Peers' granting of control to women with different sex role identities: Implications for depression.

Investigated the degree of control given to 4 (videotaped) women with different sex-role identities to study the extent to which peers (24 male and 24 female undergraduates) were willing to grant control to women with different sex-role identities. Ss indicated how much control they would give each of the role-identified women if working individually with each woman on various 2-person tasks. Results indicate that women with different sex-role identities were granted different amounts of control by their peers as a function of the type of 2-person task under consideration. Women rated high on masculinity were granted greater control on enjoyable and creative tasks, whereas women rated low in masculinity were given more control on methodological and less enjoyable tasks. Women judged high in femininity were given control on tasks requiring interpersonal skills. Findings are discussed within the context of learned helplessness theory as a possible aid in understanding why more women than men become depressed. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sex role identity and the decision to regain control among women: A learned helplessness investigation.

280 female undergraduates from 4 sex-role identity groups underwent either an initial loss of control (helpless) or control (nonhelpless) experience. Ss were then allowed to choose their role in a team problem-solving task. They could either (a) have total control over the team's decisions, (b) have no control over the team's decisions, or (c) not participate in the task. Compared to Ss low on masculinity, Ss high on masculinity chose to be in control of team problem solving in both the helpless and nonhelpless conditions. None of the 14 feminine-sex-typed Ss chose to control the team's decisions in the helpless condition, whereas 10 of the 14 masculine-sex-typed Ss made this choice. Results are discussed relative to the high rates of depression among women. (30 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sex-role and socialization patterns: Some personality concomitants and environmental antecedents.

Distinguished between sex-role typing, socialization, and identification in 66 male and 69 female 30-40 yr old Ss using the Femininity and Socialization scales of the California Psychological Inventory. Ss were grouped according to their sex-role and socialization pattern: sex appropriate-socialized, sex appropriate-unsocialized, sex inappropriate-socialized, and sex inappropriate-unsocialized. The personality correlates of these patternings were highly informative, as were the family and childhood data available for these Ss. The relationships were interpreted employing an articulated version of the concept of identification. It is noted that sex-role typing for men appears to expand the personal options available to them; for women, sex-role typing seems to restrict the alternatives of action and expression that are available. (51 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sex role typing and ego identity in Israeli, Oriental, and Western adolescents.

1,129 Oriental and Western Israeli students from religious and secular high schools participated in a study to investigate (a) the relation between sex-role typing and ego identity, (b) the distribution of sex-role typing within different cultural groups, and (c) the relative contribution of masculinity (M), femininity (F), religiousness, sex, and ethnic origin to prediction of ego identity variables. Ss completed the Bar-Ilan Sex Role Inventory and the Adolescent Ego Identity Scale, which measures 3 factors: commitment and purposefulness, solidity and continuity, and social recognition. More androgynous, less sex-typed, and less undifferentiated Ss were found among Orientals than among Westerners. Sex-role type was significantly related to each of the ego identity variables, indicating that androgynous Ss were highest followed by masculine, feminine, and undifferentiated Ss. Boys were higher than girls on Solidity and Continuity, but lower on Social Recognition. Westerners were higher than Orientals on Commitment and Purposefulness and on Total Ego Identity. Religious Ss were higher than secular Ss on Commitment and Purposefulness. Regression analyses revealed high prediction of ego identity variables with greater prediction power for M than for F in both ethnic groups. Ego identity was predicted by M among boys, whereas both M and F predicted ego identity with greater prediction power for M than for F. (61 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An attempt to reverse performance deficits associated with depression and experimentally induced helplessness.

The learned helplessness model of depression predicts that any effective treatment for reactive depression should also reverse performance deficits associated with experimentally induced helplessness, and vice versa. A study was conducted to test this prediction. Ss were 62 college students who were exposed to experimental manipulations designed to induce helplessness or who scored above a group mean on the Beck Depression Inventory. Depressed and helpless Ss were randomly assigned to 4 groups. The 2 treatment groups received either E. Velten's (1968) mood statements for the induction of elation or a set of simple anagrams to solve. The 2 remaining groups were exposed to no-treatment conditions. All Ss were tested for helplessness on a series of concept formation problems. Results fail to confirm the predictions of the learned helplessness model of depression. Although treatment was effective with helpless Ss, the performance of treated depressed Ss was not enhanced. Also, depressed Ss given anagrams performed more poorly than depressed Ss given mood statements. Several possible explanations for the findings are considered. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

When cognitive exertion does not yield cognitive gain: Toward an informational explanation of learned helplessness.

This study tested a new information-processing explanation of learned helplessness that proposes that an uncontrollable situation produces helplessness symptoms because it is a source of inconsistent, self-contradictory task information during problem-solving attempts. The flow of such information makes hypothesis-testing activity futile. Prolonged and inefficient activity of this kind leads in turn to the emergence of a state of cognitive exhaustion, with accompanying performance deficits. In 3 experiments, Ss underwent informational helplessness training (IHT): They were sequentially exposed to inconsistent task information during discrimination problems. As predicted, IHT was associated with subjective symptoms of irreducible uncertainty and resulted in (a) performance deterioration on subsequent avoidance learning, (b) heightened negative mood, and (c) subjective symptoms of cognitive exhaustion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of amount of helplessness training and internal–external locus of control on mood and performance.

Based on C. B. Wortman and J. W. Brehm's (1975) integration of reactance theory with M. E. Seligman's (1972, 1975) model of learned helplessness, the present study examined the effects of amount of helplessness training and internal–external locus of control on subsequent task performance and on self-ratings of mood. 90 undergraduates were divided into internal and external groups on the basis of their scores on Rotter's Internal–External Locus of Control Scale and were then given either high, low, or no helplessness training on a series of concept-formation problems. After completing the Multiple Affect Adjective Check List, all Ss worked on an anagram task presented as a 2nd experiment by a 2nd experimenter. Internals exhibited greater performance decrements and reported greater depression under high helplessness than did externals. In the low helplessness conditions, internals tended to perform better than control Ss, while externals tended to perform worse than control Ss; low helplessness Ss also reported the highest levels of hostility. The results are discussed within the context of Wortman and Brehm's integration of reactance and learned helplessness theories. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Career involvement of women in dual-career families: The influence of sex role identity.

Studied the influence of sex-role identity on the career involvement of 70 25–45 yr old professional women who were members of dual-career families that included young children. As predicted, Ss categorized as masculine on the Personality Research Form, ANDRO scales, were employed a significantly greater proportion of time after having children than Ss categorized as feminine. In addition, the more equalitarian the marriage, the more likely S was to continue her career participation after having children. Regardless of employment status and the equalitarianism of the marriage, Ss reported that they spent significantly more time alone with their children than their husbands did. Implications for various counseling situations are noted. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of sex role deviance in disturbed male adolescents on the perception of psychopathology.

Investigated the effect of sex-role deviance on the perception of psychopathology and correlated the size of this effect with measures of sex-role ideology and gender stereotyping. The study employed a person perception rating task in which Ss (99 school teachers; mean age 24.4) evaluated written case histories of sex-role deviant and sex-role congruent male adolescents with emotional and behavioral problems. Male adolescents were judged to be more disturbed if their hobbies, career aspirations, and interests were deviant for their sex than if they were sex-role congruent. The relationship between evaluative bias (i.e., the extent to which greater disturbance was perceived in sex-role deviant than congruent stimulus persons) and measures of gender stereotyping and sex-role ideology was also established. Gender stereotyping correlated significantly with bias, while sex-role ideology was not significantly correlated. Similar bias effects were found for male and female Ss. (French summary) (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sex role identity, peer evaluation of competition, and the responses of women and men in a competitive situation.

A 2 (male vs female)?×?2 (peer approval vs disapproval of competition)?×?4 (sex-role identity: masculine, feminine, androgynous, undifferentiated) design was used with 78 female and 67 male students who were randomly assigned to approval/disapproval conditions. Sex-role identity was measured using the Personal Attributes Questionnaire. Results reveal effects of sex-role identity and interactions of sex and peer evaluation of competition on performance and related variables. Masculine and androgynous groups had higher expectancies for performance than feminine groups, better objective performance, and greater perceived success than feminine or undifferentiated Ss of either sex. Men and women in the masculine and androgynous groups did not differ from each other in performance, affect, or cognitions. The interactions of sex and peer evaluation of competition revealed that women responded more positively on all measures to approval than disapproval, whereas men's responses were largely unaffected. (42 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learned helplessness in Black and White children identified by their schools as retarded and nonretarded: Performance deterioration in response to failure.

20 Black and 20 White children who had been identified as retarded and nonretarded but were similar in MA (110.2–214.3 mo) were administered concept formation problems designed to reveal use of strategies. When feedback was veridical the groups did not differ in their use of effective strategies, but when feedback became consistently negative the groups diverged markedly. Under negative feedback, retarded Ss showed striking deterioration in strategy usage, but nonretarded Ss showed no deterioration. Consistent with these findings, teachers rated retarded Ss as significantly more helpless than their nonretarded peers on a checklist of relevant school behavior. Additional findings suggest that Black retarded Ss may be more susceptible to helplessness than are their White counterparts. Finally, group differences in verbalizations during problem solving bore little relation to group differences in actual performance. Findings point to helplessness deficits in retarded children that may interfere significantly with expression of their actual abilities. (31 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Influence of presenter's gender on students' evaluations of presenters discussing sex fairness in counseling: An analogue study.

70 university students who planned to enter graduate school in the helping professions viewed 1 of 4 videotapes. Two tapes described some of the relationships between the law and psychology, and 2 described the issues of sex bias and sex-role stereotyping in counseling women. The same male and female made identical presentations on each topic. Ss evaluated the presenter on a general measure of professional effectiveness and rated the importance of the tape's content. Three of the 4 hypotheses advanced were supported: (a) the male presenter received higher ratings than the female presenter, (b) the difference in ratings between the female and male presenters was greater for the topic directly related to women than for the topic not directly related, and (c) the female presenter discussing sex-role stereotyping received the lowest ratings of the 4 conditions. Contrary to predictions, topics were not rated as more important when presented by a male than by a female. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interaction of sex role self-concept with relationship quality and relationship beliefs in married, heterosexual cohabiting, gay, and lesbian couples.

Examined the relationship between sex-role self-concept (masculine, feminine, undifferentiated, and androgynous) and relationship quality and dysfunctional relationship beliefs among 44 married (mean age 29.68 yrs), 35 heterosexual cohabiting (mean age 28.68 yrs), 50 homosexual (mean age 31.28 yrs), and 56 lesbian (mean age 31.18 yrs) couples. Ss completed questionnaires on demographic and background information, the Bem Sex-Role Inventory, a relationship beliefs inventory, and relationship quality assessments. Individual partner analyses revealed that relationship quality and relationship beliefs differed by Ss' sex-role self-concept. Androgynous and feminine Ss reported higher relationship quality than masculine and undifferentiated Ss; androgynous Ss had fewer "disagreement is destructive" beliefs than feminine Ss; and androgynous Ss had fewer "partner cannot change" beliefs than undifferentiated Ss. Couple analyses showed a relation between partners' sex-role self-concept only for the heterosexual cohabiting couples. For these couples, masculine men tended to pair with feminine or undifferentiated women, and androgynous partners tended to pair together. Relative to other couples, those in which one or both partners were androgynous or feminine reported the highest relationship quality; couples in which one or both partners were undifferentiated or masculine reported the lowest. These effects did not vary by type of couple. It is concluded that sex-role self-concept is a robust factor in appraisals of relationship quality. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The roles of self-esteem and self-consciousness in the Wortman-Brehm model of reactance and learned helplessness.

Studied the conditions under which failure would enhance or inhibit subsequent task performance. Based on the theory of C. B. Wortman and J. W. Brehm (1975), it was expected that small amounts of failure would produce reactance (manifested by improved performance at a subsequent task); large amounts would lead to learned helplessness (i.e., impaired later performance). It was further expected that individual differences in self-esteem and private self-consciousness would serve as moderator variables for the effects. In Exp I, 78 college students were exposed to either a small amount or no failure before working on an anagrams task. As predicted, Ss high in self-consciousness, who showed greater reactance arousal in attitude change studies, performed better on the anagrams task than Ss low in self-consciousness in the small-failure condition, but not in the no-failure condition. In Exp II, 119 Ss were pretreated with either a small amount of failure, an extended amount of failure, or no failure before working on the task. A significant Self-Esteem by Helplessness Training interaction emerged. Low self-esteem Ss (low SEs) performed marginally better than did high SEs in the small-failure condition but significantly worse than high SEs in the extended-failure condition. Questionnaire data from Exp II were consistent with the notion that enhanced performance reflected reactance, whereas impaired performance signified helplessness. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learned helplessness and depression in a clinical population: A test of two behavioral hypotheses.

Conducted a study to extend the learned helplessness phenomenon to a clinical population and to test the competing hypotheses of M. E. Seligman (1975) and P. M. Lewinsohn (1974). 96 male hospitalized psychiatric and medical patients were divided into 3 levels of depression according to their scores on the Short Form of the Beck Depression Inventory. Ss were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 experimental conditions: (a) One group was treated with an 80-db tone, which could be terminated by making an active response; (b) a 2nd group was treated with the tone with a passive escape contingency; (c) a 3rd group was treated with an inescapable tone; and (d) a no-noise group served as a control. After treatment, Ss were tested on an anagram-solving task. Inescapable noise produced as much deficit in the low-depressed Ss as was present in the depressed no-noise control Ss. Passive escape Ss did as well as active escape Ss. Results replicate the learned helplessness phenomenon in a group of clinical depressives and support Seligman's model of depression. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On specificity in the impact of social participation on physical and psychological health.

Distinguished specific components of social interaction and health and examined differential relationships among them in an experiment with 43 male and 53 female undergraduates. Three distinct categories of social participation variables were posited: quality, quantity, and social traits. It was hypothesized that health problems would be more frequent among Ss with poor quality interaction and that socially communicated illnesses (e.g., urinary-sexual disorders) would be more prevalent among Ss with a greater quantity of social participation, regardless of quality. Ss completed instruments to assess self-esteem, loneliness, self-consciousness, Machiavellianism, sex-role orientation, trust and social skills. Ss were rated for physical attractiveness, and their visits to the health service were recorded. Results confirm the hypotheses for females. For males, the pattern of results was more complex, in that masculinity and femininity influenced the manner in which symptoms were expressed. Findings support the notion that social relations have a specific impact on health. (44 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Performance impairment after failure: Mechanism and sex differences.

Conducted 2 experiments in which 120 male and 120 female 7th graders completed 10 solvable or unsolvable matching-figures tasks and then tried to solve 15 anagrams described as highly or moderately difficult. In Exp I, 120 Ss did not have the option to give up on an anagram before the allotted time had elapsed. No performance impairment in response to failure was found. In Exp II with another 120 Ss, Ss were able to give up and choose to move on to the next anagram. Boys performed significantly worse after failure when anagrams were described as moderately difficult. They performed as well as Ss who completed solvable matching figures, however, when the 2nd task was described as very difficult. These data for the boys were consistent with M. Zuckerman's (see record 1980-28101-001) ego-threat hypothesis. Girls followed the pattern associated with learned helplessness (e.g., C. S. Dweck and N. D. Reppucci; see record 1973-26160-001), performing less well when the 2nd task was described as very difficult. The presence or absence of an observer had no effect. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learned helplessness, test anxiety, and acknowledgment of contingencies.

72 undergraduates designated as high or low test anxious (Test Anxiety Questionnaire) received either controllable of uncontrollable noise in a typical helplessness induction. Half of them subsequently received an acknowledgment of contingencies in the induction task, and the other half did not. An anagram task was then administered. Test anxiety theory successfully predicted group differences in anagram performance: Only high-test-anxious Ss were debilitated by the helplessness induction. The effects of providing acknowledgment of contingencies proved ambiguous, but this may have been due to the wording of the acknowledgment and the susceptibility of high-test-anxious Ss to social dimensions of the task situation. Because of differences in terminology, learned helplessness theory has failed to take into account a large body of literature that has similarly employed experimenter-induced failure, and there are numerous competing explanations for impairments following a helplessness induction. Test anxiety theory suggests that the deficits underlying impaired performance are likely to be attentional in nature. (32 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sex-role conflict in alcoholic women: Myth or reality.

Compared various dimensions of masculinity–femininity in 120 female alcoholics, 118 females in treatment for emotional or psychiatric disorders, and 119 women in a nontreatment normal control group. Measures included the Femininity scale of the California Psychological Inventory, Bem Sex Role Inventory, Franck Drawing Completion Test, and Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. Limited evidence was found for the greater existence of sex-role conflict between "unconscious masculinity" and "conscious femininity" among alcoholic Ss than among nonalcoholic Ss. Less than 25% of the total alcoholic sample evidenced this pattern of sex-role conflict. Alcoholic Ss showed feminine role-relevant preferences similar to those of the nonalcoholic controls. They reported fewer "masculine" behaviors on a measure of sex-role style than did nonalcoholic, nontreatment, normal Ss. (24 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reversal of cognitive and affective deficits associated with depression and learned helplessness by mood elevation in patients

Therapeutic implications of the learned helplessness model of depression were tested in a clinical population (48 male medical and psychiatric patients of a VA hospital). In pretreatment, 2 groups of nondepressed medical patients waited, 2 groups of nondepressed medical patients received helplessness training, and 2 groups of psychiatric patients (diagnosed as primary affective disorder) waited. In treatment, Ss received either E. Velten's (1968) mood-elation procedure as "therapy" or Velten's (1968) mood-neutral procedure as placebo. Performance on cognitive and mood tasks was assessed. Three separate administrations of the Depression Adjective Check List indicated that helplessness training induced depressive affect, and the mood elation procedure decreased depressive affect for both helpless and depressed Ss. The mood neutral procedure and the waiting periods were associated with no affective changes. On the cognitive (anagrams) task, performance deficits were associated with helplessness and depression but were reversed by mood elation. Results are interpreted as consistent with the learned helplessness model of depression. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)