Sex bias in judgements of occupational suitability.

Discusses 2 forms of sex bias that are based on denigration of women and on sex-role congruence. Studies are reviewed documenting the existence of both forms of bias, but the latter form seems to be prevalent when studies are properly designed. It is argued that the apparent absence of bias in several recent studies was due to the substantial amount of information available about stimulus persons. Investigations directly examining the effects of type and amount of information have shown that relevant information significantly reduces or eliminates bias. A social cognition model of occupational suitability judgments is presented according to which social category information (e.g., sex) is important when little relevant information for the judgment is available. Personal information takes precedence over and obviates the need for category information. Implications for role theory and the division of labor in the work force are discussed. (French abstract) (56 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Addressing criticism of sex bias research on borderline personality disorder.

Replies to H. N. Garb's (see record 1996-08172-001) criticism that D. Becker and S. Lamb (see record 1994-29756-001) overlooked previous studies of sex bias in the diagnosis of borderline personality disorder and overinterpreted their findings. The authors address specific methodological criticisms and discuss their study's strengths (e.g., the inclusion of psychologists and social workers as well as psychiatrists) in the context of studies by M. R. Ford and T. A. Widiger (see record 1989-26071-001), K. A. Henry and C. I. Cohen (see record 1984-06917-001), and D. A. Adler et al (see record 1991-15353-001). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reducing the effects of juror bias.

Proposes a theoretical framework for relating bias to a juror's ultimate judgment. In this framework, bias, in the sense of positivity or negativity of a prejudgmental disposition, is integrated with the degree of guilt appearance of the evidential information. The 2 components, bias and evidence, are inversely weighted, so that increasing the importance of one decreases the effective importance of the other. In 2 experiments with 192 undergraduates, the effects of trait biases in simulated jurors, selected for their harshness or leniency toward criminals, were reduced by conditions that increased the reliability and trustworthiness of trial evidence. Situational biases were induced in a 3rd experiment with 96 undergraduates by trial conditions designed to annoy jurors, but their effects were ameliorated by a short period of deliberation. These bias-reducing procedures are interpreted as indirectly dealing with bias by increasing the salience of the information taken into account in judgment formation. Some implications regarding trial conditions that facilitate or inhibit manifestation of bias are discussed. (28 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Middle class bias in personality testing.

"The higher neurotic tendency scores obtained by the working class on the Bernreuter were found to be accounted for by a third of the inventory items. These items were found to be biased in one of the following ways: (a) they reflected middle-class values, mostly middle-class masculine values… ; (b) their connotations were sufficiently obvious to allow the middle class to benefit from their greater test motivation. We conclude that working-class scores on the inventory are spuriously high." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Detecting sex bias in salaries.

Asserts that the difference index proposed by the author (in press) represents the most effective means of assessing sex bias in salaries and is preferable to regression-based indices regardless of the type of available measures of qualifications and salary. The difference index defines sex bias as the difference in mean salary inequities between men and women and emphasizes the necessity of deciding how much relevant differences in qualifications are worth. Unlike the regression indices, if measurement errors are uncorrelated with sex, the difference index is unchanged. This index is also applicable to other employee characteristics and types of inequity. (7 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adolescents' sex bias in the evaluation of performance.

Examined 252 7th, 9th, and 11th graders' evaluations of articles differing in sex association of field (masculine, feminine, or neutral) and sex of author. Results show that sex bias in the evaluation of performance is well established in boys and girls by the early years of adolescence, particularly in the devaluation of female achievements. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Differential impairment as an indicator of sex bias in DSM-IV criteria for four personality disorders.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the possibility of sex bias in the diagnostic criteria for borderline, schizotypal, avoidant, and obsessive-compulsive personality disorders. A clinical sample of 668 individuals was evaluated for personality disorder criteria using a semistructured interview, and areas of functional impairment were assessed with both self-report and semistructured interview. The authors used a regression model of bias to identify bias as differences in slopes or intercepts between men and women in the relationship between each diagnostic criterion and level of impairment. The results suggest that most of the diagnostic criteria examined do not seem to display sex bias. However, those criteria that displayed evidence of bias came largely from the borderline diagnosis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On detecting sex bias in salaries.

Comments that the model used by M. H. Birnbaum (1979, 1981) to derive his diagnostic test makes the implausible assumption that salary depends only on true quality of performance and is not influenced at all by common measures of merit (e.g., number of publications, years of experience). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the bias of information estimates.

Considers the problem of the calculation of the bias of the maximum likelihood information estimate H, based on independent choices among k events. The expectation EH is calculated exactly as a function of the probabilities p1, p2, . . . , pkk. The bias H - EH is approximated by using a convergent expansion for a logarithm and using the 1st 2 terms of a finite expansion for the jth moment of a random variable. The resulting approximation is more generally valid, although less concise and simple, than the classical Miller-Madow approximation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sex bias and the diagnosis of borderline personality disorder.

Criticizes D. Becker and S. Lamb's (see record 1994-29756-001) paper reporting that women are more likely than men to be diagnosed as having a borderline personality disorder (BPD). Results from the previous research of D. A. Adler et al (see record 1991-15353-001), K. A. Henry and C. I. Cohen (see record 1984-06917-001) and M. R. Ford and T. A. Widiger (see PA, Vol 76: 26071), indicate that the gender of a client does not have a statistically significant effect on whether the client is given a diagnosis of BPD. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developmental sex differences in global-local perceptual bias.

Previous developmental studies have indicated that boys tend to perform better than girls on tasks associated with the right hemisphere (e.g., spatial tasks), whereas girls perform better on tasks associated with the left hemisphere (e.g., verbal tasks). Extending this body of literature to what is known about hemispheric specialization of visuospatial processing, we predicted that boys would be more global than girls in their perception of visual hierarchical stimuli. Forty girls and 39 boys between the ages of 4 and 12 years were administered a perceptual judgment task previously used by Kimchi and Palmer (see record 1983-02534-001). Boys were significantly more global in their perceptual judgments than girls at all ages. Younger children of both sexes were less global than older children. Results were consistent with developmental models that suggest an early left-hemisphere advantage for girls and a right-hemisphere advantage for boys. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sex bias in the diagnosis of histrionic and antisocial personality disorders.

The differential prevalence of the histrionic and antisocial personality disorders among men and women has been attributed both to sex biases and to actual variation in disorder base rates. The present study assessed the bias and base rate explanations and examined whether sex biases are minimized by the relatively explicit diagnostic criteria in the DSM-III. Psychologists (N?=?354) either diagnosed 9 DSM-III disorders from case histories that varied in the ambiguity of the antisocial and histrionic personality disorder diagnoses or rated the degree to which specific features extracted from the case histories met 10 histrionic and antisocial diagnostic criteria. The sex of the patient was either male, female, or unspecified. Sex biases were evident for the diagnoses but not for the diagnostic criteria. The results are discussed with respect to base rate effects, sex biases, and the construction of diagnostic criteria. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reducing intergroup bias: Elements of intergroup cooperation.

The authors examined the potentially separable contributions of 2 elements of intergroup cooperation, interaction and common fate, and the processes through which they can operate. The manipulation of interaction reduced bias in evaluative ratings, which supports the idea that these components are separable, whereas the manipulation of common fate when the groups were interacting was associated with lower bias in nonverbal facial reactions in response to contributions by in-group and out-group members. Whereas interaction activated several processes that can lead to reduced bias, including decategorization, consistent with the common in-group identity model (S. L. Gaertner, I F. Dovidio, P. A. Anastasio, B. A. Bachman, & M. C. Rust, 1993) as well as M. Hewstone and R. J. Brown's (1986) group differentiation model, the primary set of mediators involved participants' representations of the memberships as 2 subgroups within a superordinate entity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reducing intergroup bias: The benefits of recategorization.

Three hundred sixty undergraduates participated in small groups in an experiment that tested 2 strategies, based on the social categorization approach, for reducing intergroup bias. Both strategies involved recategorizing members' conceptual representations of the aggregate compared with a control condition designed to maintain initial group boundaries. The recategorization treatments induced members of 2 3-person groups to conceive of both memberships as 1 6-person group or as 6 separate individuals. The findings revealed that the one-group and separate-individuals conditions, as compared with the control condition, reduced intergroup bias. Furthermore, these recategorized conditions reduced bias in different ways consistent with M. B. Brewer's (see record 1979-25967-001) analysis and J. C. Turner's (1985) self-categorization theory. Specifically, the 1-group representation reduced bias primarily by increasing the attractiveness of former out-group members, whereas the separate-individuals representation primarily decreased the attractiveness of former in-group members. Implications for the utility of these strategies are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mood and personality correlates of IQ by race and sex of subject.

Administered the WISC, Mood Adjective Check List, Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale, the Janis-Field Personality Questionnaire, and Rotter's Internal–External Locus of Control Scale to 416 Black and 416 White junior high and high school students. Results show that mood and personality were significantly related to IQ and that this effect was differentially patterned, depending on Ss' race and sex. Stepwise multiple regression analyses indicated that for all females, externality was the strongest predictor of IQ; for all males, aggression was the strongest or 2nd strongest predictor. Blacks tended to show stronger relationships and higher mean scores on variables that correlated negatively with IQ, and weaker relationships and lower mean scores on variables that correlated positively. A factor analysis indicated that the mood scales could be combined into 3 dimensions: Emotional Upset, Defensive Overconfidence, and Task Interest. The Emotional Upset factor is conceptualized as an index of the degree of internal arousal experienced during examination. (34 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sex bias in the diagnosis of borderline personality disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder.

Questioned the existence of sex bias in the clinical diagnosis of both borderline personality disorder (BPD) and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Social workers, psychologists, and psychiatrists (N?=?1,080) were asked in a mail survey to assess the applicability of a number of diagnoses to a case tailored to include equal numbers of criteria for both BPD and PTSD. Half of the Ss received a "male" case; the other half received an identical "female" case. Results from the final sample of 311 Ss revealed sex bias in diagnosis, particularly with respect to sex of client, sex of clinician, and profession of clinician. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Clinician bias in the diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder and borderline personality disorder.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 2(2) of Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy (see record 2010-12181-005). In this article, the copyright attribution is incorrect. The article is in the public domain.] A sample of volunteers from a group of randomly selected psychologists in New York State (N = 119) provided a primary diagnosis and rule-out diagnoses for a case vignette that included balanced criteria for borderline personality disorder (BPD) and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in a mail survey. Vignettes portrayed a male or a female client, and history of childhood sexual abuse was presented either first or last. Results indicated that cognitive–behavioral therapy (CBT) clinicians were more likely to diagnose PTSD than BPD or other disorders, and psychodynamic clinicians were more likely to diagnose BPD or other disorders than PTSD. An anchoring effect (i.e., evidence that one regards initial information as an anchor that may or may not be adjusted upon exposure to subsequent information) of abuse history presentation was found. Findings did not support a patient or clinician gender bias. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sexual symbolism and the variables of sex and personality integration.

The purpose was to reassess the hypothesis of sexual symbolism using stimulus figures similar to those presented in Levy's study (see 28: 8696). The hypotheses were: (1) when asked to designate stimulus objects as male or female, Ss respond to elongated, pointed, or penetrating objects as male, and to hollow, rounded, or enclosing objects as female; and (2) psychiatric patients identify these objects as male or female, respectively, less frequently than nonpsychiatric patients. 20 psychiatric patients and 20 college students, each group made up of an equal number of males and females, served as Ss. Both hypotheses were confirmed at significant levels. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)