Psychology Commons^™

Gender And Cultural Differences In Body Dissatisfaction And Self-Esteem, Nadezhda Shepeliak

Honors College Theses

A total of 144 college students (103 were females) participated in a study investigating the gender and cultural variation in the relationship betwen body image dissatisfaction and self-esteem. The results revealed a significant negative correlation between one's body image dissatisfaction and self-esteem. No cultural differences were found in either body dissatisfaction or self-esteem; however, the study did yield several findings with regard to gender differences. Females were more satisfied than male participants with their upper torso, and male engaged in more body avoidance behavior than did female participants. Social-cultural approach to studying body image dissatisfaction was evaluated and discussed with …

Memory Task: Gender Differences In Verbal And Spatial Memory Ability, Miranda Richardson, Anna Zeik

Undergraduate Psychology Research Methods Journal

Memory can be broken down into two components: verbal and spatial memories. Verbal memory involves reading, writing, vocabulary and comprehension of texts. Spatial memory, on the other hand, involves the ability to read maps, rotate geometric figures in space, and understand diagrams. Women are thought to have better verbal memories than men, whereas men seem to have better spatial abilities than women. We recruited 28 participants from the Human Subject Pool in order to test this hypothesis. We found that this is not true when we gave the participants memory tasks; there are more differences within a certain gender than …

Towards A More Comprehensive View Of The Use Of Power Between Couple Members In Adolescent Romantic Relationships, Charles George Bentley

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This study investigated the construct of power in adolescent romantic couples using multiple measures. The project examined gender differences in power, created models of powerlessness for each gender, and examined relations between power and aggression and relationship quality. Participants were 90 heterosexual couples, aged 14-18 years old, living in rural areas in Utah and Arizona. Couple members completed surveys assessing attitudes and behaviors in their relationships and a video-recall procedure in which partners rated their own and their partner's behaviors during problem solving discussion.

Few gender differences emerged in reports of perpetration of aggression, but boyfriends reported higher levels of …

New Perspectives On The Relationship Between Emotion Decoding And Social Acceptance In School-Age Children, Eri Suzuki

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The relationship between children's emotion decoding ability and their social acceptance was examined, with a major focus on potential nonlinear components. Based on the display rules literature, the prediction was tested that social acceptance and emotion decoding skills can be best described as an inverted U-shaped function. Children in kindergarten through fifth grade (113 girls and 123 boys) completed measures of postural and facial decoding accuracy (FACES and TALK) and their social acceptance was assessed using child and teacher reports (SPPC or PSPC). The results showed only a statistically significant quadratic relationship for girls and a statistically significant linear relationship …

Effects Of Gender And Ethnicity On Adolescent Experiences In Same-Race And Interracial Romantic Relationships, Angela Marie Enno

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

In recent years, the field of psychology has seen considerable growth in the body of literature on adolescent romantic relationships (e.g., Florsheim, 2003; Furman, Brown, & Feiring, 1999). As this trend continues, the need for a more thorough understanding of the processes that underlie normal relationship development becomes increasingly apparent; particularly in the case of adolescent members of ethnic minority groups, for whom literature on normal development is sparse. The present study sought to gain insight into some of the forces that shape adolescents' experiences of romantic relationships: namely, race/ethnicity and gender. We hypothesized that, like their adult counterparts, adolescent …

Gender Differences In Emotion Regulation, Kristiane Madsen

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Emotion regulation is conceptualized as the ability to identify and respond appropriately to emotions. Previous research on gender and emotional expression suggests that female children are socially conditioned to be more expressive, and thus may be more able to regulate emotion with their mothers in relation to their male peers. Participants include 144 mother-child pairs at child age points 14, 24, and 36 months and at Pre-Kindergarten entry who participated in a local Early Head Start Research and Evaluation project. Data consist of videotaped interactions of mothers and infants engaged in a 10 minute free play activity with three bags …

Breaking Down The Wall: An Examination Of Mental Health Service Utilization In African American And Caucasian Parents, Idia O. Binitie

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated the influence of parents' gender, race, and psychopathology on barriers and attitudes to mental health utilization for themselves and for their children. It was hypothesized that mothers and Caucasian¹ parents would have more positive attitudes and would perceive fewer barriers to mental health services than fathers and African American² parents. A total of 194 African American and Caucasian parents were recruited from the community to participate in this study. Parents completed measures on barriers and attitudes toward treatment for themselves and their children, utilization of mental health services for themselves and their children, and their own current …

Two-Year-Olds' Discrimination Of Gender-Stereotyped Activities, Sara Elizabeth Hill

Theses and Dissertations

Two-year-olds' knowledge of gender-stereotyped tasks was assessed in an experiment that utilized the preferential looking paradigm. The looking times of toddlers' (N = 18) gazes towards gender-consistent and gender-inconsistent activities were measured and assessed. In the procedure, toddlers viewed either a male or female actor on two displays performing a masculine stereotyped activity (shaving, putting on a tie) on one screen and a feminine stereotyped activity (putting on lipstick, putting on nail-polish) on the other screen. Infants also viewed male and female actors performing gender-neutral activities (eating, drinking water) side by side in control trials. Consistent with our predictions and …

The "Duty" To Be A Rational Shareholder, David A. Hoffman

David A Hoffman

How and when do courts determine that corporate disclosures are actionable under the federal securities laws? The applicable standard is materiality: would a (mythical) reasonable investor have considered a given disclosure important. As I establish through empirical and statistical testing of approximately 500 cases analyzing the materiality standard, judicial findings of immateriality are remarkably common, and have been stable over time. Materiality's scope results in the dismissal of a large number of claims, and creates a set of cases in which courts attempt to explain and defend their vision of who is, and is not, a reasonable investor. Thus, materiality …

Attitudes And Behaviors Related To Filial Responsibility In Latino Youth: Variations By Birth Order, Gender, And Immigration Age, Anabel Alvarez

Psychology Theses

Filial responsibility and familism were examined among a sample of Latino youth through a number of diverse methods that included variable centered and person centered analyses. Effects of gender, birth order, and immigration age were examined. An exploratory principal components analysis of the Adolescent Filial Responsibility Questionnaire-Revised revealed that the most interpretable solution included five factors: fairness, chores, culture brokering, emotional tasks, and overburden. ANOVA analyses found significant main effects of birth order on culture brokering and chores, of gender on emotional tasks, and of immigration age on culture brokering. Cluster analysis identified five groups based on adolescents’ responses: traditional …

Parent-Adolescent Involvement: The Relative Influence Of Parent Gender And Residence, Daniel Hawkins, Paul R. Amato, Valarie King

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

The 1995 wave of the Add Health study is used to investigate the relative influence of parent gender and residence on patterns of parental involvement with adolescents. Adolescent reports (N = 17,330) of shared activities, shared communication, and relationship quality with both biological parents are utilized. A multidimensional scaling analysis reveals that parent gender explains most of the variance in parent-adolescent involvement, with residential status playing a secondary yet fundamental role in accounting for these patterns. Resident mothers who do not live with adolescents’ biological fathers engage in the broadest range of activities with their children. Unpartnered resident fathers display …

Confronting Conventional Thinking: The Heuristics Problem In Feminist Legal Theory, Nancy Levit

Nancy Levit

The thesis of The Heuristics Problem is that the societal problems about which identity theorists are most concerned often spring from and are reinforced by thinking riddled with heuristic errors. This article first investigates the ways heuristic errors influence popular perceptions of feminist issues. Feminists and critical race theorists have explored the cognitive bias of stereotyping, but have not examined the ways probabilistic errors can have gendered consequences. Second, The Heuristics Problem traces some of the ways cognitive errors have influenced the development of laws relating to gender issues. It explores instances in judicial decisions in which courts commit heuristic …

Children's Moral Reasoning Regarding Physical And Relational Aggression, Diann Murray-Close, Nickix R. Crick, Kathleen M. Galotti

Faculty Work

Elementary school children’s moral reasoning concerning physical and relational aggression was explored. Fourth and fifth graders rated physical aggression as more wrong and harmful than relational aggression but tended to adopt a moral orientation about both forms of aggression. Gender differences in moral judgments of aggression were observed, with girls rating physical and relational aggression as more wrong and relational aggression as more harmful than boys. In addition, girls were more likely to adopt a moral orientation when judging physical and relational aggression and girls more often judged relational aggression than physical aggression from the moral domain. Finally, moral reasoning …

Understanding How African-American Middle School Students Cope With Peer Victimization: A Mixed-Methods Approach, Suzanne C. Linkroum

Theses and Dissertations

A mixed-methods approach was used to determine how African-American middle school students cope with peer victimization and to identify factors that inhibit and promote the use of prosocial coping strategies. In a previous study, participants had been categorized into four social clusters: well-adjusted, rejected, passively-victimized, or aggressively-victimized based on a cluster analysis of self-reported psychosocial variables. Interviews with a sub sample of 80 students focusing on identifying both how students thought they would respond and how they thought they should respond to hypothetical situations involving peer victimization were analyzed. Interviews also elicited factors that would support or impede the use …

Gender Differences In How Men And Women Referred With In Vitro Fertilization (Ivf) Cope With Infertility Stress, Brennan Peterson, C. R. Newton, K. H. Rosen, G. E. Skaggs

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Men and women use a variety of coping strategies to manage stress associated with infertility. While previous research has helped us understand these coping processes, questions remain about gender differences in coping and the nature of the relationship between coping and specific types of infertility stress. Methods: This study examined the coping behaviors of 1,026 (520 women, 506 men) consecutively referred patients at a Universityaffiliated teaching hospital. Participants completed the Ways of Coping Questionnaire, Fertility Problem Inventory, and the Dyadic Adjustment Scale. Results: Women used proportionately greater amounts of confrontive coping, accepting responsibility, seeking social support, and escape/avoidance when compared …