Effects of eating abnormalities and gender on perceptions of desirable body shape.

A. E. Fallon and P. Rozin (see record 1985-14553-001) found that men and women differ when choosing the figure drawings that most resemble (a) their own current figures ({current}), (b) their ideal figures ({ideal}), and (c) the figure thought most attractive to the opposite sex ({opposite}). In the present experiment, women with high Eating Attitude Test (EAT) scores, indicating abnormal eating patterns, choose differently from those with low scores. All women's {ideal} and {opposite} figures are thinner than their {current} figures, whereas men rate all three nearly identically. Only the high-scoring women choose an {ideal} figure thinner than their {opposite}. This suggests that whereas men are satisfied with their figures, women desire to be thinner than they think they are, and women with abnormal eating behaviors desire to be even thinner than what they think men find attractive. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Body-figure preferences in male and female adolescents.

Previous research has examined body dissatisfaction and pressures toward thinness among college-age and adult women, demonstrating greater dissatisfaction among women than men. Little is known about when such sex differences arise. The present study replicated the procedure used by Fallon and Rozin (1985) to assess body-size preferences in a sample of 288 female and 283 male adolescents aged 10.5 to 15 years. Both sexes revealed a small degree of body-figure dissatisfaction relative to their chosen ideal, but neither sex rated their own figure as significantly different from the size considered most attractive to the opposite sex. Both male and female adolescents held distorted perceptions of opposite-sex preferences. Girls showed a bias toward thinness; boys revealed a bias toward larger figures. The latter bias was associated with pubertal development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Body image, attitudes to weight, and misperceptions of figure preferences of the opposite sex: A comparison of men and women in two generations.

This study explores some possible causes of the recent increase in dieting and eating disorders among American women. Measures on body image, attitudes to eating and weight, and eating behaviors were collected from male (sons) and female (daughters) college students and their biological parents. All groups but the sons considered their current body shape to be heavier than their ideal. Mothers and daughters believed that men (of their own generation) prefer much thinner women than these men actually prefer. Mothers and daughters both showed great concern about weight and eating. Although fathers resembled mothers and daughters in their perception of being overweight, they were more similar to their sons in being relatively unconcerned about weight and eating. Hence, the major factor in concern about weight is sex rather than generation or discrepancy between perception of current and ideal body shape. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The science of sex appeal: An evolutionary perspective.

Growing evidence shows that features we find attractive in members of the opposite sex signal important underlying dimensions of health and reproductive viability. It has been discovered that men with attractive faces have higher quality sperm, women with attractive bodies are more fertile, men and women with attractive voices lose their virginity sooner, men who spend more money than they earn have more sex partners, and lap dancers make more tips when they are in the fertile phase of their menstrual cycle. This paper highlights recent evidence showing that the way we perceive other people has been shaped by our evolutionary history. An evolutionary approach provides a powerful tool for understanding the consistency and diversity of mating preferences and behaviors across individuals and cultures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Racial differences in women's desires to be thin

The goal of this research was to attempt to understand why white women are more prone to develop eating disorders than black women. Using self-reports, we found that white women chose a significantly thinner ideal body size than did black women, and expressed more concern than black women with weight and dieting. White women also experienced greater social pressure to be thin than did black women. White men indicated less desire than black men to date a women with a heavier than ideal body size, and white men felt they would more likely be ridiculed than did black men if they did date a woman who was larger than the ideal. The results suggest that black women experience eating disorders less than white women at least in part because they experience less pressure to be thin.     

Perceived proposer personality characteristics and gender differences in acceptance of casual sex offers.

In a highly influential paper, Clark and Hatfield (1989) demonstrated that, whereas men were quite likely to accept a casual sexual offer from a confederate research assistant, women never did so. The current research provides a more in-depth explanation of gender differences in acceptance of casual sex offers via 4 (quasi-) experiments. First, using a person-perception paradigm, I assessed people's impressions of women and men who proposed a casual sexual encounter in the same manner that confederates in Clark and Hatfield did. Women and men agreed that female proposers were more intelligent, successful, and sexually skilled than men who made the same proposals. Second, I demonstrated that the large gender differences from the original Clark and Hatfield study could be eliminated by asking participants to imagine proposals from (attractive and unattractive) famous individuals, friends, and same-gender individuals. Next, I assessed factors associated with likelihood of agreeing to the casual sex proposal. The extent to which women and men believed that the proposer would be sexually skilled predicted how likely they would be to engage in casual sex with this individual. Finally, I examined these factors in the context of actual encounters from the participants' previous experiences, and the results were replicated in this context. Overall findings suggest that the large gender differences Clark and Hatfield observed in acceptance of the casual sex offer may have more to do with perceived personality characteristics of the female versus male proposers than with gender differences among Clark and Hatfield's participants and that sexual pleasure figures largely in women's and men's decision making about casual sex. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Publication Records of Women Counselors During the Past Decade.

The present survey of the publishing habits of women in the Journal of Counseling Psychology found that women published in this journal in higher proportion than would be expected by their membership in Division 17 of the American Psychological Association at the end of the past decade. Women published in the Journal of Counseling Psychology at the end of the 1970s in proportion to the percentage of women who earned counseling psychology PhDs in the mid-1970s. Women published most often with members of the opposite sex, whereas men published with members of the same sex. When men and women published together, first authors were generally men; however, when articles where one man published with one woman were examined, first authorship was shared equally between the sexes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conformity to sex-typed norms, affect, and the self-concept

The self-concept plays an important role in conformity to sex-typed social norms. Normative beliefs that men are powerful, dominant, and self-assertive and that women are caring, intimate with others, and emotionally expressive represent possible standards for whom people ought to be and whom they ideally would like to be. In the present research, to the extent that sex role norms were personally relevant for participants, norm-congruent experiences (i.e., those involving dominance for men and communion for women) yielded positive feelings and brought their actual self-concepts closer to the standards represented by ought and ideal selves.     

Devaluation of the human love object: Heterosexual rejection as a possible antecedent to fetishism.

30 university men chose 1 of 6 women they would most like to date. Half of these men subsequently received feedback that their 1st choice did not choose them in return, and the remainder were informed that the women they chose reciprocally chose them as the men they would most like to date. This procedure was repeated, resulting in 2 successive rejections or acceptances for the respective groups. These 30 men, and an additional 15 who comprised a control group, then rated pictures of designs, lingerie, panties, women's feet, women's legs, and women on scales of pleasantness, sexual arousability, and acceptance. Rejected men evaluated pictures of women less positively than did other men, and they evaluated pictures of women less positively than they did pictures of women's legs and panties in contrast to other men whose ratings of these 3 pictures did not differ significantly. Implications for a 2-factor model of fetishism are discussed. (11 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Publication records of women clinicians in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology..

Findings reveal that women published in proportion to their membership in Division 12 of the American Psychological Association. There was a lower percentage of women authors, however, as compared to the percentage of women PhD clinicians at the end of the decade. Women published most often with members of the opposite sex, whereas men published with members of the same sex. When men and women published together, 1st authors were generally men; however, when articles for which 1 man published with 1 woman were examined, 1st authorship was shared equally between the sexes. (3 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceived and real sex differences in college students' career planning.

Examined (a) sex differences in success avoidance, home–career conflict, and the importance of attitudes of significant members of the opposite sex as influences on college students' career planning; and (b) sex differences in and the accuracy of counselors' perceptions regarding those variables. The author's Relationships Influencing Career Planning Scale, designed to measure the 3 dependent variables, was administered to 55 male and 80 female undergraduates and 97 male and 77 female counselors. Female students reported significantly more success avoidance and home–career conflict than male students. Male counselors thought male students were more influenced by success avoidance and significant women than male students actually reported. All counselors perceived that female students experienced more of all 3 dependent variables than female students actually reported. No significant sex differences were found in counselors' perceptions of students' responses. (13 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sex typing and androgyny in dyadic interaction: Individual differences in responsiveness to physical attractiveness.

In an expansion of the "behavioral confirmation" paradigm developed by M. Snyder et al (see record 1979-26014-001), 12 sex-typed and 12 androgynous (Bem Sex-Role Inventory) undergraduates of each sex engaged in getting-acquainted telephone conversations with allegedly attractive and unattractive members of their own and the opposite sex. Although females were more socially responsive than males, the sexes neither differed in their responsiveness to physical attractiveness nor in their responsiveness to cross-sex and same-sex interaction. As hypothesized, sex-typed individuals were rated by blind judges as being significantly more responsive toward allegedly attractive than unattractive partners. In contrast, androgynous men did not differentiate on the basis of physical attractiveness, and androgynous women actually led allegedly unattractive targets to be rated as more socially attractive than allegedly attractive targets, thereby disconfirming the physical attractiveness stereotype. Because cultural definitions of physical attractiveness are different for men and women, results are discussed in the context of recent evidence that sex-typed individuals have a particular readiness to encode and organize information in terms of gender. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sex role perceptions during adolescence.

Sex-role perceptions were examined by having 165 males and 141 females in Grades 7–12 respond to the Self-Esteem Inventory and the Nowicki-Strickland Adult Locus of Control Scale under 2 sets of instructions: (a) a standard set and (b) a set in which Ss were asked to respond as they thought a member of the same age and grade but of the opposite sex would respond. No sex differences were obtained on the 2 instruments under the standard set of instructions. Under opposite-sex instructions, however, both sexes credited males with being higher in self-esteem than females. On the locus of control scale, members of both sexes perceived themselves to be more internally controlled than members of the opposite sex. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sex similarities and differences in preferences for short-term mates: What, whether, and why.

Are there sex differences in criteria for sexual relationships? The answer depends on what question a researcher asks. Data suggest that, whereas the sexes differ in whether they will enter short-term sexual relationships, they are more similar in what they prioritize in partners for such relationships. However, additional data and context of other findings and theory suggest different underlying reasons. In Studies 1 and 2, men and women were given varying "mate budgets" to design short-term mates and were asked whether they would actually mate with constructed partners. Study 3 used a mate-screening paradigm. Whereas women have been found to prioritize status in long-term mates, they instead (like men) prioritize physical attractiveness much like an economic necessity in short-term mates. Both sexes also show evidence of favoring well-rounded long- and short-term mates when given the chance. In Studies 4 and 5, participants report reasons for having casual sex and what they find physically attractive. For women, results generally support a good genes account of short-term mating, as per strategic pluralism theory (S. W. Gangestad & J. A. Simpson, 2000). Discussion addresses broader theoretical implications for mate preference, and the link between method and theory in examining social decision processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

How chronic self-views influence (and potentially mislead) estimates of performance.

An important source of people's perceptions of their performance, and potential errors in those perceptions, are chronic views people hold regarding their abilities. In support of this observation, manipulating people's general views of their ability, or altering which view seemed most relevant to a task, changed performance estimates independently of any impact on actual performance. A final study extended this analysis to why women disproportionately avoid careers in science. Women performed equally to men on a science quiz, yet underestimated their performance because they thought less of their general scientific reasoning ability than did men. They, consequently, were more likely to refuse to enter a science competition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Protease inhibitor combination therapies and perceptions of gay men regarding AIDS severity and the need to maintain safer sex

BACKGROUND: Advances in the treatment of HIV disease with protease inhibitor combination therapies have been widely documented in the media. OBJECTIVES: To investigate perceptions concerning the severity of HIV/AIDS and the need to maintain safer sex practices in the light of recent HIV treatment advances. METHODS: A survey eliciting demographic characteristics, HIV serostatus and treatment information, and HIV/AIDS severity and safer sex perceptions was administered to a community sample of 379 homo-/bisexual men who reported awareness of combination therapy regimens. RESULTS: Ten per cent of all respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the statement that 'AIDS is now very nearly cured' and 13% felt that the threat of AIDS is less serious than in the past. HIV-positive men were more likely to perceive AIDS as a less serious threat or as very nearly cured. Overall, 8% of men in the sample indicated that they practice safer sex less often since new AIDS treatments came along; 18% of HIV-positive men on combination therapy regimens said they practice safer sex less frequently since treatments have advanced. Regardless of serostatus, nearly 20% of men indicated they would stop practicing safer sex if an AIDS cure was announced. CONCLUSION: It is essential to integrate behavior change counseling into HIV treatment programs and to temper optimism concerning treatment advances with recognition that the threat of HIV/AIDS remains great.     

Effects of age and gender on perceived facial attractiveness.

Examined 2 alternative predictions: (1) that Ss would find others similar to themselves as most attractive or (2) that men would prefer younger women and women more mature men. 22 men and 25 women (aged 17–29 yrs), 16 men and 18 women (aged 30–49 yrs) and 18 men and 32 women (aged 50+ yrs) rated the physical attractiveness of 72 photographs of faces from similar age/gender categories. For all groups of Ss, perceived attractiveness declined with age of face, particularly for women's faces. In addition, most groups rated women's faces as more attractive than those of men, the exception being men under 30 yrs, who rated men higher. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sex differences in the time course of emotion.

Conventional wisdom holds that women are more "emotional" than men. However, research evidence suggests that sex differences in emotion are considerably more complex. The authors tested hypotheses about sex differences in the engagement of the approach and avoidance motivational systems thought to underpin emotional responses. The authors measured reported emotional experience and startle response magnitude both during the presentation and after the offset of emotional stimuli that engage these motivational systems to assess whether men and women differ in their patterns of immediate response to emotional stimuli and in their patterns of recovery from these responses. Our findings indicated that women were more experientially reactive to negative, but not positive, emotional pictures compared to men, and that women scored higher than men on measure of aversive motivational system sensitivity. Although both men and women exhibited potentiation of the startle response during the presentation of negative pictures relative to neutral pictures, only women continued to show this relative potentiation during the recovery period, indicating that women were continuing to engage the aversive motivational system after the offset of negative emotional pictures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)