Judith A. Howard

Helping Behavior as Role Behavior: Disclosing Social Structure and History in the Analysis of Prosocial Action

Dominant approaches to the study of helping behavior are characterized by an empirical focus on temporally isolated acts of helping with little concern either for social structure or for interactional history. We suggest that Meads conceptualization of role offers a unique theoretical basis for incorporating dimensions of both social structure and history. This conceptualization of role also points to certain circumstances in which role and person merge; the extent of role-person merger has direct implications for action. We hypothesized that the degree of merger between person and a particular role, that of a blood donor, is both distinctfrom and compensatory to more traditional variables such as social and personal norms in its influence on blood donation behavior. We examine this suggestion empirically using a sample of 658 blood donors. Support was found for the three specific predictions derived from this general hypothesis. This approach illustrates the importance of conceptualizing helping behavior as role behavior, facilitating incorporation of both social structural and historical characteristics of such behavior.

Internalized Values as Motivators of Altruism

For us, altruism refers to self-sacrificial acts intended to benefit others regardless of material or social outcomes for the actor. Crucial to this definition is an emphasis on the actor’s motivation: An act is altruistic only to the extent that it is motivated by concern for the welfare of others. In other words, altruistic behavior is motivated by the desire to affirm one’s own moral values (Schwartz & Howard, 1981). The more general notion of prosocial behavior points to the outcomes of action rather than to the intentions that underlie action (Wispe, 1972). Prosocial behavior usually entails a mixture of altruistic and other types of motivation. An adult may stop children who are fighting, for instance, both because of her own value-based concern for their welfare and because this act may elicit social approval and enhance her sense of competence.

TOLERANCE OF RAPE: A SEXIST OR ANTISOCIAL ATTITUDE?

A prison sample and a community control group were used to develop a scale of Rape Attitudes (tolerance of rape) and to validate a modified version of the Gough Socialization Scale. A university student sample and an adolescent sample completed the Rape Attitudes scale and a scale of attitudes toward heterosexual relationships. Males in the adolescent sample also completed the modified Cough Socialization Scale. For both university students and adolescents, and for both males and females, tolerance of rape was associated with sexist attitudes toward heterosexual relationships. For the male adolescents, tolerance of rape and sexist attitudes were associated with antisocial, delinquent personality tendencies. The relationship between tolerance of rape and sexist attitudes was stronger than the relationship between tolerance of rape and an antisocial personality.

Gendered Situations, Gendered Selves: A Gender Lens on Social Psychology

Defining Social Psychology and Gender Conceptions of Gender in Social Psychology Social Exchange and Related Theories Social Cognition Symbolic Interactionism Altruism and Aggression Gendered Dynamics of Helping and Harming Others Conclusions Reprising a Gender Lens on Social Psychology

Ideological Investment in Cognitive Processing: The Influence of Social Statuses on Attribution

This study investigates the impact of race and socioeconomic status on attributions and evaluations of actors in two social situations, an arrest and an application for unemployment benefits. The viability of two potential explanations of the influence of status characteristics on cognitive judgments is considered. One approach stresses the influence of ideology, which may lead either to the ethnocentric derogation of the behavior of members of an outgroup, or to the equally general approbation of behavior of members of disadvantaged outgroups. The second approach stresses the influence of common cognitive processes such as stereotyping. Stereotypes are conceptualized as the source of behavioral expectancies, which in turn influence attributions. The results suggest both that social statuses exert pervasive influences on cognitive judgments, and that particular statuses exert effects only in specific situations. The role of ideology receives substantial support.

The overdue courtship of attribution and labelling

Kelleys (1967) model of causal attribution is employed to explore the relationship between attribution and labeling, using deliberations from mock juries. The deliberation transcripts were content analyzed to determine: (1) whether people select from a behavioral description the kinds of information identified as relevant to attribution and if so, how this information is combined; (2) whether labels are more likely to be applied on the basis of information that leads to an internal as opposed to an external attribution; (3) whether evaluations of an actors personality and character are associated with the attribution and labeling processes; and (4) the temporal ordering of these processes. The relationships between attributional information and verdicts were consistent with predictions. Several refinements in t,he original Kelley formulation are suggested on the basis of these results. The relationships between character evaluations and verdicts were not consistent with predictions. Analyses of the temporal sequences of statements suggest that the processes of attribution and labeling are closely intertwined; their specification will require more complex research designs and settings.

TRAIN THE WHOLE SCHOLAR: A DEVELOPMENTALLY BASED PROGRAM FOR TEACHING ASSISTANT TRAINING IN SOCIOLOGY*

The literature on teacher education stresses that learning to teach is a developmental process, and therefore, teacher training programs should incorporate a developmental model. We review existing theory and research on the development and training of graduate teaching assistants and apply this perspective to an individual teaching assistant training program at the University of Washington, a large research university. This training program was designed, and has been modified over the past 20 years, to draw on current lines of thinking regarding teaching assistant training practices. Hence, it is organized around the developmental and cognitive issues facing new, and advanced, graduate assistants. Using evaluative program data and feedback from those who have completed this training program, we elaborate upon the usefulness of a developmental approach for the preparation and training of graduate assistants in sociology

The conceptualization and measurement of attributions

Abstract Substantial knowledge has been gained about the information processing that underlies attribution, biases and errors in the perception of causation and responsibility, and several types of consequences of attribution. We have far less systematic information about the adequacy of those measures typically employed to elicit attributions. Several issues in the conceptualization and measurement of attributions are explored in this paper, drawing on confirmatory factor analyses of attributions in two related samples. Central issues include: (1) the validity and reliability of several types of attributional measures; (2) the relationship between dispositional and situational attributions; and (3) the specificity and meaning of particular attributional categories.

Gender Concepts of Swedish and American Youth.

Contents: The Problem. Swedens Equal Opportunity Policies and Practices. Cross Cultural Studies of Gender Roles. Methods and Predictions. Cultural Gender Concepts: Generally Admired Attributes and Spontaneously Generated Descriptions. Cultural Gender Concepts: Importance Ratings Contents of Cultural Concepts. Personal Gender Concepts: Ratings of Current and Ideal Self. The Change-Sex Story. Lifestyles that Eighteen-Year-Olds Expect for Themselves in Ten Years Time. Conclusions and Discussion. References. Appendices.

Finding Feminist Sociology: A Review Essay

T here is much at stake in naming, claiming, and framing feminist sociology. This is no less true today than it was in the mid-1970s, when scholars first began to chip away at sociology’s deeply embedded androcentric assumptions. As with the other traditional disciplines, scholars always intended the adjectival addition of “feminist” to be truly transformative, never for it to function as a mere modifier. Among these transformative goals have been the development of robust and flexible theorizations of gender, integrating these theorizations of gender into all aspects of sociology (thereby freeing gender from the ghetto of the family), eschewing a fictive neutrality in favor of a liberatory politics, and transforming power relations within the academy. In the decades since the 1970s, feminist sociologists have undertaken several influential assessments of the field. Judith Stacey and Barrie Thorne offered the first critical assessment of feminist sociology in their influential 1985 essay, “The Missing Feminist Revolution in Sociology.” They argued that in spite of important gains and an impressive proliferation of work on gender, “we have yet to transform the basic conceptual frameworks of the field” (Stacey and Thorne 1985, 301) and that “the impact of feminist thought on sociology, and the current relationship between feminism and the discipline as a whole, seem to fall short” (Stacey and Thorne 1985, 302). They illustrated this “falling short” with sociology’s tendency to relegate gender to studies of the family while continuing to conceptualize other major institutions (e.g., the economy) as ungendered. Revisiting this thesis in 1996, they did not revise their earlier analysis of the impact of feminism within sociology, but they questioned the discipline-bound