When the Name Says it All: Preschoolers' Recognition and Use of the Gendered Nature of Common Proper Names

By the time they enter preschool children have acquired extensive knowledge of gender stereotypes. There has been little work on their use of this knowledge to make inferences about behavior; there is virtually no information as to how the explicitness of gender-category information influences the reliability of inferences. In two experiments we tested 3-112-year-old children's recognition and use of less-than-explicit, yet highly reliable, cues to gender-category membership: common proper names. In Experiment 1 children reliably associated feminine-stereotyped names with pictures of girls and masculine-stereotyped names with pictures of boys; they did not reliably associate gender-neutral names with pictures of girls and boys. In Experiment 2 children used their knowledge of same-gender-category names to make predictions about the preferences of otherwise sex-unspecified targets; they did not make reliable predictions when the targets were labeled with opposite-gender-category names. In contrast, when the targets were labeled with gendered common nouns (“girl” and “boy”) performance was reliable and was not affected by match or mismatch between the sex of the child and the gender category of the target. The findings indicate differential patterns of development and application of gender-category consistent versus gender-category inconsistent knowledge.     

Managing as a Performing Art

This paper considers the activities of senior managers as isomorphic with the activities of actors. It takes performing as not a matter of metaphor, but a matter of form; life at the top of an organization is intrinsically theatrical; each of us is blessed or cursed with histrionic sensibility. Proceeding by way of a comparison of Edmund Kean and Lee lacocca it touches upon matters of text and interpretation, rehearsal and performance and the importance of individuation. The argument – such as it is – is that both Kean and lacocca perform themselves, the former's Richard III, the latter's Chrysler being the fullest realizations of that which was, hitherto, inchoate and emergent. The final part of the paper is concerned with the implications of this perspective for education, training and development; current management education appears geared to reduce rather than to promote individuality. Techniques are imposed and answers are provided and the entire educational performance revolves around teachers as performers rather than managers as performers. The way to become a management star, it is suggested, is to do managing, not simply to be audience for academic stars.     

Relations between statistics for testing exponentiality and uniformity

It is shown that Greenwood's statistic for uniformity and the Hahn-Shapiro and Stephens statistics for exponentiality with known origin are equivalent. It is also shown that the distribution of the Shapiro-Wilk statistic for testing the hypothesis of exponentiality with unknown origin is obtainable from the distribution of Greenwood's statistic.     

The problem of suffering as a driving force of rationalization and social change

This article documents and analyses a reconstructed Weberian conception of the problem of suffering. In this setting a focus is brought to how the problem of suffering is constituted in the dynamic interplay between, on the one hand, the compulsion to impose rational sense and order on the world, and on the other, the necessity to find a means to satiate charismatic needs. The discussion highlights Weber's account of the tendency for problems of suffering to increase in volume and scale along with the intensification and spread of modern processes of rationalization. It offers a case for the development of further sociological inquiries into the role played by experiences of the problem of suffering within the dynamics of social and cultural change.     

States of nature and states of mind: a generalized theory of decision-making

Canonical economic agents act so as to maximize a single, representative, utility function. However, there is accumulating evidence that heterogeneity in thought processes may be an important determinant of individual behavior. This paper investigates the implications of a vector-valued generalization of the Expected Utility paradigm, which permits agents either to deliberate as per Homo economics, or to act impulsively. This generalized decision theory is applied to explain the crowding-out effect, irrational educational investment decisions, persistent social inequalities, the pervasive influence of non-cognitive ability on socio-economic outcomes, and the dynamic relationships between non-cognitive ability, cognitive ability, and behavioral biases. These results suggest that the generalized decision theory warrants further investigation.

     

Confirmatory Factor Analysis of Scales Measuring Trust,and Control-Self-efficacy of Young Iranian Women

This study is among the first to assess Trust and Control-Self-efficacy scales as measures of cognitive social capital in transitional societies such as Iran. 391 Iranian young women aged between 18 and 35 years (M 27.3, SD 4.8) were recruited at ten sites in the city of Shiraz by cluster convenience sampling to participate in this cross-sectional study. The measures used included “Trust” and “Control-Self-efficacy” scales adapted from the British General Household Survey social capital survey. Confirmatory factor analysis with Structural Equation Modelling was used to assess the model adequacy. In addition, reliability and validity of the model was measured. After assessing all possible models to yield the best fit for the data, the “Trust” scale model represents a change of structure from three subscales to four subscales which provided a best fit with the data (χ² = 2.231, RMSEA = 0.056). While for “Control-Self-efficacy” scale with three subscales, five items were deleted in order to have a fit model (χ² = 2.128, RMSEA = 0.054). As a result, the collective evidence suggested that the instrument includes relevant items for its target population and can be a reliable and valid measure for the population of interest.