Abigail M. Harris

Predictors of distress in women being treated for infertility

Many studies cite infertility as highly stressful, yet womens responses to infertility are quite variable. Lazarus and Folkmans cognitive phenomenological theory of stress, coping, and appraisal may explain this variability. Gender role identity, career role salience, and societal pressure for motherhood are variables hypothesised to affect a womans cognitive appraisal of infertility, thus influencing distress level. Female participants (N = 119) were recruited through the NYU Fertility Clinic and Resolve, a support organisation for individuals faced with infertility. Participants completed questionnaires assessing gender characteristics, career role salience, social pressure for motherhood, cognitive appraisal, and distress. Many respondents (42%) reported clinically significant levels of distress. A path analysis assessed the effects of gender‐role identity, career role salience, social pressure for motherhood, and cognitive appraisal on distress. The model accounted for 32% of the variance in distress. Women experiencing social pressure for motherhood viewed infertility as more stressful, women identifying with more positively valued instrumental gender role traits reported less distress, and women who endorsed more negatively valued instrumental gender role traits and cognitively appraised infertility as stressful reported greater distress.

Classroom Interaction and Opportunities for Cross-Sex Peer Learning in Science.

The relationship between opportunities for cross-sex peer learning and student attitudes toward cross-sex peer learning in science was addressed in an analysis of data from 29 fourth- and fifth-grade classrooms. It was found that teachers rarely organize instruction to encourage peer learning and that students are generally unwilling to work with a cross-sex classmate on science projects. Students in classrooms exhibiting relatively higher levels of collaborative opportunities held statistically significantly less stereotyped attitudes than students in classrooms where collaboration was relatively rare.

The role of cooperative reward interdependency in success and failure

Abstract The self-worth-related consequences of success and failure for low and high performers under two reward structures (cooperative and competitive) and two reward standards (achievement and improvement) were compared. Participants were 282 middle school children who solved puzzles independently, but side-by-side in same-sex, same-grade pairs. Performance was experimentally manipulated to produce high and low performers in each pair and successful and unsuccessful pairs. Students worked under competitive or cooperative reward conditions. Results indicated that (a) regardless of reward contingencies, success or failure played a critical role in perceptions of individual differences: Failure depressed perceptions of the other students ability in each pair and decreased reward allocations for both low and high performers, and (b) cooperative reward interdependency accentuated perceptions of ability differences.