Alexandra Rutherford

Beck Depression Inventory: Exploring its dimensionality in a nonclinical population.

The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) was factor analyzed to examine its potential multidimensionality. Results indicate that the items on the BDI assess two primary dimensions of depression: cognitive-affective and physiological symptoms. Reliabilities for the items comprising each of the factors were acceptable. Between-groups analyses showed that women scored significantly higher than men on both of the factors and on total depression. Within-group analyses showed that levels of cognitive-affective and physiological depression did not differ significantly within the total sample, or for men or women. In future revisions of the BDI, it may be useful to develop scoring systems based on these two dimensions, both to differentiate between types and levels of depression, and to consider implications for prognosis and treatment response.

Responsible Opposition, Disruptive Voices: Science, Social Change, and the History of Feminist Psychology.

Feminist psychology began as an avowedly political project with an explicit social change agenda. However, over the last two decades, a number of critics have argued that feminist psychology has become mired in an epistemological impasse where positivist commitments effectively mute its political project, rendering the field acceptable to mainstream psychology yet shorn of its transformative vision. In this article, we explore the complexity of allying positivism with a transformative project using two illustrative examples from feminist psychologys history. Both Naomi Weisstein, whose work was catalytic in the creation of feminist psychology in the 1970s, and Ethel Tobach, who has consistently fought against sexism, racism, and other forms of injustice as both scientist and citizen, have remained committed to the scientific ideal without losing sight of their political projects. An examination of their efforts reveals the vital necessity, but ultimate insufficiency, of this position for creating large scale social change as well as a need for constant vigilance to the politics of knowledge in which science—and feminism—are embedded.

Skinner boxes for psychotics: Operant conditioning at Metropolitan State Hospital

Between 1953 and 1965, Ogden Lindsley and his associates conducted free-operant research with psychiatric inpatients and normal volunteers at Metropolitan State Hospital in Waltham, Massachusetts. Their project, originally named “Studies in Behavior Therapy,” was renamed “Harvard Medical School Behavior Research Laboratory” in 1955. This name change and its implications were significant. The role of the laboratory in the history of the relationship between the experimental analysis of behavior and applied behavior analysis is discussed. A case is made for viewing Lindsley’s early work as foundational for the subfield of the experimental analysis of human behavior that formally coalesced in the early 1980s. The laboratory’s work is also contextualized with reference to the psychopharmacological revolution of the 1950s. Finally, a four-stage framework for studying the historical and conceptual development of behavior analysis is proposed.

Neuroticism: how does one slice the PI(e)?

Costa and McCraes operationalization of the Five‐Factor Model, the Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Openness Personality Inventory—Revised (NEO‐PI‐R; Costa and McCrae, 1992a), measures five broad dimensions of personality: Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. According to Costa and McCrae, the Neuroticism (N) domain scale subsumes six facets. Although derived rationally and tested factor analytically, the factorial structure of the facet scales has yet to be unequivocally confirmed with analytic methods imposed at the item level. Using confirmatory and exploratory factor‐analytic techniques, this study examines and tests the structure of the N domain scale of the NEO‐PI‐R. Confirmatory factor analysis indicates poor replication of the structure of the N scale. Results of the exploratory factor analysis indicate that while three of the facets replicated quite well, the other three factors did not correspond to Costa and McCraes formulation. Future research should elaborate on the factorial structure and construct validity of the N facet scales, especially if they are to be used and interpreted in personality and clinical assessment.

Emergence and Development of the Psychology of Women

The emergence and development of the psychology of women has been closely tied to the social and professional status and concerns of women over the course of the late 19th, 20th, and early 21st centuries. Although treatises on female subjectivity have existed throughout history, we begin our account with work on the psychology of women produced soon after the advent of scientific psychology in western Europe and North America in the late 1800s and provide a broad overview of developments through the early 21st century. Although in its earliest forms the psychology of women focused largely on sex differences presumed to underlie women’s predetermined social roles, the purview of the field, its institutional presence, and its philosophical bases changed and grew dramatically throughout the latter one-third of the 20th century. Propelled by political, epistemological, and methodological developments, the psychology of women and gender has moved far from its late 19th century roots to encompass the diverse interests of its increasingly diverse practitioners and constituents. Outlining the emergence and development of the psychology of women appears to be a straightforward task until one tries to define the historical object. Treated strictly as a body of research or an institutional sub-field within psychology, the psychology of women becomes artificially divorced from its gendered context and political origins. Given that the psychology of women, both as subject matter and professional discipline, was created almost entirely by women, often in response to personal experiences of sexism or an acute awareness of widespread sexist assumptions about women, it is impossible to disentangle the emergence and development of the psychology of women from the women who developed it and the gendered contexts in which they worked. Furthermore, the growth of the field is closely tied to the historical trajectory of women’s status and to the increasing awareness of gendered practices and their effects within the discipline of psychology. Given the impossibility, and even undesirability, of attempting to separate out agents, context, and objects of study, we have chosen to embrace this reflexivity and use it to shape the contours of our account. Morawski and Agronick (1991), in their discussion of feminist work in experimental psychology, referred to this complex state of affairs as a “double consciousness”: “Given that psychology is a reflexive science ‐ one involving the production of truth statements about a class of objects (humans) of which the observer is a member ‐ then women’s double consciousness as women and as scientists can take even more complicated forms” (p. 569). Here, our historical account of the psychology of women engages us in a reflection on how women scientists have utilized and

From the Ground Up Feminist Approaches, Methods, and Critiques

It seems fitting to begin these Special Sections with a theme that is foundational to the field: the epistemological and methodological issues that underlie feminist scholarship and inform its methods and critiques. As Marecek remarked in her introduction to the 1989 special issue of Psychology of Women Quarterly (PWQ) on feminist metatheory, epistemology, and method: ‘‘If what we know is determined by how we know, then our methods of study deserve close scrutiny’’ (p. 370). There is indeed a rich history of lively debate and close scrutiny by social scientists and women’s studies scholars about what makes a research method or methodology feminist, including the relationship between methods, methodologies, and epistemologies. Some of this debate has been published in the pages of this journal (e.g., Crawford & Kimmel, 1999; Crawford & Marecek, 1989; O’Leary, 1981; Peplau & Conrad, 1989; Wallston, 1981; Worell & Etaugh, 1994; see also Gergen, 1988; Mies, 1983; Morawski, 1994, 1997; Reinharz, 1979, 1992; Wilkinson, 1986). As many feminist scholars have pointed out, to understand these debates it is important to distinguish among method, methodology, and epistemology. A method is simply a technique for gathering data (e.g., questionnaire methods, interview methods). Many feminist psychologists have argued that almost any method can be used in feminist ways and that indeed feminist research requires a diversity of methods (e.g., Reinharz, 1992). How to use methods in feminist ways, however, leads us directly to methodology, where methodology is defined as a ‘‘theory and analysis of how research should or does proceed’’ (Campbell & Schram, 1995, p. 87). Many feminist psychologists believe that to conduct feminist research, the researcher must attend closely to the power dynamics inherent in the research situation and work to minimize the distance between the researcher and the researched, or the knower and the known. Still others argue that feminist research should break down this dichotomy entirely because it re-enacts a form of knowledge production that is inherently patriarchal (see Gergen, 1988). Further, some feminist researchers posit that all research should have an explicit social change agenda and start from a position that seeks to change the status quo (see Mies, 1983). Clearly, methodology is informed by epistemology. Epistemologies are theories of knowledge that specify how we come to know, who counts as a knower, what can be known, and what counts as valid knowledge (see Harding, 1986). Although feminist psychology began by critiquing mainstream research methods for their sexist biases (e.g., Grady, 1981) and offered practical guidelines for how to avoid such biases (Denmark, Russo, Frieze, & Sechzer, 1988; McHugh, Koeske, & Frieze, 1986), it quickly became important to move beyond these critiques toward an articulation of distinctly feminist methodologies and epistemologies (Riger, 1992). As several feminist psychologists have pointed out (e.g., Wallston & Grady, 1985; Wilkinson, 1986), in the early days of feminist psychology there was a synergy between the feminist concern with research methods and the crisis in social psychology that came to a head in the mid-1970s (see Sherif, 1977). It is no coincidence that many of the feminist psychologists who turned their attention to issues of method in the early days of the field had been trained as social psychologists. Further, there has been a well-documented history of overlap in membership between Division 35 (Society for the Psychology of Women) and Division 9 (the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues) of the American Psychological Association, whose membership base is largely in social psychology (Katz, 1991; Unger, Sheese, & Main, 2010). Weisstein (1971), although not a social psychologist, based her catalytic critique of psychology’s inability to theorize women’s experiences, in part, on the same social psychological research that sparked the so-called crisis in social psychology (see Rutherford, Vaughn-Blount, & Ball, 2010). By the late 1960s, a body of social psychological work on demand characteristics and experimenter effects, as well as the power of the situation to invoke fairly dramatic behavior (as in Milgram’s 1965 obedience to authority experiments), had empirically shown that a psychology that did not take

Predicting approach-avoidance: The roles of coping styles, state anxiety, and situational appraisal

Abstract This study examined the role of dispositional coping styles, state anxiety, and situational appraisal in the prediction of situational coping strategies. One hundred and seven participants completed the Miller Behavioral Style Scale (MBSS; Miller, S.M. (1987) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 52, 245–253), the Mainz Coping Inventory (MCI; Krohne, H.W. (1989) Advanced Behavior Research and Therapy, 11, 235–248), and the Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations (CISS; Endler, N.S. and Parker, J.D.A. (1990) Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations (CISS): Manual, Toronto: Multi-Health Systems). These scales each measure the dispositional tendency to approach or avoid stressful situations. Participants then anticipated a controlled stressor, and rated their state anxiety and appraisal of the situation. Cognitive and behavioral coping strategies were recorded and coded for degree of approach or avoidance. Low avoidance and high emotion-coping scores on the CISS, and situational appraisals...

In Our Own Voice: The Impact of Feminism on Canadian Psychology

Interviews with four feminist psychologists are used to explore the impact of feminism on psychology in Canada. Using a thematic analysis, three levels of impact - individual, disciplinary and institutional - are derived and discussed with specific examples from the Canadian context. We highlight opportunities and obstacles to feminist influence, and make tentative suggestions for strengthening feminism’s current and future presence in Canadian psychology.

Feminist Women’s Accounts of Depression

Feminist theorists have argued that women’s experiences of depression are intimately tied to multiple systemic factors, such as oppression and violence. Although these theories challenge the dominant paradigm, they tell little about how feminist women who have been diagnosed with depression construct their own experiences. This article reports on interviews with nine feminist women who had received a diagnosis of depression that were conducted and analyzed using thematic analysis. The participants’ understandings of depression were elicited and examined. The majority of participants constructed subjective understandings of depression that emphasized social factors, but this understanding neither mitigated their material suffering nor was entirely dismissive of biological understandings.

II. "Functionalism, Darwinism, and the Psychology of Women" as critical feminist history of psychology: Discourse communities and citation practices

Stephanie Shields’s prescient article ‘‘Functionalism, Darwinism, and the Psychology of Women: A Study in Social Myth’’ (Shields, 1975a) signaled the rise of a new genre within psychology: critical feminist history of psychology. Published in the American Psychologist while Shields was still a doctoral student, it was followed just one issue later by ‘‘Ms. Pilgrim’s’ Progress,’’ her study of Leta Stetter Hollingworth’s early 20th century critique of the psychology of sex differences (Shields, 1975b). Shields’s work can be situated within both the new, critical history of psychology that was beginning to appear in the pages of American psychology’s flagship journal in the 1970s, and in the emerging psychology of women/feminist psychology literature that was starting to burgeon as the 1970s unfolded (for ‘‘states of the field’’ at the time, see Mednick & Weissman, 1975; Parlee, 1975). In this commentary, we provide a contextualization of Shields’s article within these two traditions, arguing that ‘‘Functionalism, Darwinism, and the Psychology of Women’’ broke new ground in combining critical history with feminist psychology but that it has been taken up differently within these two discourse communities. We substantiate this claim with the results