Lowest Common Denominator
Equal Opportunity Objectification? The Sexualization of Men and Women on the Cover of Rolling Stone
Erin Hatton & Mary Nell Trautner
Sexuality & Culture, September 2011, Pages 256-278
Abstract:
A number of journalists and scholars have pointed to the sexual objectification of women and men in popular media to argue that Western culture has become "sexualized" or even "pornified." Yet it is not clear whether men or women have become more frequently - or more intensely sexualized - over time. In a longitudinal content analysis of images of women and men on more than four decades of Rolling Stone magazine covers (1967-2009), we begin to answer such questions. Using a unique analytical framework that allows us to measure both the frequency and intensity of sexualization, we find that sexualized images of men and women have increased, though women continue to be more frequently sexualized than men. Yet our most striking finding is the change in how women - but not men - are sexualized. Women are increasingly likely to be "hypersexualized," but men are not. These findings not only document changes in the sexualization of men and women in popular culture over time, they also point to a narrowing of the culturally acceptable ways for "doing" femininity as presented in popular media.
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Male advantage in sound localization at cocktail parties
Ida Zündorf, Hans-Otto Karnath & Jörg Lewald
Cortex, June 2011, Pages 741-749
Abstract:
Sex differences exist in the structural organization of the human brain and are related to cognitive abilities. Females usually outperform men in verbal fluency, verbal memory, perceptual speed, numerical calculation, and fine motor skills, whereas males are superior in visuospatial abilities, throwing accuracy, and mathematical reasoning. Here we demonstrated a male advantage in spatial abilities for the auditory modality. We employed a sound localization task based on the so-called "cocktail party situation", requiring extraction of auditory information of a specific sound source when multiple competing sound sources were present. The results indicated better performance of males than females for localizing target sounds in a multi-source sound environment. This finding suggests a sex difference in the attentional mechanisms extracting spatial information of one acoustic event of interest from an auditory scene composed of multiple sound sources. It seems that the known male superiority in spatial abilities may be supramodal, rather than a specificity of the visual modality.
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Early Non-marital Childbearing and the "Culture of Despair"
Melissa Schettini Kearney & Phillip Levine
NBER Working Paper, June 2011
Abstract:
This paper borrows from the tradition of other social sciences in considering the impact that "culture" (broadly defined as the economic and social environment in which the poor live) plays in determining early, non-marital childbearing. Along with others before us, we hypothesize that the despair and hopelessness that poor, young women may face increases the likelihood that they will give birth at an early age outside of marriage. We derive a formal economic model that incorporates the perception of economic success as a key factor driving one's decision to have an early, non-marital birth. We propose that this perception is based in part on the level of income inequality that exists in a woman's location of residence. Using individual-level data from the United States and a number of other developed countries, we empirically investigate the role played by inequality across states in determining the early childbearing outcomes of low socioeconomic status (SES) women. We find low SES women are more likely to give birth at a young age and outside of marriage when they live in higher inequality locations, all else equal. Less frequent use of abortion is an important determinant of this behavior. We calculate that differences in the level of inequality are able to explain a sizable share of the geographic variation in teen fertility rates both across U.S. states and across developed countries.
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Early Pubertal Timing and the Union Formation Behaviors of Young Women
Shannon Cavanagh
Social Forces, June 2011, Pages 1217-1238
Abstract:
This study examined whether the transition into adolescence, proxied by pubertal timing, shaped the transition into adulthood, proxied by union formation behaviors, among contemporary American women. In a sample drawn from Add Health (n = 7,523), early maturing girls reported an accelerated transition to marriage and cohabitation in young adulthood, net of family structure history, academic achievement in high school, and parental education. The link between pubertal timing and cohabitation was strongest among socioeconomically advantaged women; no socio-economic differences were identified for marriage. The tendency for early maturers to have more pronounced romantic orientations during adolescence partially explained their transitions to marriage. In all, the persistence of the pubertal timing effect into young adulthood suggests that early maturers accelerated entrance into the romantic market in adolescence has a cascading, long-term impact on the shape of their lives in young adulthood.
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Olga Yakusheva
Economic Inquiry, July 2011, Pages 810-837
Abstract:
This study uses the High School and Beyond data (1980-1992) to examine the importance of educational and fertility expectations in explaining the achievement gap of adolescent mothers for over 5,500 young women from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Using a non-parametric local propensity score regression, the study finds that the economic disadvantage associated with having a child in high school is particularly large in poor socioeconomic environments; however, this disadvantage is a result of preexisting differences in the educational and fertility expectations and is not because of a diminished capacity of the socioeconomic environment to mediate the effect of an unplanned childbirth. The findings suggest that childcare assistance and other policies designed to alleviate the burden of child rearing for young mothers of low means may not produce the desired improvement in their subsequent educational and labor market outcomes. A much earlier policy intervention with a focus on fostering young women's outlook for the future is needed.
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Changes in Women's Interpersonal Styles Across the Menstrual Cycle
Patrick Markey & Charlotte Markey
Journal of Research in Personality, forthcoming
Abstract:
Past research suggests that women alter their behaviors during periods of high fertility to attract mates. Consistent with this notion, the current research examined the interpersonal style, as defined by the interpersonal circumplex, men tend to find most attractive in potential mates and the change in women's interpersonal styles across the menstrual cycle. In Study 1, a sample of 101 single men reported the interpersonal style they found most attractive in a potential mate. In Study 2, a sample of 86 women reported their interpersonal styles during each day of their menstrual cycle. Results indicated that men tended to prefer mates who were interpersonally warm and that women tended to become more interpersonally warm during periods of high fertility.
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Attachment figures activate a safety signal-related neural region and reduce pain experience
Naomi Eisenberger et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 12 Jul 2011, Pages 11721-11726
Abstract:
Although it has long been hypothesized that attachment figures provide individuals with a sense of safety and security, the neural mechanisms underlying attachment-induced safety have not been explored. Here, we investigated whether an attachment figure acts as a safety signal by exploring whether viewing an attachment figure during a threatening experience (physical pain) led to increased activity in a neural region associated with safety signaling, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC), and corresponding reductions in pain. Female participants in long-term romantic relationships were scanned as they received painful stimuli while viewing pictures of their partner and control images (stranger, object). Consistent with the idea that the attachment figure may signal safety, results revealed that viewing partner pictures while receiving painful stimulation led to reductions in self-reported pain ratings, reductions in pain-related neural activity (dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, anterior insula), and increased activity in the VMPFC. Moreover, greater VMPFC activity in response to partner pictures was associated with longer relationship lengths and greater perceived partner support, further highlighting a role for the VMPFC in responding to the safety value of the partner. Last, greater VMPFC activity while viewing partner pictures was associated with reduced pain ratings and reduced pain-related neural activity. An implication of these findings is that, in the same way that stimuli that historically have threatened survival (e.g., snakes, spiders) are considered to be prepared fear stimuli, attachment figures, who have historically benefited survival, may serve as prepared safety stimuli, reducing threat- or distress-related responding in their presence.
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Stress resilience in early marriage: Can practice make perfect?
Lisa Neff & Elizabeth Broady
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
As all couples experience stressful life events, addressing how couples adapt to stress is imperative for understanding marital development. Drawing from theories of stress inoculation, which suggest that the successful adaptation to moderately stressful events may help individuals develop a resilience to future stress, the current studies examined whether experiences with manageable stressors early in the marriage may serve to make the relationship more resilient to future stress. In Study 1, 61 newlywed couples provided data regarding their stressful life events, relationship resources (i.e., observed problem-solving behaviors), and marital satisfaction at multiple points over 2½ years. Results revealed that among spouses displaying more effective problem-solving behaviors, those who experienced moderate stress during the early months of marriage exhibited fewer future stress spillover effects and reported greater increases in felt efficacy than did spouses who had less experience with early stress. Study 2 examined stress resilience following the transition to parenthood in a new sample of 50 newlywed couples. Again, spouses who experienced moderate stress during the early months of marriage and had good initial relationship resources (i.e., observed support behaviors) reported greater marital adjustment following the transition to parenthood than did spouses who had good initial resources but less prior experience coping with stress. Together, results indicate that entering marriage with better relationship resources may not be sufficient to shield marital satisfaction from the detrimental effects of stress; rather, couples may also need practice in using those resources to navigate manageable stressful events.
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"Let My Fingers Do the Talking": Sexting and Infidelity in Cyberspace
Diane Kholos Wysocki & Cheryl Childers
Sexuality & Culture, September 2011, Pages 217-239
Abstract:
This exploratory project investigated the behaviors of sexting and infidelity on the internet. The researchers placed a survey on a web site designed for married people to find sexual partners outside their marriage. Using a sample of 5,187 respondents, the study explored how people use the internet to find partners. Using both descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression analysis, the researchers found that the respondents use the internet to find real-life partners, both for dating and for sex hookups, but many are anxious about being caught. Females are more likely than males to engage in sexting behaviors, while females and males are equally as likely to cheat both online and in real life while in a serious real-life relationship. Older males, however, are more likely than younger males to cheat in real life. The results suggest that perhaps people who are using dating web sites do not conform to the "official" standards of dating culture, but that maybe the standards are changing.
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Daniel Farrelly
British Journal of Psychology, August 2011, Pages 406-430
Abstract:
Previous research highlighting the role sexual selection may play in the evolution of human cooperation has yet to distinguish what qualities such behaviours actually signal. The aim here was to examine whether female preferences for male cooperative behaviours are because they signal genetic or indirect phenotypic quality. This was possible by taking into account female participants' stage of menstrual cycle, as much research has shown that females at the most fertile stage show greater preferences specifically for signals of genetic quality than any other stage, particularly for short-term relationships. Therefore, different examples of cooperation (personality, costly signals, heroism) and the mate preferences for altruistic traits self-report scale were used across a series of four experiments to examine females' attitudes towards cooperation in potential mates for different relationship lengths at different stages of the menstrual cycle. The results here consistently show that female fertility had no effect on perceptions of cooperative behaviour, and that such traits were considered more important for long-term relationships. Therefore, this provides strong evidence that cooperative behaviour is important in mate choice as predominantly a signal of phenotypic rather than genetic quality.
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Nicolas Koranyi & Klaus Rothermund
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
In order to maintain a satisfying committed relationship, individuals have to cope successfully with stressors, especially those that concern both partners (i.e., dyadic stress). The aim of our study is to investigate automatic up-regulation of interpersonal trust as an adaptive response to relationship challenges. In three experiments, we manipulated relationship stress by instructing half of the participants to imagine a relationship threat (Exps. 1 & 2: a longer period of physical separation, Exp. 3: any possible stressor that could challenge their relationship). Participants subsequently played an anonymous, one-shot trust game (Exps. 1 & 2) or rated the trustworthiness of unknown faces (Exp. 3) to assess automatic up-regulation of interpersonal trust. Results revealed that participants in the relationship stress condition displayed higher trusting behavior in the trust game, and rated the trustworthiness of unknown faces as higher compared to participants in the control condition. These findings suggest that interpersonal trust is situationally and automatically attuned to relationship demands and challenges.
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Mitja Back et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Knowing one's mate value (mate-value accuracy) is an important element in reproductive success. We investigated within- and between-sex differences in this ability in a real-life speed-dating event. A total of 190 men and 192 women filled out a personality questionnaire and participated in speed-dating sessions. Immediately after each date, participants recorded who they would choose as mates and who they expected would choose them. In line with evolutionarily informed hypotheses, results indicated that sociosexually unrestricted men and more agreeable women showed greater mate-value accuracy than sociosexually restricted men and less agreeable women, respectively. These results have important implications for understanding mating behavior and perhaps the origin of sex differences in personality.
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Relationship-specific identification and spontaneous relationship maintenance processes
Lisa Linardatos & John Lydon
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Attractive alternative partners pose a relational threat to people in romantic relationships. Given that people are often limited in their time and energy, having the capacity to effortlessly respond to such relational threats is extremely useful. In 4 studies, we explored how people's identity in terms of their romantic relationship-their relationship-specific identity-affects their relationship-protective behaviors. We predicted that once a relationship becomes a part of one's sense of self, relationship maintenance responses are exhibited in a relatively fluid, spontaneous manner. In Study 1, we assessed the convergent and divergent validity of relationship-specific identification, demonstrating how it is associated with other relationship constructs. In Study 2, we found that less identified participants mentioned their relationship less than those high in relationship-specific identification, but only when interacting with an attractive member of their preferred sex. In Study 3, using a dot-probe visual cuing task, we found that when primed with an attractive member of their preferred sex, those low in relationship-specific identification gazed longer at attractive preferred-sex others compared to those high in relationship-specific identification. In Study 4, we found that relationship-specific identification was associated with relationship survival 1-3 years after the initial assessment. The present results demonstrate that relationship-specific identification predicts relatively spontaneous, pro-relationship responses in the face of relational threat.