Rhoda K. Unger

Through the Looking Glass: No Wonderland Yet! (The Reciprocal Relationship between Methodology and Models of Reality)

This article discusses the relationship between conceptual frameworks and methodology in psychology. It is argued that our models of reality influence our research in terms of question selection, causal factors hypothesized, and interpretation of data. The position and role of women as objects and agents of research are considered in terms of a sociology of knowledge perspective. Suggestions are offered for a more reflexive psychology.

Physical Attractiveness and Assumptions about Social Deviance Some Sex-by-Sex Comparisons

The hypothesis that individuals would sort less attractive individuals into categories representing various forms of minor social deviance was tested. As predicted, both male and female subjects selected less attractive individuals of both sexes as more likely to be politically radical. Female homosexuals were also selected from less attractive stimulus photographs by both sexes whereas less attractive males were selected as homosexuals only by female subjects. Both sexes selected less attractive males as those with stereotypically feminine occupational aspirations, but did not attribute masculine occupational aspirations to unattractive females. In contrast to earlier studies, only the feminist-nonfeminist label failed to produce any categorization based on physical attractiveness. Findings were discussed in terms of the evaluation process as a measure of social desirability.

Advocacy Versus Scholarship Revisited: Issues in the Psychology of Women

The apparently contradictory relationship between advocacy and scholarship is examined in this article, which attempts to determine how much of the dilemma is due to the nature of the psychology of women itself and how much is a result of interaction with the social institutions of academia and the structure of psychology as a scientific discipline. Factors which impede the legitimization of new paradigms are discussed from a sociology of knowledge perspective. The additional dilemmas of women as scientists, women as a content area, and feminism as a theoretical conception are also considered. It is suggested that professional legitimacy is a property largely conferred by those outside the field and that collective rather than personal activities will determine the extent to which the psychology of women will affect the field as a whole.

Sex, Gender, and Epistemology

It has been argued by Buss (1975) and others that psychology as a discipline tends to alternate between two basic paradigms explaining the relationship between humans and their environment. These two basic conceptual paradigms are: (1) reality constructs the person, and (2) the person constructs reality. Paradigm (1) postulates a model of a reality that is stable, irreversible, and deterministic. It further postulates that this reality is discoverable through the proper application of scientific methodology and that individual differences are a result of the impingement of that reality on the developing organism. This deep structure underlies such diverse schools of thought as behaviorism, psychoanalysis, and sociobiology. These theoretical frameworks do not question that reality exists. They differ merely on the aspects of reality they stress as having the most impact on individual behavior.

Will the Real Sex Difference Please Stand Up

Scholarship about women and gender in the US is marked by controversies about sex differences; and there is little rapprochement between groups of researchers with different epistemological assumptions. It is argued that empirical investigation of personal epistemology has important implications for feminist scholarship. Following findings of no reliable sex differences in personal epistemology, cross-cultural research showed important interactions between sex and religiosity. This suggests that in order to be able to make statements about the relative importance of sex/gender in predicting behavior, feminist researchers need to subject a wider range of variables to multiple comparisons.

Feminism and Women Leaders in Spssi Social Networks, Ideology, and Generational Change

We look at women leaders in the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI) as a case study to explore the roots of second wave feminist leadership in psychology and its impact on the acceptance of gender as an important part of the field. Although all psychological organizations excluded many women from leadership until the latter part of the 20th century, the SPSSI, despite the contradiction between its socially activist agenda and exclusionary practices, was unusual because its ideals attracted many accomplished women to become members. In order to provide a richer view of womens professional leadership and its consequences, we conducted a cohort analysis of the personal and professional circumstances of those women elected to office in the SPSSI over the past 70 years. We examine the complex interaction between the internalization of sexist norms, the use of formal and informal social structures (especially those involving collegial networking), political ideology, and social change. Based on our analysis, we suggest that the achievements of individual women appear to be less influential than the development of a critical mass of women leaders with a politically activist agenda and commitment to a social constructionist theoretical frame.

Explorations in Feminist Ideology: Surprising Consistencies and Unexamined Conflicts

The world view of a sample of feminist leaders within psychology was investigated and compared to a sample of faculty members at a local state college and of students enrolled in courses on women at that college. Results indicated that feminists leaders differ most from other groups in terms of their beliefs about biological causality and the way in which science works. They are also more socially constructionist in their viewpoint than other groups. Data are consistent with other findings indicating differences in covert ideological assumptions in scholars differing in theoretical orientation. It is suggested that what information one accepts as confirming “reality” may be more a matter of interpretation than of conflicting evidence.

Positive Marginality: Antecedents and Consequences

This article presents evidence for the view that an important precursor to a feminist identity is a sense of ones own marginality plus a redefinition of what that marginality means. Choosing marginality appears to be a highly adaptive strategy for social activists who can “pass” as members of the dominant majority. Women leaders in psychology appear to be more likely to be Jewish and/or to be from working class backgrounds than one would expect by chance. An examination of their autobiographical narratives indicates that many of them have actively engaged their marginal identities and redefined them into a source of strength. This article also explores the historical and contextual factors that influence overt identification with some form of marginality. These factors include historical differences in the danger due to a particular stigmatizing social label, familial social activism, and the social power possessed by an individual woman. Finally, it is argued that positive marginality appears to promote an awareness that injustice is rooted in structural processes rather than personal inadequacy.

Social change: introduction

In 1971, when one of the editors of this special issue (LAS) proposed to do her dissertation on sex role socialization, her advisor was concerned that this might not prove to be a viable field for a research career. He argued that the phenomenon might disappear as the result of legislation, perhaps within five years! As we are now aware, with or without legislation, gender stereotypes cannot be expected to vanish within the immediate future. Assumptions about the properties, traits, and roles of women and men seem to be so basic to our culture, and to our individual thought processes, that they resist most attempts at change. Obviously, too, it is against the perceived interests of many powerful subgroups, composed of both males and females, to change existing gender roles. In this context, it is not difficult to see why a special issue of Sex Roles on social change should be published in 1986. Clearly, gender roles are still being acquired and practiced, albeit with more overt social conflict than in some previous decades. We initially viewed a special issue on social change as an opportunity to review the changes that have occurred in gender roles and in our understanding of the processes that contribute to them over the decade since this journal was founded. In reviewing the content of the journal over this period, however, we were struck by the relatively small number of either empirical or theoretical articles dealing with change. Those that did often documented or discussed lack of change rather than sweeping success in modifying gender roles or gender-related behaviors.

Afterword: From Inside and Out: Reflecting on a Feminist Politics of Gender in Psychology:

It is both exciting and daunting to have the opportunity to read comments on an article that I wrote 30 years ago when the psychology of women and gender was in a very different place. It seems that whatever could be said has already been said by one or another of the commentators. How can I add to the conversation? One of the obvious ways is to add some more historical context to this discussion. Psychology has a very short memory. This is particularly true in the USA with its reliance on research reports containing literature reviews limited to the most recent articles. I was surprised, therefore, to learn from several of the comments that the article is still being cited today. I have discussed the circumstances that led me to write this article before (Unger, 1998). But some comments lead me to believe that a little more personal and professional history may be useful in placing the article in context. Although ‘Toward a Redefinition of Sex and Gender’ (1979b) is my first wellknown article, one can trace its antecedents in some of my earlier work. Since I was trained in experimental psychology and motivated by feminism, it is easy to see why I (with a colleague, Beth Raymond, also trained in that field) conducted a series of field experiments on the triggers for discrimination in everyday life. We found that both white women and black men as compared to white men were discriminated against in a variety of everyday circumstances, although we also found that deviant (hippie) attire trumped sex and race as stimuli for discrimination (Raymond and Unger, 1972; Unger et al., 1974). In attempting to understand the underlying dynamics for these differential judgments of various groups, I became interested in the literature on status and power. I wrote several literature reviews discussing how the idea of sex as a status variable could be used to explain a great deal of psychological research on