments of behaviors as sexist. The implications of the results for scale usage and identifying sexist behavior are discussed.     

Reporting discrimination in public and private contexts.

The authors tested the hypothesis that members of stigmatized groups would be unwilling to report that negative events that occur to them are the result of discrimination when they are in the presence of members of a nonstigmatized group. Supporting this hypothesis, women and African Americans were more likely to report that a failing grade assigned by a man or a European American was caused by discrimination, rather than by their own lack of ability, when they made the judgment privately and in the presence of a fellow stigmatized group member. However, they were more likely to indicate that the cause of the failure was lack of ability, rather than discrimination, when they expected to make these judgments aloud in the presence of a nonstigmatized group member.     

Young children's evaluations of exclusion in gender-stereotypic peer contexts

This study investigated how 50 preschool children (25 girls, 25 boys) evaluated the appropriateness of excluding boys and girls from two types of activities (doll play, truck play) and two types of future roles (playing a teacher, playing a firefighter) across different exclusion contexts. Children judged straight-forward exclusion from activities on the basis of gender as wrong, even if the child's gender was stereotypical of the activity. Furthermore, they justified these decisions on the basis of moral reasons, such as equality and unfairness. Children used a mixture of moral and social conventional reasoning (including stereotypes), however, to evaluate multifaceted situations that called for judgments about both inclusion and exclusion and that included information about the children's past experience with the activity.     

The ambiguity of recognition memory tests of schema theories

The majority of theories about the effects of schemata (or generic knowledge structures) on information processing share two fundamental assumptions. It is assumed, first, that schema-based inferences about unobserved features of an event are generated, and, second, that such inferences are stored in long-term memory and thereby confused with traces of observed features of that event. To test these assumptions, researchers rely heavily on recognition memory measures of hit and false alarm rates. In the present paper, it is observed that schema theoretic interpretations of recognition memory measures are inconsistent with an interpretation jointly derived from the theory of signal detection and Mandler's (1980, Psychological Review, 87, 252–271) subjective familiarity theory of recognition memory; from the latter's perspective, recognition memory measures are considerably more ambiguous than schema researchers realize and do not necessarily support the typical schema theoretic interpretations. Data from four experiments are analyzed from the perspective of the theory of signal detection/ subjective familiarity model and demonstrate the ambiguity of recognition memory measures for testing hypotheses about the function and consequences of schemata for information processing.     

Why versus how often: Causal reasoning and the incidence of judgmental bias

When faced with the task of making a prediction or estimating a likelihood, it is argued that people often reason about the presence or absence and relative strength of possible causal mechanisms for the production of relevant outcomes. In so doing people rely on “causal cues” or properties of an inferential problem which indicate the nature of the particular causal processes which give rise to specific outcomes. It is hypothesized that causal cues, precisely because they focus attention and thought on specific causal mechanisms, can obscure the relevance of mathematical laws of probability and lead to statistically biased judgment. Two experiments were conducted. Their results support the hypothesis, showing that the incidence of the conjunction fallacy and the base rate fallacy depend on task-specific cues for causal reasoning.     

Information-seeking and maternal self-definition during the transition to motherhood

The self-definitional processes accompanying the transition to motherhood were examined in this study. A cross-sectional sample of more than 600 women who were planning to get pregnant within 2 years, pregnant, or in the postpartum stage completed extensive questionnaires pertaining to their experiences of pregnancy and motherhood. On the basis of the assumption of the "self-socialization" perspective that individuals actively construct their identities in response to life transitions, our analyses focused on the role of information-seeking in the developing self-definitions of women becoming mothers. As predicted, (a) women actively sought information in anticipation of a first birth, (b) they used this information to construct identities incorporating motherhood, and (c) after the birth the determinants of their self-definitions shifted from indirect sources of information to direct experiences with child care. Hence, consistent with the self-socialization perspective, information-seeking did play an important role in the women's developing self-conceptions during this life transition. Mechanisms by which information gathered may alter self-conception are discussed.     

Transition to motherhood and the self: measurement, stability, and change

Different ways of conceptualizing and measuring change in attitudes during transition to motherhood are examined. A series of analyses was performed on data from a cross-sectional sample (N = 667) and a smaller longitudinal sample (n = 48) to demonstrate sound psychometric properties for 2 new scales and to show construct comparability across different phases of childbearing. For Childbearing Attitudes Questionnaire, results demonstrated equality of covariance for 16 scales and comparability of structure and meaning of 4 higher order factors--identification with motherhood, social orientation, self-confidence, and negative aspects of giving birth. For Mothering Self-Definition Questionnaire, results demonstrated equality of covariance of 5 scales and comparability of structure and meaning of a single higher order factor, interpreted as reflecting positive feelings about one's mothering characteristics. Analyses of correlations and mean differences identified areas of change and stability.