Understanding preventive behaviors among mid-Western African-American men: a pilot qualitative study of prostate screening

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jomh.2011.03.00

Are Women Always More Interpersonally Sensitive Than Men? Impact of Goals and Content Domain

Two studies examined motivation and content domain as possible influences on sex differences in interpersonal sensitivity. Although much research has found women to excel on tasks measuring interpersonal sensitivity, most of the tasks have measured accuracy in female-relevant domains such as emotion. The present studies measured interpersonal sensitivity, defined as accurate recall of another person, for both female-relevant and male-relevant content domains and also included motivational manipulations intended to influence men and women differently. Study 1 measured accuracy of recalling information in a written vignette about a person, and Study 2 measured accuracy of recalling details about an interaction partner. Both studies supported hypotheses about domain specificity and gender-relevant motivation. However, even for male-stereotypic content and for tasks framed to favor men's motivation to perform well, men's accuracy never exceeded women's

A Meta-Analytic Review of Gender Variations in Adults' Language Use: Talkativeness, Affiliative Speech, and Assertive Speech

Three separate sets of meta-analyses were conducted of studies testing for gender differences in adults' talkativeness, affiliative speech, and assertive speech. Across independent samples, statistically significant but negligible average effects sizes were obtained with all three language constructs: Contrary to the prediction, men were more talkative (d = -.14) than were women. As expected, men used more assertive speech (d = .09), whereas women used more affiliative speech (d = .12). In addition, 17 moderator variables were tested that included aspects of the interactive context (e.g., familiarity, gender composition, activity), measurement qualities (e.g., operational definition, observation length), and publication characteristics (e.g., author gender, publication source). Depending on particular moderators, more meaningful effect sizes (d > .2) occurred for each language construct. In addition, the direction of some gender differences was significantly reversed under particular conditions. The results are interpreted in relation to social-constructionist, socialization, and biological interpretations of gender-related variations in social behavior