Observer,percevoir, partager : réflexions épistémologiques à partir d’une enquête ethnographique dans cinq établissements d’enseignement secondaire

For our research on “Gender practices and violence between peers: the stakes of mixed education” (ANR-09-ENFT-006), two researchers observed interactions between students within five schools during the 2011–2012 school year in an large French city. This paper focuses on the challenges of ethnography, the validity of the results produced by such a methodology, and the opportunity to intersect clinical (notably transference and counter-transference) and socio-anthropological concepts. Our analyses center on questions related to social class and the sex-gender system.     

Comparing elite male and female distance runner's experiences of disordered eating through narrative analysis

ObjectivesResearchers have called for additional forms of theorizing and qualitative methodologies to explore disordered eating in athletes. The current study used social constructionism and narrative analysis to compare and contrast the disordered eating experiences of one male and female athlete.DesignNarrative inquiry was combined with an in-depth case study approach to explore the narrative and gendered construction of disordered eating in one elite male (age 19) and female (age 34) distance runner. The personal and cultural narratives drawn upon to construct meanings around the body, food and running and how these framed experiences were of interest.MethodsA structural and performative narrative analysis was conducted on four in-depth interviews (i.e., both runners participated in two separate interviews).ResultsBoth runners drew upon a performance narrative to construct running experiences and self-identities as elite athletes. When elite athletic identity became threatened by moments of perceived failure (e.g., poor performance, injury), disordered eating thoughts and behaviors emerged for both runners. Gendered narratives around the body, food and running further differentiated specific meanings and the emotional impact of these experiences for each male and female athlete.ConclusionsThis study extends quantitative and qualitative explorations of disordered eating in distance runners by highlighting additional understandings of the complex social, cultural and gendered construction of these experiences.     

Embodied performance in violent places: Transiting in and through the home,the streets,and institutions

Young marginalized people who live in violent contexts have intense and non-linear spatial experiences. This paper explores their gendered responses to violence in terms of body performance and spatial movements between their houses, in the streets and within various institutions. We consider these social subjects to be both ‘body-subjects' and ‘feeling-subjects', as their corporeality articulates urban space and becomes an extension of locations bound by emotion. Through mapping workshops, drawings, and interviews with young residents of a rehabilitation center located on the edge of Mexico City, we explore how institutions dedicated to marginalized youths materialize in their life trajectories. In other words, this paper analyzes institutions from the perspective of youth experience and feelings rather than institutional programs or from the point of view of staff members. We locate these institutions in the various spaces inhabited by the youth. The paper concludes with a reflection on the ambiguities of “care” as a response to violence.     

Workplace mobbing and bystanders' helping behaviour towards victims: The role of gender,perceived responsibility and anticipated stigma by association

We examined victims' perceived responsibility and bystanders' anticipated risk of being victimized themselves when others associate them with the victim (stigma by association, SBA) as possible antecedents of bystanders' helping behaviour towards a victim of workplace mobbing, and explored the effects of gender. Guided by the attribution model of social conduct (Weiner, 2006), a 2 × 2 vignette experiment was conducted. Participants were Dutch regional government employees (N = 161). Path analyses generally supported the hypotheses, but showed different results for women and men. In the strong (Vs. weak) responsibility condition, women reported less sympathy and more anger and men only more anger, which resulted in lower helping intention. Additionally, for men the results showed an unexpected direct positive effect of responsibility on helping intention. Furthermore, in the strong SBA condition, women and men reported more fear and men, unexpectedly, more anger. Consequently, helping intention decreased. The findings on gender are discussed in the context of social role theory, gender and emotion. Our findings suggest that to prevent and tackle mobbing, organizations and professionals should be aware of the attributional and emotional processes and gender differences in bystanders' helping behaviour.     

Female face preference in 4-month-olds: The importance of hairline

At 3–4 months of age, infants respond to gender information in human faces. Specifically, young infants display a visual preference toward female over male faces. In three experiments, using a visual preference task, we investigated the role of hairline information in this bias. In Experiment 1, we presented male and female composite faces with similar hairstyles to 4-month-olds and observed a preference for female faces. In Experiment 2, the faces were presented, but in this instance, without hairline cues, and the preference was eliminated. In Experiment 3, using the same cropping to eliminate hairline cues, but with feminized female faces and masculinized male faces, infants’ preference toward female faces was still not in evidence. The findings show that hairline information is important in young infants’ preferential orientation toward female faces.     

Social anxiety and depressive symptoms mediate instrumentality and maladaptive interpersonal styles

This study sought to examine the relationships between stereotypically masculine (instrumentality) and feminine (expressiveness) personality traits, social anxiety and depressive symptoms, and three interpersonal styles of relating: destructive overdependence (DO), dysfunctional detachment (DD), and healthy dependence (HD). Based on theories of social anxiety and recent research on social anxiety and close relationships, it is argued that individuals with higher levels of social anxiety would display greater detachment and overdependence in their interpersonal relationships. Students at an Australian university (n = 524) completed a battery of online self-report measures. The findings suggest that low levels of instrumentality are related to social anxiety and depressive symptoms, which both mediate the relationship between instrumentality and the two maladaptive interpersonal styles of relating: DO and DD.     

The impact of pressured information management on boys' and girls' psychological functioning

This study involving 463 adolescents examined the impact of pressured information management with mothers on boys' and girls' subsequent psychological functioning. This novel concept of pressured information management involved both pressured secrecy and disclosure and was defined as the degree to which adolescents feel they have no choice but to engage in these strategies. While pressured secrecy was especially aversive for girls, yielding associations with both depression and anxiety, it was related to stress only in boys. Pressured disclosure was less detrimental, and in fact, had a positive influence on girls' anxiety over time. Alternate models for these effects were considered but not supported by the data. Together, these findings highlight the importance of considering teens' reasons for engaging in different information management strategies and suggest adolescents who feel they have no choice but to keep secrets or disclose information to mothers may experience psychological consequences that are gender-specific.     

Mentor status,occupational context,and protégé career outcomes: Differential returns for males and females

We report two studies examining the moderating effects of mentor status and protégé gender, along with the moderating role of occupational context, in the relationship of mentoring with protégé career outcomes. Our research replicates and extends previous findings, especially those by Ramaswami et al. (2010b). Results from Study 1 indicated that business school alumni with senior-male mentors earned more compensation than those with no mentors. Additionally, a 3-way interaction (protégé gender × senior-male mentor × occupation type) indicated that the senior-male mentor effect for compensation was especially prominent for females in male-gendered occupation types. Study 2, conducted in an aerospace manufacturing firm comprising both a male-gendered occupation and industry context, confirmed mentor-status by protégé gender interaction for compensation. Female protégés with senior mentors received more compensation than females with no mentors, and also more compensation than males with senior mentors. In contrast, protégés with “other” (not senior) mentors received less compensation than those with no mentors, with this negative effect being especially strong for females. Taken as a whole, these results confirm the importance of mentor status for protégé career success. The results also underscore the importance of considering both mentor attributes and work context in understanding male and female protégés' career returns from mentoring.     

Effects of irrelevant object structure on early attention deployment

Event-related potential (ERP) studies have suggested that Gestalt principles or grouping factors in a visual scene modulate attention deployment in early visual processing. The present study examined the effects of an extrinsic grouping factor, region commonality, on early ERP spatial attention. Effects of sex were also explored, since the processing of task-irrelvant objects may differ between the sexes. Twenty-four participants were required to discriminate one side of rapidly-presented bilateral letters, and attention effects were indexed by hemispheric lateralization accroding to attended visual fields. In results, an early P1 attention effect (70–110 ms) increased when the letters were surrounded by an object, compared to the control stimulus without a complete object, and this result was more prominent in women than in men. The present study demonstrates that visual object and sex differences play a novel role at very early cortical stages of processing in attention deployment to a task-irrelevant visual structure.