Exploration of Conformity to Masculine Norms among Male Engineering Undergraduates

This study quantitatively examines the level to which college men studying engineering conform to masculine norms and the relationship between their conformity to masculine norms and sense of belonging in their major. Study participants were undergraduate, male-identifying students at a large, public research university in the Midwest. Masculine norm conformity was measured through the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory-46 (CMNI-46) and analyzed based on scores from each of the inventory’s nine subscales that align with nine popular masculine norms identified in Western culture. A comparison between engineering males’ masculine norm conformity scores and conformity scores from males enrolled in female-dominated majors at the same institution was also conducted.Results of the study indicate that engineering males in the study’s sample generally do not endorse the masculine norms measured by the CMNI-46. While the engineering males did indicate greater levels of conformity to the masculine norms compared to males in female-dominated majors, the differences were either statistically insignificant or very small. Masculine norm conformity scores were also found to predict only a small amount of the variance in scores measuring sense of belonging in major, indicating other variables not accounted for in the study are responsible for the majority of variance in belonging scores. This sample’s lack of endorsement of the masculine norms identified in the CMNI-46 align with other recent studies of similar populations and suggest that the norms measured by the instrument do not align with modern college males’ views of masculinity, suggesting that new approaches to masculinity research should be utilized for this population. Similarly, these findings suggest campus professionals should highlight positive expressions of masculinity when engaging in conversations about masculinity with men on campus

Age differences in brain activity during emotion processing: reflections of age-Related decline or increased emotion regulation?

Despite the fact that physical health and cognitive abilities decline with aging, the ability to regulate emotion remains stable and in some aspects improves across the adult life span. Older adults also show a positivity effect in their attention and memory, with diminished processing of negative stimuli relative to positive stimuli compared with younger adults. The current paper reviews functional magnetic resonance imaging studies investigating age-related differences in emotional processing and discusses how this evidence relates to two opposing theoretical accounts of older adults’ positivity effect. The aging-brain model [Cacioppo et al. in: Social Neuroscience: Toward Understanding the Underpinnings of the Social Mind. New York, Oxford University Press, 2011] proposes that older adults’ positivity effect is a consequence of age-related decline in the amygdala, whereas the cognitive control hypothesis [Kryla-Lighthall and Mather in: Handbook of Theories of Aging, ed 2. New York, Springer, 2009; Mather and Carstensen: Trends Cogn Sci 2005;9:496–502; Mather and Knight: Psychol Aging 2005;20:554–570] argues that the positivity effect is a result of older adults’ greater focus on regulating emotion. Based on evidence for structural and functional preservation of the amygdala in older adults and findings that older adults show greater prefrontal cortex activity than younger adults while engaging in emotion-processing tasks, we argue that the cognitive control hypothesis is a more likely explanation for older adults’ positivity effect than the aging-brain model