Social Values and Relationships with Parents among American College Women of Chinese and European Descent

This study compared social values and relationships with parents among American college women of Chinese and European descent. Chinese-American women scored higher on a measure of practicality and pragmatism (mastery), hierarchy, and traditionality. The Euro-American women showed a greater interest in voluntary prosocial behaviour and philanthropy. Both groups of women reported having a sense of self, autonomous of their parents. Within the Chinese-American group, ethnic identification and religion, but not generation, moderated scores on a measure of traditionality of outlook regarding issues of law and order and social equality. We discuss the implications of our findings for recent debates in cross-cultural psychology, including the growing challenge to the individualism-collectivism dimension.     

Responsibility Attributions for Drunken Behavior: The Role of Expectancy Violation1

Research on attributions about drunken aggression has suggested that intoxication serves to excuse the aggressor while increasing blame to the victim. In this study, we examined subjects' responses to a scenario depicting a violent interaction in which intoxication of aggressor and victim, victim's behavior, and aggressor's previous violent background were varied. We predicted that to the extent that the violent act violated the expectations of the observer, alcohol intoxication would serve to decrease dispositional and responsibility attributions to the aggressor. Instead, the findings showed that alcohol use led to increased attributions of causality, blame, and responsibility for both aggressor and victim. The results are discussed in terms of both attribution theory and societal factors influencing the acceptability of excuses involving alcohol.     

The double bind of caregiving: Representation of gendered emotion in American advice literature

Parent advice books written for the traditional, intact biological family represent maternal and paternal emotion quite differently from one another [S. A. Shields and B. A. Koster (1989) Emotional Stereotyping of Parents in Child-Rearing Manuals, Social Psychology Quarterly, Vol. 52, pp. 44–55]. This study examined gender-specific references to emotion in advice books directed to adoptive parents, step-parents, single parents, and married couples in order to determine the relationship between beliefs about women's and men's emotional natures and beliefs about caregiving. The gendered representation of caregivers' emotion is remarkably consistent across time, parenting genre, and author characteristics. Books directed to parents portray women as at risk for excessive emotions (both positive and negative) that have negative developmental impact on the child. In contrast, men are largely encouraged to be emotionally expressive, and when they are cautioned about their emotional display, the caution is restricted to negative emotions that are elicited by external emotional hazards: the children, the spouse (or ex-spouse), or the situation. In contrast, marriage manuals portray spouses as mutually responsible for their own and their spouse's emotional well-being. Husbands and wives are encouraged to express unlimited positive emotion and to engage in moderated ventilation of negative emotion. In our discussion of these results we consider the role of emotion representation in promoting a culture of mother blaming.We are indebted to Diane Early, Diane Hayashino, Nancy Kohn, and Sonja Jensen for their assistance in collecting and interpreting the data. This research was supported by University of California, Davis, Faculty Research Grants to S. Shields.     

CHOICE-MAKING TREATMENT OF YOUNG CHILDREN'S SEVERE BEHAVIOR PROBLEMS

The choice-making behavior of 5 young children with developmental disabilities who engaged in aberrant behavior was studied within a concurrent operants framework. Experimental analyses were conducted to identify reinforcers that maintained aberrant behavior, and functional communication training packages were implemented to teach the participants to gain reinforcement using mands. Next, a choice-making analysis, in which the participants chose one of two responses (either a mand or an alternative neutral response) to obtain different durations and qualities of reinforcement, was conducted. Finally, treatment packages involving choice making via manding were implemented to decrease inappropriate behavior and to increase mands. The results extended previous applications of choice making to severe behavior disorders and across behaviors maintained by positive and negative reinforcement.     

The Impact of Sex and Gender Role Self-Perception on Affective Reactions to Different Types of Film

To what extent do differences in biologicalsexand psychological gender identity influence affectivereactions to different genres of film? In order toaddress this question, this investigation examined the impact of sex and gender roleself-perceptions on viewers' responses to neutral,melodramatic, and violent film segments. Working with apredominantly Caucasian population (93% Caucasian) at asoutheastern university, the results emphasize theimportance of sex and gender role self-perceptions onviewers' affective responses to media entertainment. Theimplications of these findings are discussed.

     

Children's responding to live interadult conflict: The role of form of anger expression

Children's responses to interadult arguments were examined as a function of three forms of disputes: covert, verbal, and physical. Four- to seven-year-olds' overt-behavioral responses to liveenactments of arguments between a male and a female were videotaped and coded for behavioral distress and anger/aggression, and children were then interviewed. Although children exhibited overt-behavioral distress in response to all forms of disputes, physical arguments evoked the highest levels of distress. Some gender differences in responding were observed. In comparison to boys, girls exhibited more overt distress during the arguments, and wanted to stop physical arguments more frequently. The results extend findings based on the videotape methodology of the presentation of interadult arguments indicating that form of anger expression impacts children's emotional responding to interadult conflict. We wish to thank the families for contributing their time and effort to this study.     

On the scope of alcohol expectancy research: remaining issues of measurement and meaning

An article by Leigh (1989d) examined certain substantive and measurement-related limitations of research on alcohol outcome expectancies. Leigh (1989d) criticized research in this field on both conceptual and methodological grounds and speculated on future theoretical directions for research in the field. In their response, Goldman, Brown, Christiansen, and Smith (1991) contended that Leigh's critique is faulty in important respects. However, some of their points are based on misinterpretations of Leigh's comments, and they appear to have insufficient appreciation of conditions necessary for comprehensive measurement validation and for meaningful application of theories of memory to alcohol expectancy research. Despite the limitations of expectancy research, exciting avenues exist for further work.