Education and Catholic Religiosity as Predictors of Hostile and Benevolent Sexism Toward Women and Men

The relationships of education and religiosity to hostile and benevolently sexist attitudes toward women and men, as assessed by the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI; Glick & Fiske, 1996) and the Ambivalence Toward Men Inventory (AMI; Glick & Fiske, 1999), was explored in a random sample of 1,003 adults (508 women, 495 men) from Galicia, Spain. For both men and women (a) level of educational attainment negatively correlated with hostile and benevolent sexist attitudes, and (b) Catholic religiosity uniquely predicted more benevolent, but not more hostile, sexist attitudes. Although correlational, these data are consistent with the notion that active participation in the Catholic Church may reinforce benevolently sexist ideologies that legitimate gender inequality, whereas education may be effective in diminishing sexist beliefs.     

Building International Collaborative Capacity: Contributions of Community Psychologists to a European Network

Europe is in the process of building a more participative, just, and inclusive European Union. The European Social Fund, which is an initiative developed to actively promote multinational partnerships that address pressing social issues, is a good example of the European transformation. This article describes the steps taken to develop and evaluate the activities of an international network promoting collaborative capacity among regional partners involved in the prevention of labor discrimination toward immigrants in three European countries—Spain, Belgium, and Italy. An international team of community psychologists proposed an empowering approach to assess the collaborative capacity of the network. This approach consisted of three steps: (1) establishing a collaborative relationship among partners, (2) building collaborative capacity, and (3) evaluating the collaborative capacity of the network. We conclude with lessons learned from the process and provide recommendations for addressing the challenges inherent in international collaboration processes.     

Multicultural training practices in community psychology programs

Surveyed the directors of 56 community psychology graduate programs to assess multicultural training practices and attitudes. Although most program directors agreed that multicultural training is important in their mission to educate students, less than half the programs (48%) required their students to take any relevant course work and only half of the programs surveyed had any faculty who were members of an ethnic minority group and one third had only one such faculty member. Furthermore, less than half the programs had a combination of training opportunities in place to integrate classroom, research, and field experiences relevant to multicultural issues. Finally, only 23% of program directors believed their training programs were successful for most students, suggesting the need to improve training.     

Spatial learning and goldfish telencephalon NMDA receptors

Recent results have demonstrated that the mammalian hippocampus and the dorso-lateral telencephalon of ray-finned fishes share functional similarities in relation to spatial memory systems. In the present study, we investigated whether the physiological mechanisms of this hippocampus-dependent spatial memory system were also similar in mammals and ray-finned fishes, and therefore possibly conserved through evolution in vertebrates. In Experiment 1, we studied the effects of the intracranial administration of the noncompetitive NMDA receptor antagonist MK-801 during the acquisition of a spatial task. The results indicated dose-dependent drug-induced impairment of spatial memory. Experiment 2 evaluated if the MK-801 produced disruption of retrieval of a learned spatial response. Data showed that the administration of MK-801 did not impair the retrieval of the information previously stored. The last experiment analyzed the involvement of the telencephalic NMDA receptors in a spatial and in a cue task. Results showed a clear impairment in spatial learning but not in cue learning when NMDA receptors were blocked. As a whole, these results indicate that physiological mechanisms of this hippocampus-dependent system could be a general feature in vertebrate, and therefore phylogenetically conserved.     

The Making of an Interdisciplinary Partnership: The Case of the Chicago Food System Collaborative

Interdisciplinary partnerships foster innovation to address pressing social problems. This paper describes an interdisciplinary partnership called the Chicago Food System Collaborative (CFSC) composed of a team of partners from four academic institutions and three community-based organizations representing a total of eight disciplines that included: community development and community organizing, community psychology, geography, nursing, nutrition, public health, sociology, and urban planning and policy. Partners came together to address the issue of access to healthy foods and nutrition in a working class African American neighborhood. We analyze and discuss the core principles that guided the partnership and its impact across three dimensions: understanding through interdisciplinary action research, building capacity, and facilitating innovations in practices and policies. Despite the challenges of interdisciplinary partnerships, the potential benefits and impact of such efforts reflect their value as a comprehensive approach to addressing complex social problems.     

“I definitely feel like a scientist”: Exploring science identity trajectories among Latinx students in a critical race theory-informed undergraduate research experience

The current study investigated science identity development among Latinx university students selected for a critical race theory (CRT)-informed undergraduate research experience. Twenty students (12 female, 8 male; M_age = 22.00; SD = 2.77) enrolled in biomedical-related majors at a 4-year university responded to open-ended questions regarding their identity as scientists at 2 weeks, 6 months, and 18 months after they began the program. Results illustrated a steady increase in the number of students identifying as scientists over 18 months. At 2 weeks into the program, only 35% of Latinx students felt like a scientist. At 6 months, 45% of Latinx students identified as a scientist. At 18 months, 70% of Latinx students reported feeling like a scientist. Results also revealed variation in science identity trajectories, with four trajectories viewed in the data: (1) consistent or fast achievement, (2) gradual achievement, (3) achievement adjustment, and (4) never reach achievement. The majority of students demonstrated a trajectory in which they reached science identity achievement (the feeling that they are “a scientist”). Our results provide evidence of the positive, longitudinal impact that a CRT-informed curriculum has on the science identity development of Latinx students. Implications surrounding future research and strategies to facilitate long-term Latinx student participation in the biomedical sciences are discussed.     

Brain processing of task-relevant and task-irrelevant emotional words: An ERP study

Although there is evidence for preferential perceptual processing of written emotional information, the effects of attentional manipulations and the time course of affective processing require further clarification. In this study, we attempted to investigate how the emotional content of words modulates cerebral functioning (event-related potentials, ERPs) and behavior (reaction times, RTs) when the content is task-irrelevant (emotional Stroop Task, EST) or task-relevant (emotional categorization task, ECT), in a sample of healthy middle-aged women. In the EST, the RTs were longer for emotional words than for neutral words, and in the ECT, they were longer for neutral and negative words than for positive words. A principal components analysis of the ERPs identified various temporospatial factors that were differentially modified by emotional content. P2 was the first emotion-sensitive component, with enhanced factor scores for negative nouns across tasks. The N2 and late positive complex had enhanced factor scores for emotional relative to neutral information only in the ECT. The results reinforce the idea that written emotional information has a preferential processing route, both when it is task-irrelevant (producing behavioral interference) and when it is task-relevant (facilitating the categorization). After early automatic processing of the emotional content, late ERPs become more emotionally modulated as the level of attention to the valence increases.     

Stress and coping among early childhood intervention professionals receiving reflective supervision: A qualitative analysis

Reflective supervision/consultation (RS/C) is an important component of infant mental health training and practice. Given high levels of job stress reported by a variety of early childhood professionals, the present study offers a qualitative examination of early childhood intervention professionals’ perceptions of stress and coping before and after receiving regular RS/C. Thirty-one professionals received 9 months of RS/C and completed semistructured interview questionnaires at the pre-/postassessments. Questionnaires focused on job-related experiences, including what participants found stressful and how they coped with job-related stress. Inductive analysis techniques were used to identify themes that arose from the data. Relationships between themes were discovered through axial coding. Three key themes of individual, relational, and organizational stress were identified across the pre-/postassessments. Similar themes were evident in reports of coping. Following 9 months of RS/C, analysis revealed greater detail and reflection among the majority of participants. These results contribute to the literature through identification of multiple levels of stress and coping as well as areas of continuity and change among participants receiving RS/C. Future research should consider how professionals’ reports of stress and coping relate to reported self-efficacy and observed competence with young children and families.     

Bad but bold: Ambivalent attitudes toward men predict gender inequality in 16 nations

A 16-nation study involving 8,360 participants revealed that hostile and benevolent attitudes toward men, assessed by the Ambivalence Toward Men Inventory (P. Click & S.T. Fiske, 1999), were (a) reliably measured across cultures, (b) positively correlated (for men and women, within samples and across nations) with each other and with hostile and benevolent sexism toward women (Ambivalent Sexism Inventory, P. Click & S.T. Fiske, 1996), and (c) negatively correlated with gender equality in cross-national comparisons. Stereotype measures indicated that men were viewed as having less positively valenced but more powerful traits than women. The authors argue that hostile as well as benevolent attitudes toward men reflect and support gender inequality by characterizing men as being designed for dominance.     

Sex differences on the five personality factors in Spanish students

This study examined sex differences in the Big Five Personality factors in a sample of 255 Spanish university students (196 women and 59 men) whose mean age was 21.4 yr. (SD=3.91). They responded to the short Spanish version of the Big Five Personality scale. The goals of this study were first, to check the utility of this scale to evaluate personality traits in the Spanish university population, and, second, to check the sensitivity of this shorter scale in evaluating possible differences between sexes on these factors of personality. Analysis supported the published factorial structure, and significant differences were found between men and women on the factors of Extraversion, Neuroticism, and Conscientiousness.