Gillian Finchilescu

Adjustment of Black Students at a Historically White South African University.

The adjustment of black African students to what, under apartheid, were white universities has long been a concern for South African educators. Dimensions of adjustment to university were examined for 339 African black and white freshmen attending a historically white South African university, using the Student Adaptation to College Questionnaire. No significant differences were found between black African and white participants on academic adjustment or institutional commitment. However, black African participants reported significantly poorer levels of social adjustment, and somewhat poorer levels of personal-emotional adjustment. Further investigations found relationships between academic performance, race and additional variables hypothesised to be associated with adjustment.

Understanding Intra-Group Variations in Prejudice — The Role of Perceived Legitimacy and Stability:

Social Identity Theory predicts that the pattern of intergroup behaviour is a function of the relative status of the groups involved, and the perceived security of this hierarchy. Insecurity of social identity arises if the intergroup situation is seen as unstable and/or illegitimate. In this paper the authors suggest that these factors may also contribute to intra-group variations in outgroup discrimination and hostility. This was empirically investigated using black and white students from a South African university, at a time when social change appeared imminent. A measure of perceptions of status, stability and legitimacy was developed, and the effect of these perceptions on attitudes and various measures of discrimination tested. A consistent finding was that of the white subjects, those who perceived the intergroup situation as illegitimate, gave significantly less discriminatory responses than did those who perceived it as legitimate. The results provide support for some of the theoretical predictions.

What's Changed? The Racial Orientations of South African Adolescents During Rapid Political Change

The authors outline cross-sectional studies (across time and age) of the effects of the political changes in South Africa on the intergroup orientations of adolescents, as well as their orientations to the new democracy. The study was undertaken between 1992 (before the end of apartheid) and 1996 (after apartheid), with 14-year-old and 17-year-old high school students from formerly designated Black, Coloured, White and Indian population groups. Participants completed Duckitts Subtle Racism Anti-Black Scale, a Repertory Grid following Kelly and measures of adjustment to political change. The results indicate that levels of anti-Black African racism, particularly among Whites previously advantaged under apartheid, were high in both years, and have increased with the emergence of the new state. The study found in addition, that orientations towards the new political dispensation were related to levels of racism. Some evidence of outgroup preference for Whites was evident among Black participants, while a degree of outgroup rejection of other Black groups was also evident among these groups in 1996.

THE DISEMPOWERING EFFECTS OF MEDIA VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN ON COLLEGE WOMEN

This study investigated the disempowering effect of exposure to media violence against women on female students. An initial study involving 284 female students described the development and evaluation of two forms of a scale measuring disempowerment. The second study investigated the effect of media violence using a Solomon Four-Group experimental design. Fifty-seven female students were divided into four groups that were shown video clips depicting scenes of violence directed either toward female or male victims. Half the groups completed the first form of the disempowerment scale prior to the viewing. All groups completed the second form of the scale after the viewing. Analysis confirmed that completion of the pretest scale did not differentially affect the participants viewing the female-victim clips. The results of the main analysis revealed that exposure to media aggression against women heightens feelings of disempowerment in female viewers.

Talking about Language: Zulu Students' Views on Language in the New South Africa

The post-apartheid South African government has in principle instituted a new language policy, which changes the country from one with two official languages to one in which there are eleven. The previously ignored indigenous languages are to have equal status with English and Afrikaans. This paper explores the views of some members of an indigenous language group about the language question. Two focus groups were conducted, with Zulu-speaking students at the University of Cape Town. One group contained only male students and the other female students. The discussions of the focus group were translated into English by the second researcher. The translations were thematically analysed. Some of the themes that emerged in the discussions were issues such as the practicality of the language policy, the multiple versus single language debate, ‘tribalism’, the meaning of language and its role in identity. In general, three major positions on the language issue were apparent, one favouring the increased status of the Zulu language, one favouring the pre-eminence of the English language, and one supporting a diglossia position.

Social Identity Theory and the Authoritarian Personality Theory in South Africa

Social identity theory assumes that individuals and collectives apply identity management strategies in order to cope with threatened social identities. It is argued here that an integration of social identity theory and the authoritarian personality theory may help to investigate identity management strategies for minority and majority groups. It was intended to investigate predictors of identity management strategies applied by students at the University of Cape Town. Analyses are based on a questionnaire survey of 457 university students. Results only partially confirmed assumptions derived from social identity theory. Group identification and perceptions of legitimacy were related to the individual identity management strategy, “individualisation”, while the collective strategy “social competition” was associated with collective efficacy and authoritarianism. Perceptions of instability and authoritarianism predicted preferences for “temporal comparisons”. ‘Superordinate recategorisation’ was only very weakly predicted by group identification. The study indicated that social identity theory and the authoritarian personality theory might play different roles in preferences for identity management strategies. While social identity theory appears better in explaining individual identity management strategies, the authoritarian personality theory might be better in explaining collective strategies.

Setting the Frame: Gender and Psychology

The invisibility and marginality of women within psychology has been at the centre of considerable disaffection with the discipline. The desire to address this invisibility and replace women and gender within the discipline has resulted in a fertile source of theorizing and research. This article presents an outline of the causes of the disaffection, and discusses some of the current trends and debates in the work on gender and psychology.

HIV/AIDS versus smoking‐induced cancer: A comparison of South African students’ attributions of culpability, and risk‐taking behaviour

Abstract This study investigated whether people living with HIV/AIDS are held more responsible for their illness than sufferers of a smoking‐related disease. Students at the University of Cape Town completed one of two questionnaires, one referring to HIV/AIDS and the other to lung cancer. In each, a vignette was presented describing a student who discovers that he has the disease in question linked to risk‐taking behaviour. The participants completed a number of questions, including some which measured the amount of culpability attributed to the actor in the vignette. Other questions asked about their personal risk‐taking behaviour and their fears of contracting the designated disease. A final section asked their opinion of various initiatives aimed at combating the disease. The results indicate that people living with HIV/AIDS are considered more culpable for contracting the disease than people suffering from a smoking‐related disease. A large percentage of the sample admitted to risk‐taking behaviour in the form of unprotected sexual intercourse and cigarette smoking. Lack of acknowledgement of the consequences of this behaviour was evident.

Intergroup Attributions in Minimal Groups

Abstract Two minimal group experiments examined whether categorization into in-group and out-group leads to bias in attributions for success and failure. Adolescents from two Oxford schools were led to believe that they belonged to one of two groups. The students were then asked to evaluate the performance of anonymous members of the in-group and the out-group on a cognitive task and to make attributions for the success or the failure of this performance. Strong intergroup discrimination in point allocation was not evident in either experiment, but a relationship between bias in allocation of points and bias in attributions was evident in both experiments.