Search

The essence of freedom consists in the absence of restraint and an election or any other concrete instance of choosing is generally deemed to have been free if each voter had an unrestricted choice between several alternatives, of which not casting a vote may have been one. This approach is objective because it is based on "post factum" data reflecting actual behaviour in a given situation and it is statistical in so far as the analysis embraces the decisions taken by the full membership of the selected group. But diversity alone does not necessarily indicate the absence of restraint, because variety can be enforced just as effectively as uniformity. If, for example, the actual statistical spread of the choices can be traced back to the definite orders of an authority, the actual freedom displaced is nil. There are also instances where, though the factor itself is unavoidable, its consequences are not. Take sex, for instance, as a determinant of choice of profession. Whereas it is hardly a practical proposition to alter the sex of a girl who wants to pursue a profession at present reserved to males, it would not be impossible to throw all professions open to both sexes.

In this paper the mean intelligence quotients of 11-year-old children living in rural areas have been compared with those of children in urban areas. Comparisons were made, first between different types of area within the same county and secondly between rural areas as a whole and different types of urban areas. All comparisons showed that the rural school children obtained lower scores than urban children, and that the spread in intelligence among them was also smaller. Girls recorded higher scores than boys; their 'superiority' increased with the fall in the concentration of population. However, although the superiority of urban children is statistically significant, the difference is so small as to have little practical importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A brief description is given of a population sample of the County Borough of Dudley in which households were sampled with probabilities proportional to the number of adults in the household. 2. The variance of estimates for specific age-sex groups is considered and an empirical regression obtained relating the coefficient of variation to the size of the group. 3. Estimates are given of the variance that would result from a number of alternative schemes of sampling and estimation. 4. The possibility of increased, precision by district stratification is examined and shown to be negligible. 5. The variance to be expected in the age-sex tabulations from the I % sample of the 1951 Population Census is estimated from the results of the previous analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among samples of adult whites and American Indians in Seattle conservatism as measured by the Wilson-Patterson scale was inversely related to educational attainment, directly related to age, somewhat more evident among females than males, and not related to income. Factor analysis revealed four readily interpretable dimensions of conservatism among the whites (family and motherhood, religious factor, racial factor, and radical counterculture factor), but only two clearly interpretable factors among the Indians (religious factor, radical counterculture factor). The anticipated greater conservatism of the Indians did not appear; their cumulative conservatism scores were comparable to those of whites. The correlation between conservatism and support for Indian assimilation was positive, and stronger for whites than for Indians. There was a racial difference in the relation between conservatism and racial intolerance; among whites the conservatives were most likely to give intolerant responses about Indians, but among Indians there was no relationship between conservatism and antiwhite sentiments. Results suggest that whites with intolerant feelings about Indians do want Indians to "join the mainstream" of American society, but reject the possibility of close association with Indians for their own children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This experiment examined some conditions of the generality of the finding that a severe initiation leads to liking for a group. Sex, interest in joining a group. and severity of initiation were included in a 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design. It was found that females liked the group members most following a severe initiation,but this was not true for males, Males had the least interest in continuing with a group following a severe initiation, while the females' interest was almost unaffected by their initiations. Subjects who were most interested in joining in the beginning perceived the initiation as most severe. The perception of the meaningfulness of the initiation was influenced by all three independent variables in a triple interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on communication patterns, sex and length of verbalization in speech of children. Study conducted to differentiate male and female verbalization; Importance of communication pattern and sex in verbalization; Tests on research hypothesis to determine the differences between communication patterns in terms of amount of speech produced.

Six groups of observers rated the behavior of three experimenters interacting with a total of 10 research subjects. Each group of judges (male and female Americans, male and female Japanese who spoke and understood English quite well, and male and female Japanese who spoke and understood English less well) evaluated Es' behavior on the basis of the auditory channel alone and also on the basis of the combination of the auditory and visual channel. Experimenters were found to engage in a variety of unprogrammed behaviors which were significantly related to (a) their Ss' subsequent responses, (b) E's differential vocal emphasis as he read his response alternatives to his Ss, and (c) both the particular expectancy induced in E and whether any expectancy at all had been induced in E. For the purpose of predicting differential vocal emphasis, female judges were better than male judges when rating from the auditory channel alone, but male judges were better than female judges when rating from the visual and auditory channel combined. For the purpose of predicting whether E had been given any expectancy for Ss' responses, American male judges were most effective when rating the visual and auditory channel combined, but when the auditory channel alone was employed, it was the Japanese males who were less familiar with English whose predictive performance was most effective. Each of these two groups of judges appeared to extract very much the same type of information, but each from its own preferred channel of communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of interpersonal verbal attack on anger, aggression, and vascular arousal in a biracial situation were investigated. Half of 28 male and female Negro college students were subjected to insult from a White peer experimenter of the same sex; half were not. Attack led to greater self-reported anger, expressed direct and indirect verbal aggression, and elevated diastolic blood pressure than did no attack. Sex-of-victim differences were noted only for aggressive behavior, with attacked females demonstrating more indirect aggression than attacked males or control Ss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In coalition formation under conditions of uncertainty, the probability of coalition success is 0 < p < 1. A Coalition Expected Utility (CEU) model is proposed where coalitions with the highest expected utility are predicted to form. Two experiments were designed to test the CEU model given four of Caplow's triads in the males and in the females. The observed frequencies for both males and females supported the CEU model against Caplow's Minimum Resource Theory (X², p < .001). The partner preferences indicated that the strongest member was the most preferred partner and the weakest member was the least preferred partner (X², p < .001). Males showed a stronger tendency toward risky decisions than females. The CEU model showed a higher predictive validity than three additional deterministic theories of coalition formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patterns of Negro and white conformity behavior were compared. A 2 by 2 by 2 factorial analysis of variance design was employed with Race, Sex, and Task Difficulty as independent variables. All three main effects were significant, with females yielding more than males, Negroes yielding more than whites, and greater yielding on difficult task items over easy task items. Extremely high yielding by Negro females produced the Race × Sex interaction and accounted for the two main effects. The Task Difficulty × Race interaction demonstrated a deviation by Negroes from the typical white student pattern of informational behavior in a task oriented setting. The Negro pattern was interpreted as a display of normative behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fifty-six college males and 56 college females were interviewed to determine their identity status and then played a Prisoner's Dilemma game with either a high or low authority opponent under feedback that changed either from cooperation to competition or competition to cooperation. Moratorium (in crisis) subjects were found to cooperate less with a high authority opponent than with a low authority opponent (interpreted as "rebellion") and also to match their responses to their opponents' more often than the other statuses (interpreted as "need for guidance in decision-making"). The previously established higher anxiety level in the moratorium status manifested itself in longer response latencies when feedback moved from cooperation to competition. Identity diffusions, who have resolved the identity crisis by remaining uncommitted, were unaffected by partner status or feedback manipulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory was used to compare native with nonnative students at the University of Alaska. Mean scale scores of natives were more deviant than scores of nonnative Alaskans, which were in turn more deviant than scores of United States college groups tested elsewhere. Subgroups of natives were ranked from the most to the least deviant group based on mean scale scores and a profile analysis technique: males, Aleuts > Eskimos > Indians; females, Aleuts > Indians > Eskimos. It is suggested that the differences among groups may reflect the degree of acculturation into United States society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EPPS and MMPI findings with 130 college males and females were factor analyzed. This yielded 10 factors of varying degrees of clarity. A validity factor was derived and its status discussed at length. A descriptive analysis was made of the 10 factors that emerged. In addition, the composition of these factors was evaluated in terms of the test from which their significantly loaded components emerged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An attempt has been made to determine the reaction to the human aspects of atomic warfare. Quantitative as well as qualitative analysis is made of 339 randomly selected letters written in response to John Hersey's Hiroshima story. A wide range of rural and urban area is represented with few letters from the South and the Northwest regions. There is a large proportion of professional people in the sampling, and males and females are almost equally represented. Correspondents identified as professional, business, religious, fraternal, or labor could not be described as different from each other or the group as a whole, perhaps only because of the size of the sample. Approximately 9 per cent of the correspondents disapproved of the article. The reasons they gave were, that they felt deprived of their usual humorous magazine material, that too much had been written already about the atom bomb, that the story was undesirable propaganda, and that they felt a hostile attitude toward Russia. An overwhelming majority (approximately 90 per cent) approved of the story's publication with the following opinions most frequently expressed: There was recognition of the story as a contribution to public good, and appreciation of the author's style and ability, they expressed a need for broader awareness of the implications of atomic warfare, a realization of what the bombing of Hiroshima meant in terms of human beings, a feeling of responsibility for the dropping of the bomb, and a feeling of anxiety regarding the future use of atomic weapons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a study, which discusses the regional differences in masculinity-femininity. This study takes its departure from the first suggestion, but instead of investigating groups of widely divergent tradition, etc., it selects more and more homogeneous populations from a heterogeneous one. Three groups of students served as subjects in this study: an unselected group of 556 Florida State College for Women students, a group of 492 University of Florida students, and a group of 485 high school students from Tallahassee. It will be seen that the college populations are segregated according to sex. The western populations from which data were derived were coeducational in nature. This factor could conceivably influence any difference which might appear between the western and southern populations. The high school populations are coeducational in both studies. The populations are not, therefore; homogeneous populations as far as regional origin, political tradition, or some phases of social customs are concerned.

The major purpose in this article, according to the author is to report on the range of areas covered by the responses to self-evaluation test, and of course to make a report on whatever is presently available regarding differences in this range by several social categories. In order to provide information of a systematic and inclusive sort, more than two hundred student protocols were content-analyzed by the method of successive combination into more general categories. It was found that locus increased with age; that within the age bracket represented by groups, sex references increased with age. Result indicated that females more frequently and saliently than males identified themselves by sex and kin and less frequently by race than did males. Occupational identity increased with years of professional training, and, within one professional school, nursing, and locus scores increased with years of training. Finally, an over-all content analysis of responses from students in four professional schools and from members of one professional group indicated marked differences in social anchorage, reference to ideology, identity in terms of intention or ambition, and the amount and nature of self-evaluations.

Though it would seem of obvious importance to understand the relationship between occupation and the decision to marry, there is astonishingly little published directly on this subject. Most of what there is relates to the age of the female, primarily because the interest in gathering such information has tended to center around the demographic study of fertility. An attempt is made to supplement the picture derived from these sources by materials emerging from my own research. As this research is in a very early, exploratory stage, the data that the article presents, on young British engineers, is very tentative and preliminary in nature. Given the differentiation and specialization of occupations within Western society, and the differences of life situation associated with the various occupational roles, one would expect sharp differences in the age of first marriage for males. Furthermore, one would expect these tendencies to have been growing increasingly over the past hundred years, as the degree of specialization has increased.

In creator Harold Pinter's most recent play, The Homecoming, several male members of a family struggle for power over each other and maneuver to win the favors of the sole woman in their midst. Their tactics, more direct than the behavior one usually encounter in everyday life, seem to be a quintessence of familiar attitudes and actions. What is usually buried, here emerges, distilled, to the surface. Included in this distillation is a demonstration of the human being in the role of human animal. While The Homecoming dramatizes a struggle for power and for sexual mastery in what might be called a "civilized jungle," the adjective "civilized" does not wholly modify the noun's implication of primitive and elemental urges, which underlie the characters' behavior. Pinter presents a cluster of interwoven images: battles for power among human animals, mating rites, and a dominant wife-mother in a den of sexually maladjusted males. The various repetitions and patterns of The Homecoming convey a vividly theatrical image of lust and power, and of lust used for power. Partly because of the consistent coupling of characters, with members of different generations in each of the four pairs, impressions of continuity and permanence are created.

Age data from the 1960 and earlier censuses of Ghana allow the construction of child-woman ratios, which appear to indicate the existence of a substantial urban-rural fertility differential. Plausible assumptions of urban-rural mortality differentials increase the apparent fertility differential. In this article recently published data for Statistical Areas in the country's larger towns are used to demonstrate that one explanation for the fertility differential is almost certainly the enumeration of some females in the towns, while one or more of their surviving children were enumerated outside. Nevertheless, in 1960 the four largest towns exhibited birth levels, which are likely to have been about 11 percent below those of the population in the surrounding regions. Roughly half the differential can be attributed to a general urban-rural differential and half to socio-economic differentials within the towns. This article argues that the fertility differentials are evidence of some fertility decline among key groups in the population and that such declines are likely to become more widespread.

Birth data obtained from the parish records of the City of York, England show a markedly bi-modal seasonal distribution in the sixteenth century. It appeared interesting to compare the expectation of life of individuals born during this period, during the two minimal and two maximal seasons, to determine if there was any adaptive significance in the annual variation of birth rate. No such effect could be established by this study. However, certain conclusions of considerable interest can be drawn. The survivorship functions for either sex, grouped by birth season or on the whole group, are of a rectilinear diagonal type more reminiscent of an avian population rather than man. However the York data were treated, no statistically significant difference appeared between the sexes when their expectation of life was compared, and the female death rate at all times until the end of life was somewhat higher than the male. It appeared that sixteenth-century York tended to care better for their sons than for their daughters, which also appears to be the case in some modern societies of low to moderate living standard.

The article describes fertility trends among Soviet women during the past 40 years as compared to American women during the same period of time. Period-specific fertility rates were arrived at by relating the annual total of live births to a pattern of age-specific fertility rates estimated for each year and also to the number of women for each single year of age. These rates were then appropriately re-arranged and compressed into five-year age groups to form a series of cohort-specific fertility rates. The findings rest on somewhat conjectural estimates of live births and numbers of women in the Soviet Union, some of which were originally prepared before the 1959 Soviet census. The tentative evidence shows that changes in the period-specific fertility of Soviet women were far more irregular and dramatic in the past, than among American women. According to the author, this experimental investigation of fertility in the Soviet Union makes no claim to high standards of accuracy and validity. Its intended purpose is to stress the desirability of shifting emphasis from the temporal and prognostic type of study, characteristic of present-day demographic research about the Soviet Union, to the generational and historical approach.

This article reports that studies in the United States have demonstrated age and sex differences in susceptibility to persuasive communications. Females have been found significantly more persuasible than males and, regardless of sex, older Ss less persuasible than younger ones. In a study on Ss from Rhodesia, Lebanon, Brazil, Hong Kong, Peru, and the United States, researchers found that with the exception of Lebanese 5s, all the persuasibility scores for females were higher than those for males, although significant male-female difference was observed in Ss from Hong Kong only. Mohsin Nationalization Scale was administered to all Ss before and after a persuasive communication which contained arguments for and against nationalization of industry, trade, business, and public services. The scale has two parallel forms A and B having 24 items in each. The difference in score on forms A and B was taken as a measure of persuasibility.