Showing papers in "Journal of Social Issues in 1972"

Sex‐Role Stereotypes: A Current Appraisal

Abstract: Consensus about the differing characteristics of men and women exists across groups differing in sex, age, marital status, and education. Masculine characteristics are positively valued more often than feminine characteristics. Positively-valued masculine traits form a cluster entailing competence; positively-valued feminine traits reflect warmth-expressiveness. Sex-role definitions are incorporated into the self-concepts of both men and women; moreover, these sex-role differences are considered desirable by college students and healthy by mental health professionals. Individual differences in sex related self-concepts are related to sex-role relevant behaviors such as achieved and ideal family size. Sex-role perceptions also vary as a function of maternal employment.

Toward An Understanding of Achievement‐Related Conflicts in Women

Abstract: The motive to avoid success is conceptualized within the framework of an expectancy-value theory of motivation. It is identified as an internal psychological representative of the dominant societal stereotype which views competence, independence, competition, and intellectual achievement as qualities basically inconsistent with femininity even though positively related to masculinity and mental health. The expectancy that success in achievement-related situations will be followed by negative consequences arouses fear of success in otherwise achievement-motivated women which then inhibits their performance and levels of aspiration. The incidence of fear of success is considered as a function of the age, sex, and educational and occupational level of subjects tested between 1964 and 1971. Impairment of the educational and interpersonal functioning of those high in fear of success is noted and consequences for both the individual and society are discussed.

Early Childhood Experiences and Women's Achievement Motives

Abstract: Research findings in child development are reviewed to shed light on female achievement motives. It is suggested that females have high needs for affiliation which influence their achievement motives and behavior, sometimes enhancing and sometimes blocking them. Since girls as compared to boys have less encouragement for independence, more parental protectiveness, less pressure for establishing an identity separate from the mother, and less mother-child conflict which highlights this separation, they engage in less independent exploration of their environments. As a result they develop neither adequate skills nor confidence but continue to be dependent upon others. Thus while boys learn effectance through mastery, the effectiveness of girls is contingent on elicting the help of others. Affective relationships are paramount in females and much of their achievement behavior is motivated by a desire to please. If achievement threatens affiliation, performance may be sacrificed or anxiety may result.

Determinants of Occupational Role Innovation Among College Women.

Abstract: This study of 200 senior college women investigates the relationship between non-sextypical occupational choices (Role Innovation) and background, personality, and college experience. Role Innovators are more autonomous, individualistic, and motivated by internally imposed demands to perform to capacity. Rather than cross-sex identification, there is some evidence of role modeling of more educated working mothers. The Role Innovators' career commitment is greater, yet they have as many romantic and friendship relationships with men as do Traditionais. Faculty and female college friends provide role support, but a supportive boyfriend may be more important at this stage. A four-part typology is suggested in which role modeling and the type of maternal model are related to motivational patterns and occupational choice.

Understanding Women: Implications for Personality Theory and Research

Abstract: This paper addresses the neglect of work on feminine psychology as a symptom of the far broader impoverishment of contemporary work in personality. Bakan's concepts of agency and communion are invoked toward understanding the constraints imposed by current research paradigms. Agentic (masculine) modes of inquiry involving manipulation, quantification, and control need to be complemented by the communal (feminine) research styles (naturalistic, qualitative, open) developed in other disciplines. Three issues are proposed for research in personality: duality in human nature, typology and qualitative patterning and biological bases of personality. These issues are consonant with the nature of feminity, engage the talents of female investigators, and could foster development of the new research paradigms required for serious inquiry in personality. Suggestions for conceptual elaboration and empirical research are proposed.

Positive Forms of Social Behavior: An Overview

Abstract: The possibility exists that during the past decade some important social psychological theory and research and some salient social forces may have interacted to produce a subtle shift in the Zeitgeist from studies concerned with more negative to studies of more prosocial or positive forms of social behavior. The history of the term “prosocial” is first explored. Some different forms of prosocial behavior are indicated, along with the different research strategies and operational definitions involved, and a working definition of prosocial behavior is suggested. Finally, each chapter is overviewed and some indications are made of various intersections of agreement as well as countervailing arguments.

The Land Ethic Realized: Some Social Psychological Explanations for Changing Environmental Attitudes1

Abstract: Changing environmental attitudes from an economic to a moral orientation are discussed in terms of the activation of moral norms to guide and evaluate behavior. In controlled experimental situations, increasing levels of two variables (awareness of the negative interpersonal consequences and ascription of responsibility) increased the likelihood that moral norms influenced behavior. Changes in the social system are discussed which have increased both our awareness of, and the actual adverse consequences stemming from, a strict economic approach to the environment. Other modifications have made decision-makers responsible for these consequences. These changes have fostered the current moral fervor concerning the natural environment.

On the Genetics of Altruism and the Counter-Hedonic Components in Human Culture1

Abstract: Man is more similar to the social insects than to the wolf and chimpanzee in complex social coordination, division of labor, and self-sacrificial altruism. In the social insects, the behavioral dispositions involved are genetically determined, an evolution made possible by the absence of genetic competition among the cooperators. In man, genetic competition precludes the evolution of such genetic altruism. The behavioral dispositions which produce complex social interdependence and self-sacrificial altruism must instead be products of culturally evolved indoctrination, which has had to counter self-serving genetic tendencies. Thus unlike the social insect, man — as Freud noted — is profoundly ambivalent in his social role.

Individual Orientations To Prosocial Behavior

Abstract: Findings relating personality and demographic variables to prosocial behavior are reviewed. Original research results are then presented. These results show that different personal dispositions are related to various forms of prosocial behavior in different ways. The traditional search for general correlates of prosocial behavior is viewed as shortsighted. Attention is drawn to the relation of situational payoffs to personal dispositions, interactions among predictors, assessment of independence among predictors, and to situational shifts in personality.

Dimensions of Internal-External Locus of Control and the Women's Liberation Movement

Abstract: Fifty feminist (WL) and 50 control subjects were administered Rotter's Internal-External scale and a series of questions concerning their backgrounds and their attitudes about and involvement in the women's movement. Three dimensions emerged from a factor analysis of the I-E items: personal control, protestant ethic ideology, and feminist ideology. The WL subjects were more internal than the control subjects in their sense of personal control and more external in protestant ethic ideology (PEI) and feminist ideology. Externality on these two dimensions was shown to be related to involvement in the feminist movement. Rejection of PEI was accompanied by an increased sense of personal internality for the feminists.

Women as Politicians: The Social Background, Personality, and Political Careers of Female Party Leaders

Abstract: Women attaining high levels of political party leadership in California are the focus of this interdisciplinary study of personality and politics. The energies of female politicians tend to be directed toward a career within the political party. Compared to male leaders, they less often fashion a political career around the goal of public office and a political career serves less frequently as an integral part of a broad social career. Female leaders tend to express the forceful, effective, and socially ascendant style in an earnest, sobersided, and ambivalent manner; male leaders express the same personal style in a more easy-going, direct, and uncomplicated way. The interplay among personality, sex-role typing, and political career is discussed.

Sex‐Role Attitudes and Psychological Well‐Being

Abstract: Sex-role concepts of 162 senior college women are explored in relationship to ego strength, happiness, and achievement plans. The majority of women believe it possible to assume the roles of wife and mother while concomitantly pursuing extra-familial interests. Neither happiness nor the establishing of relationships with men differentiated women traditional in sex-role orientation from women primarily interested in realizing their own potential. Differences in ego strength were found to be associated with plans for marriage and career: Subjects who obtained the highest ego-strength scores were actively pursuing both objectives. The latter finding suggests that ego strength may be negatively related to the adoption of the traditional female sex-role. The traditional conceptions of masculine and feminine are [assumed to be] inappropriate to the kind of world we can live in in the second half of the twentieth century. An androgynous conception of sex role means that each sex will cultivate some of the characteristics usually associated with the other in traditional sex role definitions … tenderness and expressiveness should be cultivated in boys and socially approved in men … [and] achievement need, workmanship and constructive aggression should be cultivated in girls and approved in women [Rossi, 1964, p. 608].

Frustrations, Comparisons, and Other Sources of Emotion Arousal as Contributors to Social Unrest

Abstract: Many different factors enter into riots and other forms of social violence. On many occasions, particularly in the early stages, the aggression is impulsive rather than instrumental. Generally speaking, these “expressive” acts are responses to aversive conditions, but they are also affected by prior learning, strength of inhibitions against aggression in the specific situation, the presence of appropriate situational cues, and also the feeling of being able to cope with the aversive conditions. Social comparisons contribute to the unpleasant situations, creating a predisposition to aggression. In analyzing the role of these comparisons, it is important to specify just what groups serve as reference groups. It is suggested that unfavorable comparisons with one's own kind are particularly important.

Instigation to Goodness: The Role of Social Norms and Interpersonal Influence

Abstract: Norms are only one of a variety of determinants of prosocial behavior. The distinction between knowing and personally accepting a norm is stressed. Two specific norms of prosocial behavior are discussed: the norm of reciprocity, and the norm of social responsibility. Reciprocity seems to guide both return of benefits and retaliation of harm. However, the intent attributed to another, the degree of his self sacrifice, and other conditions affect the degree of reciprocity. The evidence that a norm of responsibility guides helping behavior is less convincing. In emergencies (and probably other situations), not only normative (generalized) expectations, but also (specific) expectations communicated by other people who are present and rules applicable to the specific situation seem to greatly affect behavior. This may be due both to people's concern about others' reactions to them and to a social definition of reality.

Promotive Tension: The Basis of Prosocial Behavior from a Lewinian Perspective1

Abstract: Three categories of tension are identified as potential correspondents of psychological forces: tension arising from own needs, from induced needs, from the need to satisfy impersonal demands. To these, a fourth is added in which tensions are coordinated to someone else's desire to locomote toward or away from a region in his life space. From this Lewinian perspective, altruism and other less dramatic forms of prosocial behavior are part of a general theoretical question: What conditions determine whether individuals develop tension systems coordinated to another's goal attainment? The process by which tension is coordinated to another person's goal attainment is here called promotive tension arousal. Conditions that determine whether promotive tension arousal produces behavior that facilitates or hinders another's goal attainment are discussed.

The Changing Image of the Career Woman

Abstract: During the 1950s there was an effort to assimilate the idea that a married woman could work if her family came first. Women with genuine career interest were described as both rare and maladjusted; research data were interpreted as supporting this negative view. Today there is a decrease in the emphasis on motherhood and a new look at career women. Even women who matured in an earlier day have been favorably described in research findings. Current research gives a more differentiated view of the personality of career women, analyzes the institutional arrangements and prejudiced attitudes which handicap women, and reappraises the concepts of masculine and feminine characteristics and their roles in the personality.

Altruism: Human, Cultural, or What?

Abstract: The article isolates and tries to explain a phenomenon called the altruistic paradox which refers to the fact that mankind individually and collectively can be both cruel and kind at one and the same time. Altruism is operationally defined and then discussed at both the psychological and sociocultural levels. It is theorized that man is hedonistic and reward-oriented as an organism, while cultures have evolved altruistic values as survival mechanisms. Thus altruism is in fact a superorganic phenomenon which for a number of reasons is found more often in more complex cultures that have stable family life which can produce the emotional development necessary to activate the culturally derived altruism in human behavior.

Assignment of responsibility in the case of Lt. Calley

Abstract: Attitudes toward the trial and conviction of Lt. William Calley were explored in a national survey, completed between May 28 and June 12, 1971, conducted by the Roper Organization staff. Of the 989 respondents, 34% approved of Calley's having been brought to trial and 58% disapproved. Subgroups were identified on the basis of the reasons behind their attitudes. Those who approved because they felt the individual soldier must bear responsibility (AR) and those who disapproved because they felt it unfair to hold Calley individually responsible (DR) showed marked and consistent differences in response to hypothetical questions, queries about legal precedents, and other trial-related questions; the groups were, however, almost equally disenchanted with the Vietnam war. Demographically, DR's tended to be lower in SES and education. Findings are discussed in terms of patterns of integration into the national system; the DR group's hypothesized pattern appears conducive to violence upon orders from authority. Language: en

Equity and the Innocent Bystander1

Abstract: This paper attempts to integrate equity theory and specialized theories and data concerning the reactions of bystanders and victims caught up in emergencies. The authors first examine three factors which determine the bystander's response to emergency situations: whether or not bystanders attend to an emergency; how aroused bystanders become by the emergency; how the bystander responds to the emergency — i.e., by helping, by denigrating the victim, or by running away. Finally, they examine factors which affect how the victim will respond to the bystander who either provides or denies him assistance.

Why Children Help: A Review.

Abstract: This article reviews current hypotheses and investigations concerning helping behavior. Two areas of helping behavior are focussed upon: donation and rescue responses. Studies concerning the impact of the social responsibility norm, experimenter demand characteristics, and proprieties are reviewed. Additionally, studies concerned with the subject variables associated with aiding activity are discussed.

Race and Sex in the Perception of Emotion

Abstract: A factorial design was utilized to investigate the effects of race of expresser (black or white), sex of expresser, race of perceiver (black or white), and sex of perceiver on the perception of emotion (POE), employing seven emotions (anger, happiness, surprise, fear, disgust, pain, and sadness). Overall results indicate significant main effects: for race of expresser (whites were more accurately perceived), for sex of expresser (females were more accurately perceived), for race of perceiver (blacks were more accurately perceived). There was no significant effect associated with sex of perceiver.

Conscious Factors Entering Into Decisions of Women to Study Medicine.

Abstract: The data presented discuss the motivations and personality of the female medical school student from the University of California, San Francisco campus. Inductive analyses of conscious reasons for entering medical school reveal the importance of encouragement from others, long-standing interest, self-development motives, and altruism. In contrast to studies reported on male subjects, economic and prestige factors as well as the unreachable aspect of other occupations are seldom mentioned by women.

Learning Theory and Prosocial Behavior.

Abstract: Altruism constitutes a paradox for learning theory. By definition altruism is a form of behavior which is engaged at some cost to the actor and without tangible rewards for him. Learning theory, however, implicates reinforcement both in the learning and the maintenance of all behavior. How then is altruistic behavior learned and maintained? The roles of affect, cognition, and possibly self-reinforcement are examined for their influence in establishing and maintaining altruistic behavior. The implications of these variables for theories of learning are considered.

Methods for Resolving Differences of Interest: A Theoretical Analysis1

Abstract: Four methods are described for pursuing and resolving differences of interest in a dyad: bargaining, reliance on content-specific norms, reliance on equity norms, and reliance on the norm of mutual responsiveness. Bargaining entails a number of dilemmas and other problems that are largely avoided when dyads rely on norms. Reliance on content-specific and equity norms poses other problems that are avoided by mutual responsiveness. A theory of changing patterns in the use of these methods is advanced. The theory holds that (a) content-specific norms give way to the norm of mutual responsiveness in crises produced by changing needs, and (b) reliance on mutual responsiveness is replaced by bargaining in crises resulting from changes in the relative bargaining strength or capacity to be generous of the two members of the dyad, as perceived by one or both members. A revised norm of mutual responsiveness can be constructed in the latter kind of crisis provided the members of the dyad develop a consensus about their relative bargaining strength, feel dependent on one another, and have a minimal level of trust in one another.

Maternal Role Incompatibility and Fertility in Urban Latin America1

Abstract: Based on fertility surveys conducted in seven Latin American cities, this study examines the proposition that the crucial variable determining the relationship between maternal employment and fertility may be the extent of incompatibility between joint occupancy of the roles of mother and worker. Where these two roles are incompatible, female employees should have fewer children than the nonemployed. Two structural aspects of role incompatibility (employment outside the home and white collar employment) are related to fertility in most cities. The number of hours employed outside the home is usually unrelated to fertility. Many of the relationships are simply due to more education and greater approval of nondomestic activities among employed wives. The wife's motivation for employment, her education, and her preferred role seem to exert greater influence on her fertility than her actual role of employee or homemaker. A significant finding of the research is the role of individual city and the ecological conditions operative within each.

New Social Psychological Perspectives on Women

Abstract: This issue reflects the growing awareness of “shibboleths and lacunae (Laws, 1969)” in the study of women, and includes some of the recent attempts to correct these. The issue focusses on methodological and theoretical criticism, analysis of female stereotypes and roles, and achievement and achievement motivation in women. The feminist movement which is responsible for these new perspectives on women also raises fundamental questions regarding present institutions like the family, and provides fresh views on such vital issues as peace, racism, population, and environment.

1830 and the unnatural history of revolution

Abstract: When natural histories of revolution do not consist simply of explicated definitions, they generally fail as explanatory theories, largely because they fail to deal with negative cases or to eliminate alternative explanations, and because they assume that a continuous and integrated social system experiences revolution. A more adequate treatment requires that governments, contenders for power, and relations among them be distinguished. Revolution consists of the fragmentation of a single polity. Starting from that view, we develop a political process model of revolutionary change, illustrated and supported by detailed evidence — both quantitative and qualitative—from the French revolution of 1830.

How Scientific are the Social Sciences

Abstract: The social sciences are scientific in the sense that we seek true knowledge of man and his society. Why then does progress in the social sciences seem slow in comparison to the natural sciences? To some extent perhaps there is selective recruitment of the most gifted students away from the social sciences, but more crucial is the fact that the problems we deal with are more difficult to master; the social scientist can never get down to constants (laws of nature) and thus to a generally valid knowledge. Another cause of difficulty is the unavoidable intrusion of the scientist's valuations, which are diversified and not self-evident. Consequently relatively little stands as undisputed truth in our findings. It should be the task of the sociology and social psychology of science to examine the problem of bias in social research. Social scientists and social engineers additionally must take responsibility for inducing necessary changes in the political process.

Correlates of Student Political Activism and Ideology

Abstract: This study of student political orientations treats attitudes and activism as conceptually and empirically independent, does not confound demographic variables in the subject groupings, and focuses on the dimensions of activism and attitudes and not specifically on left activists. Yale freshmen (N = 164) were classified into four ideology groupings and two levels of activism. Patterns of socialization and personality correlates of activism and ideology are presented and related to earlier studies. The absence of significant interactions and the concordance of some correlates of activism and ideology are discussed.

The Emancipation of Man1

Abstract: A fundamental idea embraced today in Sweden is that one must aim for change which emancipates men as well as women from the restrictive effects engendered by the traditional sex-roles — culturally conditioned expectations on an individual on account of sex. Implications and consequences of changes which may evolve are considered and an example of taxation reform recently instituted in Sweden is presented.