Gender-Role Attitudes in University Students in the United States, Slovenia, and Croatia

Determinants of gender-role attitudes were examined in samples of university students from Pittsburgh in the United States, Ljubljana in Slovenia, and Osijek in Croatia. Surveys including items from the Attitudes Toward Women Scale and the Neosexism Scale were administered to a total of 1,544 U.S. students, 912 Slovene students, and 996 Croatian students between the years of 1991 and 2000. As predicted, men held less egalitarian or more sexist attitudes about the appropriate roles for women and men, and those with more frequent attendance at religious services held more sexist attitudes. No changes in attitudes were found for women over time, but Slovene males were found to become more traditional over time.     

Rivals without a cause? Relative performance feedback creates destructive competition despite aligned incentives

Whether people compete or cooperate with each other has consequences for their own performance and that of organizations. To explain why people compete or cooperate, previous research has focused on two main factors: situational outcome structures and personality types. Here, we propose that—above and beyond these two factors—situational cues, such as the format in which people receive feedback, strongly affect whether they act competitively, cooperatively, or individualistically. Results of a laboratory experiment support our theorizing: After receiving ranking feedback, both students and experienced managers treated group situations with cooperative outcome structures as competitive and were in consequence willing to forgo guaranteed financial gains to pursue a—financially irrelevant—better rank. Conversely, in dilemma situations, feedback based on the joint group outcome led to more cooperation than ranking feedback. Our study contributes to research on competition, cooperation, interdependence theory, forced ranking, and the design of information environments.     

Brain weights correlate with behavioral parameters in individual inbred mice housed in a common and enriched environment

Fifty 8-week-old Balb/c mice were individually identified and housed together in a large and enriched environment for 5 months. Maze and open field exploration, response to an aversive noise, swimming, and induced grooming tests were applied to each mouse in an initial search for possible relationships between brain morphology and spontaneous behavior in isogenic individuals living in a complex social and physical environment. The tasks generated 39 quantitative behavioral indices which include locomotion, rearing, still, and grooming bout frequencies, latencies, total, and mean bout durations. At the end of the tests, the 7-month-old mice were sacrificed and the fresh weights of their whole brain, cerebellum, brain stem, diencephalon, telencephalon, and prosencephalon were rapidly obtained. Behavioral data have wide variations and do not adjust to normal population distributions. Means of the same parameter differ between tests. A Spearman correlation matrix of all data yielded many significant correlations between indices of the same task which can be interpreted in terms of time budget and sequence probability. Significant correlations between indices of different tests suggest diverse emotionalities, exploratory strategies, and motor skills. The correlations between body and brain weights and among separate brain regions were not significant. There were several low but significant correlations between brain weights and behavioral indices. Such correlations, the resulting factors, and significant behavioral differences between mice with large and small brains suggest that mice displaying low motor activity in novel environments have larger brains and forebrain/hindbrain ratios than mice with high activity, and that animals with high scores of some specific behaviors have larger brain areas physiologically related to such behaviors.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)     

Imputation of missing categorical data by maximizing internal consistency

This paper suggests a method to supplant missing categorical data by reasonable replacements. These replacements will maximize the consistency of the completed data as measured by Guttman's squared correlation ratio. The text outlines a solution of the optimization problem, describes relationships with the relevant psychometric theory, and studies some properties of the method in detail. The main result is that the average correlation should be at least 0.50 before the method becomes practical. At that point, the technique gives reasonable results up to 10–15% missing data.We thank Anneke Bloemhoff of NIPG-TNO for compiling and making the Dutch Life Style Survey data available to use, and Chantal Houée and Thérèse Bardaine, IUT, Vannes, France, exchange students under the COMETT program of the EC, for computational assistance. We also thank Donald Rubin, the Editors and several anonymous reviewers for constructive suggestions.