A Compliment's Cost:How Positive Responses to Non-traditional Choices may Paradoxically Reinforce Traditional Gender Norms

In times of societal change, like changes in gender roles, one may compliment men deciding to spend more time on childcare, or women pursuing a job higher up, to support their pioneering behaviour. However, we predict that while compliments may communicate appreciation of someone's behaviour, they simultaneously communicate that a norm has been breached, and thus that the behaviour is not considered ‘normal’. In four studies (total N = 821), we show that men receive more compliments for reducing work hours for childcare than women (Study 1). Moreover, compliments (compared to neutral responses) signal more descriptive norm deviance, and this has downstream consequences for perceptions of the target's gender belonging and decision doubt and for perceived societal norms (Studies 2–4). Together, these findings contribute to our understanding of normative communication patterns as well as potential paradoxical reinforcement of gender norms through compliments

Is individual educational level related to end-of-life care use? : results from a nationwide retrospective cohort study in Belgium

Background: Educational level has repeatedly been identified as an important determinant of access to health care, but little is known about its influence on end-of-life care use. Objectives: To examine the relationship between individual educational attainment and end-of-life care use and to assess the importance of individual educational attainment in explaining differential end-of-life care use. Research Design: A retrospective cohort study via a nationwide sentinel network of general practitioners (GPs; SENTI-MELC Study) provided data on end-of-life care utilization. Multilevel analysis was used to model the association between educational level and health care use, adjusting for individual and contextual confounders based upon Andersen's behavioral model of health services use. Subjects: A Belgian nationwide representative sample of people who died not suddenly in 2005-2007. Results: In comparison to their less educated counterparts, higher educated people equally often had a palliative treatment goal but more often used multidisciplinary palliative care services (odds ratios [OR] for lower secondary education 1.28 [1.04-1.59] and for higher [secondary] education: 1.31 [1.02-1.68]), moved between care settings more frequently (OR: 1.68 [1.13-2.48] for lower secondary education and 1.51 [0.93-2.48] for higher [secondary] education) and had more contacts with the GP in the final 3 months of life. Conclusions: Less well-educated people appear to be disadvantaged in terms of access to specialist palliative care services, and GP contacts at the end of life, suggesting a need for empowerment of less well-educated terminally ill people regarding specialist palliative and general end-of-life care use

Chemical speciation and behaviour of cyanide in contaminated soils

Cyanide is present as a contaminant of the soil on several hundred (former) industrial sites in the Netherlands. The risk for the occurrence of adverse effects on human health and the environment strongly depends on the chemical form in which cyanide is present and on the behaviour of this cyanide in soils.The research reported in this thesis aimed to elucidate the predominant forms of cyanide in contaminated soils and the main processes which govern the behaviour of this cyanide. First an automated method of chemical analysis was developed which differentiates the two main forms of cyanide: free cyanide and hexacyanoferrate, and corrects for the presence of thiocyanate. Using this method it was established that the groundwater on former gasworks sites only contains hexacyanoferrate, although this form of cyanide is not thermodynamically stable. The decomposition kinetics of hexacyanoferrate to free cyanide were studied. In daylight complete decomposition appears to proceed within hours. In the dark it proceeds very slowly, with a half-life of hexacyanoferrate ranging from years to hundreds of years, depending on pH and redox potential. These findings were used to improve the separation of free cyanide, hexacyanoferrate and thiocyanate in chemical analysis.The behaviour of hexacyanoferrate in soils was found to be dominated by the precipitation and dissolution of Prussian blue, a mineral occurring in several chemical forms. The exact composition and the solubility product of this mineral were determined, which enabled calculation of hexacyanoferrate concentrations in equilibrium with Prussian blue as afunction of pH and redox potential. Calculations revealed that the solubility of Prussian blue ranges from completely soluble in soils with a pH>ca. 6.5 to slightly soluble in more acid soils. This causes a large difference between the mobility of cyanide in alkaline and in acid soils which was also observed in the field situation

Imperfections: using defects to program designer matter

Errors are everywhere, and mechanical failures are especially common: buckled grain silos and cracked support columns are, justly, seen as an issue to be avoided. But flaws can also be used to design materials with unique functionalities. In the work presented here, we use two types of imperfections to create functional structures. First, we design materials that are locally stiff or soft, depending on how they are actuated, using topological imperfections: mistakes in their underlying architecture. Second, we create structures that shape-morph, because their individual elements fail, buckle, and snap- features that should be avoided otherwise.NWO-IBiological and Soft Matter Physic

Perpetuating Inequality: Junior Women Do Not See Queen Bee Behavior as Negative but Are Nonetheless Negatively Affected by It

Previous research has revealed that women may attempt to avoid negative gender stereotypes in organizations through self-group distancing, or “queen bee”, behaviors: emphasizing masculine qualities, distancing themselves from other women, and legitimizing organizational inequality. Factors that increase self-group distancing have been identified (e.g., existing discrimination and low group identification), but it is unknown how self-group distancing by an ingroup leader is perceived by and affects subordinates of the negatively stereotyped group. In the current study, female participants received ambiguous negative feedback from a male versus female leader displaying queen bee-type versus neutral behavior. As expected, a male leader displaying queen bee-type behavior was seen as having less positive intent than a male leader displaying neutral behavior, which in turn increased how sexist he was perceived to be. A female leader displaying queen bee (vs. neutral) behavior was not seen as having less positive intent, which thus did not indirectly influence perceived sexism. Behavior of both male and female leaders did affect junior women: participants exposed to a leader displaying queen bee-type behavior reported more anger, sadness, and anxiety than participants exposed to a leader displaying neutral behavior. These data provide further evidence that simply adding more women or minorities in key senior positions is insufficient to change inequality if bias in the organization is not tackled. Specifically, exposure to gender inequality can steer female leaders to endorse–rather than change–stereotypes about women, and this behavior is particularly consequential because it (a) might not be recognized as bias and (b) exerts negative effects

Environment and culture shape both the colour lexicon and the genetics of colour perception

Many languages express 'blue' and 'green' under an umbrella term 'grue'. To explain this variation, it has been suggested that changes in eye physiology, due to UV-light incidence, can lead to abnormalities in blue-green color perception which causes the color lexicon to adapt. Here, we apply advanced statistics on a set of 142 populations to model how different factors shape the presence of a specific term for blue. In addition, we examined if the ontogenetic effect of UV-light on color perception generates a negative selection pressure against inherited abnormal red-green perception. We found the presence of a specific term for blue was influenced by UV incidence as well as several additional factors, including cultural complexity. Moreover, there was evidence that UV incidence was negatively related to abnormal red-green color perception. These results demonstrate that variation in languages can only be understood in the context of their cultural, biological, and physical environments