The teaching of sex-role stereotyping issues in an educational psychology course for student teachers is discussed. Issues presented include influences on the learner, the teaching of sex roles and stereotypes in the elementary grades, the presence of role models at home and school, contributions of curriculum to sex-role stereotyping and the…

In October 1976, under a grant from NIMH to the Human Sexuality Program, Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco, the Sex and Disability Training Project began training physically disabled and nondisabled persons as sociosexual educator-counselors for persons with disabilities, their intimates and families, and health…

Empirical studies that demonstrate probable gender biased perceptions resulting from the use of man-linked words and third-person, singular masculine pronouns are reviewed in this paper. Among the findings revealed by the review are: (1) there is a tendency for people to perceive man-linked words as more likely to refer to men than to women; (2)…

A comparison of the social structuring of birth and death in modern American society is proposed as a new area of study: cosmic status passage. The author compares the two events as cosmic, universal transformations. The similarities of the experiences are explored in six categories. First, the role of the birthing or dying individual is…

A study was conducted to examine children's use of social factors as bases for evaluating different patterns of code switching in dyadic social interaction. The factors were role-related and social norms, interpersonal accommodation, intergroup biases, and socio-cultural status. An initial study was conducted of monolingual and bilingual English…

A functional model of person perception suggests that information seeking about other persons would increase as the prospect of interaction became imminent. Male (N=62) and female (N=42) college students responded to 3 hypothetical blind date situations by indicating which of 30 bipolar traits they would want to know about an immediate date, a…

The literature on attitudes of health workers toward the elderly suggests three variables as contributing to the elderly patient's perception of helplessness in the health care setting. First, the health worker may age-stereotype the elderly person as dependent, low in competence, and unlikely to respond to treatment. Secondly, the disparity in…

Profile analyses of social behavior exhibited shortly after entry were conducted to determine whether youths who successfully completed a program at a wilderness camp exhibited patterns of behavior which were different than those from youths who did not complete the program. Successful youths were found to have significantly greater scatter in…

This study focused on whether actual or stereotypic associations with a speaker's body type would affect his or her credibility. Effects on the source-credibility ratings submitted by a total of 165 students were investigated for three different sources' body types. A significant main effect was found for body type but not for the blocked…

A study was conducted to investigate stereotypes in college students and the relationship between traditional sex-role values and self-concepts. Students in Women's Studies and non-Woman's Studies classes were utilized as subjects to allow for a sample of potentially less traditional women. Questionnaires consisting of seven incomplete sentences…

The identification techniques in Herbert C. Kelman's schema of identification were used to analyze the near, and perhaps surprising, success of Rep. Frances (Sissy) Farenthold's bid for the Democratic Texas gubernatorial nomination in 1972. Opposing government corruption, Farenthold overcame the potential obstacles of being a politically liberal…

This paper offers the hypothesis that in times of low collective excitement rumors in a complex society whose content is beyond normal social discourse (a spectral rumor, for instance) will increasingly exhibit one or the other, or both, of two legitimizing agents--authority and mass media--as a means of gaining greater plausibility and…

Data presented from two studies support the hypothesis that normative expectations of youthful deviance are held mainly by those social classes for which youth as a social moratorium exists for some length of time. As youth is a class-dependent social arrangement, it should be expected that normative expectations be held mostly by members of the…

This study utilized a cross-lagged correlational technique to determine the causal relationship among media exposure patterns, political and information level, and degree of interest in the 1972 Presidential campaign. It was hypothesized that exposure to campaign content in newspapers, television, radio, and news magazines would lead to higher…

This paper suggests the applicability of metric multidimensional scaling for research within the political arena. Multidimensional scaling allows the researcher to simultaneously observe change and rates of change within the policy's attitudes toward the candidates and issues in election campaigns. Multidimensional scaling also reveals which…