Parents' perceptions of children's behavior may vary depending on the gender of the child and the type of behavior displayed. It is important to delineate which factor(s) influence parental perceptions because parental perceptions directly influence whether or not parents respond to their children's behavior and how parents choose to manage the behavior. The present study examined how the gender of the child and the types of behaviors (internalizing vs. externalizing) the child displays affect parental perceptions regarding the severity of the behavior. One hundred and three parents of children ages 1 V2 to 5 years in the Southeast region of the United States participated by reading several vignettes, which manipulated child gender and type of behaviors (internalizing vs. externalizing). Parents were also asked to rate the severity of the behavior described in four vignettes. A demographics questionnaire, the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL; Achenbach & Rescorla, 2000, 2001), the Parenting Stress Index (PSI-SF; Abidin, 1995), and the Social Support Questionnaire (SSQ; Sarason & Sarason, 1982) were also completed. Results indicated that parents rated the male/externalizing scenario the most problematic of all four scenarios, while the female/externalizing scenario was rated the second most problematic. Parents rated the female/internalizing scenario as the third most problematic, while the male/internalizing scenario was rated by parents as the least problematic.

The present researcher focused on how subjects cope with jealousy in 6 different situations. A scale was developed to assess how jealous subjects would be in the 6 situations and how likely they were to use 13 different coping methods. Principal components analysis yielded 3 coping components. The researcher investigated the relationship between personality and coping style, finding that different personality types, using Costa and McCrae's 5-factor model, coped differently with jealousy. The researcher also examined the relationship between gender and coping style. Results suggested that females use coping methods to save the relationship with their partner and males tend to "get back" at their partner or deny/avoid their jealousy. Finally, the relationship between intensity of jealousy and coping method was studied. Results indicated that subjects "get back" at their partners or interfere with the rival relationship when reporting the highest level of jealousy experienced.

With the increasing popularity and accessibility of the Internet, there is a need to reexamine dating and relationship preferences in the high-tech information age. Previously research pertaining to dating has focused on relationships and attitudes as well as the concept of homophily. In an effort to bridge the gap between previous dating conclusions and a modern means for meeting people, this research is an attempt to determine if previously established conclusions about homophily transcend to mate selection conducted through the use of the Internet. This research utilizes content analysis of online personal advertisements in order to compare the demographic characteristics and personal interests of advertisers with the characteristics and interests of those whom he or she is seeking. For this study a sample of 511 personal advertisements was selected from a popular national website service. The sample includes advertisers living in one southern U.S. city who are seeking either heterosexual or homosexual relationships. Using deductive coding to examine demographic and interest characteristics and inductive coding to explore the self-expressed behavior of the advertiser as well as the behavior sought, the principle of homophily was examined through descriptive statistics. Consistent with the prior literature, findings for this study suggest that certain demographic characteristics such as race, education, and marital status exhibit moderate to high degrees of homophily. Findings also suggest high to moderate degrees of homophily in other demographic characteristics such as body type, smoking habits, and alcohol-drinking habits. Results also show that personal-interest variables such as playing music, gardening, and health and fitness do not show evidence of homophily. It was also concluded that females, as opposed to males, tend to seek other people who have their same characteristics and interests.

The current study investigated the impact of gender, victim job performance, and victim employment status on individual juror and jury perceptions of sexual harassment. Gender, victim job performance, and victim employment are all extralegal factors that were found to influence individual jurors' perceptions of sexual harassment. The present study revealed individual female jurors were more likely than male jurors to find sexual harassment. Although gender did not have a significant effect in jury perceptions of sexual harassment, further analysis revealed females were more likely than males to change their decision on sexual harassment in a jury. Victim job performance and employment status were both found to influence jury perceptions of sexual harassment. When the victim was a good, average performer, or no information was provided on victim job performance, the individual jurors were more likely to find sexual harassment than cases where the victim was a poor performer. When the victim was a good or poor performer or no information was provided for victim job performance, the jury was more likely to find sexual harassment than cases where the victim was an average performer. Individual jurors were more likely to find sexual harassment when the victim was currently employed or no information was provided than when the victim was fired from the organization. Juries were more likely to perceive sexual harassment when no employment information was provided than when the victim was currently employed fired. These results have implications for the legal system.

The current study investigated the impact of gender, jury instructions, victim intoxication status, and perpetrator intoxication status on perceptions of sexual harassment of participants role-playing individual jurors and juries. Gender, victim intoxication status, and perpetrator intoxication status affected the sexual harassment perceptions. The well established gender effect was replicated as the current study found female jurors were more likely to perceive sexual harassment than were male jurors. Individuals were less likely to find sexual harassment when they were told the victim was intoxicated than when no information was presented. When the perpetrator was intoxicated, sexual harassment was less likely to be found. Giving instructions to ignore irrelevant intoxication information had no impact on individual jurors but did impact juries. Juries were also biased by the perpetrator's intoxication status. The significant interaction between jury instructions and victim intoxication and jury instructions and perpetrator intoxication indicated giving juries instructions reduced the bias of victim intoxication status but not perpetrator intoxication status. Initial findings of the majority of individuals lead to the jury's decision 73% of the time, indicating a majority effect. Likewise, a leniency bias and an asymmetry effect were also observed among initial findings and jury decisions. Furthermore, once juries deliberate, individuals are likely to stick to their jury's decision.

Adult peer groups have become more and more a topic for sociological study. It is a phenomenon that is starting to gain interest. This research focuses on one sorority on the campus of a Midwestern university and how this sorority manages to incorporate the women that they pledge through formal recruitment into the sorority and how these women fully socialize themselves into this group of women who already have bonded with each other. A synthesis of symbolic interactionism and social exchange theory helps to break down the socialization process and shows how the new members move through the stages of sorority membership. By the time this research ended at the sorority formal, the new members were fully incorporated into the sorority through a variety of events including meetings, recruitment, sisterhood activities, social activities, and the ritual aspects of the sorority.

This study examines factors of religiosity and fundamentalism that lead to sexist attitudes toward various women's issues. Analysis of data from the 1996 General Social Survey was implemented to ascertain the dependent variables: the Attitude toward Abortion Scale, the Women in Politics Scale, the Familial Roles Scale, the Attitude toward the Women's Movement Scale, Biology as a Reason for Women Taking Care of Children, God's Will as a Reason for Women Taking Care of Children, Importance of Women's Issues and Self-report Being Feminist. The correlations and regressions between measures of religiosity (church attendance and strength of affiliation) and attitudes toward women's issues, as well as between the measures of fundamentalism (Biblical interpretation, NORC determined level of fundamentalism, and self-report being fundamentalist) and attitudes toward women's issues were included. Biblical interpretation and gender were the two most often correlated variables. A multidimensional model was used to create a theoretical framework, and an extensive review of the literature was included.

This researcher examined how participants' attitudes towards homosexuality influenced their ability to reason on logic test items concerning homosexuality. A 64-item logic test was developed to measure distortion in reasoning due to prohomosexual or antihomosexual beliefs (measured by 32 items), while controlling for distortions caused by the truth or falseness of conclusions on nonhomosexual matters (also measured by 32 items). McFarlands' (2000) abbreviated version of the Attitudes Towards Homosexuality Scale (ATH Scale) was administered to directly measure participants' attitudes. The logic test and ATH Scale was administered to 201 undergraduate psychology students. Data analyses showed a significant amount of distortion due to the truth-value of the conclusion. Correlations between scores on the logic test and the ATH Scale, after partialing out the effects of the truth-value of the conclusions, showed that on the logically valid items where accuracy was generally high, both antihomosexual and prohomosexual attitudes produced logical distortion in the direction of those attitudes. But on the invalid items, where logical error rates were much higher, only antihomosexual attitudes led to distortion. Overall, the findings provide more support for hypothesis that people with antihomosexual attitudes distort reasoning in keeping with their attitudes about these issues than do those with prohomosexual attitudes

This dissertation explores the transatlantic shaping of the early twentieth century sex reform movement as a pivotal moment in the history of affect. I focus on a set of influential white middle class British and American radical intellectuals who emphasized emotions, instincts, and energies as transformative forces that could politically, socially, and materially alter the world. Crucially, this dissertation shifts historical attention on this period as a watershed in sexual practices toward the lens of a politics of love that informed sex reformers' construction of discourses and practices. I argue that sex reformers' politics of love amounted to the emergence of new registers of organizing bodies along the lines of gender, race, class, and sexuality by differentiating these bodies in terms of what I call their affective potential to achieve love. By examining the sex reform movement through this lens of a politics of love, I highlight the multiple ways that sex reformers radicalized the domain of intimacy as an arena of intense concern in matters of both social and political organization as well as ontological questions of spiritually and ecologically relating to the world. Each of this dissertation's chapters aims to take the reader on a journey thorugh the multiple worlds that took shape as sex reformers looked to develop scientific, spiritual, social, political, and economic strategies to engineer relationships defined by love. This journey spatially and temporally situates sex refomers' bodies as affective compasses that moved through and constructed historically specific worlds out of Darwinian maps of cities and nations, bohemian living arrangements, 'modern' schools and playgrounds, Edenic gardens, plant breeding and animal sex research laboratories, and imagined eugenic utopias of future species and races.

Participants role-played jurors evaluating the facts of a potential sexual harassment incident, including information on victim and perpetrator intoxication levels. They first made an individual determination of sexual harassment, followed by a group determination. Generally, sober perpetrators were more likely to be perceived as guilty of sexual harassment than either intoxicated perpetrators or when no information on perpetrator intoxication was available. However, victim intoxication interacted with gender to impact decisions of sexual harassment. Men were less likely than women to find the perpetrator guilty when the victim was sober. Women were less likely than men to find the perpetrator guilty when the victim was intoxicated. These data suggest that women provided more support for the "Just World Hypothesis" then did men. Women tended to blame the perpetrator when the victim was sober, but not when the victim was intoxicated. When there was no information about either the victim's or the perpetrator's intoxication status women were more likely than men to perceive sexual harassment. Information regarding intoxication level appeared to interfere with juror perceptions and their confidence in decisions of sexual harassment. When participants were placed in a group setting, they were more likely to change their decision from a finding of sexual harassment to one of no sexual harassment.