Ya'arit Bokek-Cohen

How do anonymous sperm donors signal credibility through their self-presentations?

Sperm donor profiles in catalogues exhibited in commercial sperm bank websites provide health information about each donor, both explicitly and implicitly. Donors’ anonymity poses a great challenge to signalling credibility. Inspired by both Spences signalling theory and Walther and Parks warranting theory, the study explores the way sperm donors add credibility to their self-presentations. Profiles of 135 donors from nine sperm banks in Europe and North America were content analysed; 36 of these donors’ baby photos were visually analysed. Donors compensated for the paucity of usable warrants by adding intensified emotional context to the profile and inviting potential recipients to join a fantasy family. The article concludes with some practical recommendations aimed at facilitating the process of donor selection for the benefit of donor insemination users, as well as fertility practitioners, and sperm donors.

Sperm and simulacra: emotional capitalism and sperm donation industry

The article proposes sociological insights into the sperm banking industry, derived from a qualitative study of extended sperm donor profiles in six large American sperm banks. We content analyzed the extended profiles and baby photos of 120 randomly selected donors who appear in the catalogues. Inspired by Baudrillards and Illouzs writings on the postmodern era, we show how sperm banks de-commodify sperm, personify donations, facilitate the romanticization of the donor–recipient bond, and add an emotional context to the economic transaction. The donors’ extended profiles constitute a simulacrum of a living male partner and fulfill recipients’ fantasies. This creates a powerful reenchantment mechanism counterbalancing the anonymity and disenchantment characterizing donor insemination technology in particular and the postmodern spirit in general.

Marital Power Revisited: The Importance of Distinguishing between “Objective” and “Subjective” Marital Power

Abstract The “classic” view of family power highlights mainly macrolevel characteristics of the marital partners; this article suggests that emotional and psychological aspects should also be considered as components of the interpersonal power dynamics. My research describes an exploratory study of 384 subjects (192 couples) that uncovered the “subjective” and emotional bases of marital power. “Subjective” marital power was found to predict the use of an emotional influence strategy between spouses. I propose a distinction between “objective” and “subjective” marital power bases. This distinction elaborates and enhances the concept of marital power, contributing to a more accurate and realistic description of the power balance between marital partners.

The challenge of Improving Teaching in a Globalizing World

The USA has served as a beacon of hope for thousands of foreign students and academics with its diverse and superior opportunities created by a system of meritocracy unparalleled in the world. In keeping with other industries, academia is increasingly becoming a global village and foreign‐born professors constitute a large proportion of university faculties. As higher education is increasingly accessible to students with varying levels of academic preparedness, faculties have become more aware of the importance of the opinions of students – the system’s consumers – on teaching. Bearing in mind the ‘similarity‐attraction paradigm’, this study sought to examine whether teaching evaluations are affected by cultural similarity or difference between students and instructors. Our data are based on teaching ratings from the largest Israeli public college. The analysis relates to 42,874 teaching ratings of 768 instructors, of whom 602 are Israeli‐born and 166 are immigrants from the Former Soviet Union (FSU). The findings indicate that FSU immigrant students awarded higher evaluations to FSU immigrant faculty members than their native‐born peers. Similarly, Israeli‐born students awarded higher evaluations to Israeli‐born faculty than the FSU immigrant students. We conclude by discussing the educational and managerial implications of these findings for higher education institutions with ethnically diverse faculty and students.