Project description:Preferences for pink and blue were tested in children aged 4-11 years in three small-scale societies: Shipibo villages in the Peruvian Amazon, kastom villages in the highlands of Tanna Island, Vanuatu, and BaYaka foragers in the northern Republic of Congo; and compared to children from an Australian global city (total N = 232). No sex differences were found in preference for pink in any of the three societies not influenced by global culture (ds - 0.31-0.23), in contrast to a female preference for pink in the global city (d = 1.24). Results suggest that the pairing of female and pink is a cultural phenomenon and is not driven by an essential preference for pink in girls.
Project description:Power can be applied in different domains (e.g., politics, work, romantic relationships, family etc.), however, we do not always reflect on which domains we have power in and how important power in these domains is. A dominant idea is that men have more power than women. This notion may be biased because the concept of power is associated with public life. We introduce the concept of preference-weighted power (PWP), a measure of power that includes different domains in life, weighted by the domains' subjective importance. Two studies investigated power from this perspective. In Study 1, participants generated words related to power, which were quantified/categorized by latent semantic analysis to develop a semantic measure of the power construct. In Study 2, we computed a PWP index by weighting the participants' self-rated power in different power domains with the importance of having power in that domain. Together the studies suggest that men have more perceived power in the public domain, however, this domain has a lower preference weighting than the private domain where women have more power than men. Finally, when preferences for power in different domains were considered, no gender differences were observed. These results emphasize gender difference in different domains and may change how we perceive men's and women's power in our society.
Project description:Recently, researchers have proposed a polynomial model called the "consequences, norms, generalized inaction" (CNI) model for researching moral judgment. However, it is unclear whether the model can be used to explore cultural differences in moral judgment. In this study, we investigated the applicability of the CNI model of moral judgment to East Asian groups, and subsequently explored cultural and gender differences in moral judgment between East Asian (i.e., Japan, n = 211; China, n = 200) and Western (i.e., USA, n = 201) groups. The CNI model was proposed by Gawronski et al., and it can quantify individuals' sensitivity to moral consequence, sensitivity to moral norms, and their general preference for inaction or action in moral dilemmas. Our results indicate that the CNI model fits well for Japanese and Chinese individuals. Both East Asian women and Western women were significantly more sensitive to moral norms than men in their respective countries. In the international comparison, Westerners were more sensitive to moral norms. The Japanese groups, for both men and women, were most biased towards inaction. Regarding sensitivity towards consequences, no differences were observed in the comparison between Eastern and Western male groups, whereas poor sensitivity was observed among women. By using this new model, this study provides new insights into the differences of cultural and gender in moral judgment.Supplementary informationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-023-04662-6.
Project description:BackgroundThis study aims to identify gender differences in specialty preference and career choice among Syrian medical students.MethodA cross-sectional study comprising currently enrolled second, fourth and sixth year medical students at Aleppo University was conducted. Demographics, specialty preferences and factors influencing this decision were collected and analyzed.ResultsA total of 561 students (44% males, 56% females) responded to our survey (87% response rate). Surgical specialties (40%) and internal medicine (16%) comprised the two most common specialties chosen by males. In contrast, the majority of females preferred other specialties (17%), internal medicine (16%) and surgical specialties (15%). The most common factor affecting the choice of a specialty by both genders (74% females and 71% males) was 'A specialty that I like and find interesting'. Work/life balance and anticipated income were the second most common influencing factors by females (62%), males (67%), respectively. The majority of both genders supported the idea that medical students should be able to pursue any medical specialty they want, regardless of their gender. However, females more often believed that they had decreased opportunities for professional advancement based on their gender compared to males (33% vs. 4% respectively, p < 0.001).ConclusionsWe illustrated significant gender differences in specialty preferences and factors influencing this decision. While the majority of participants agreed that medical students should be able to pursue any medical specialty they desire regardless of gender, more women believed they had decreased opportunities for professional advancement based on gender. Policy makers should advocate for a culture of gender equity and develop educational programs to insure gender balance of physicians into different specialties.
Project description:An international sample of 2754 selfies uploaded to Instagram that form part of the Selfiecity (www.selfiecity.net) research project (selfies originating from Bangkok, Berlin, London, Moscow, New York, and Sao Paolo) were examined to assess the existence of facial prominence differences in depictions of males and females and the variability of facial prominence among cultures. Results show that gender stereotypical bias resulting in greater facial prominence in depictions of men is present in selfies. The control of image creation and selection for publication by the persons presented in the images do not diminish this gender based bias. Also, when gender is controlled, significant differences exist in facial prominence among different cultures. Comparisons with various socio-cultural indicators indicate possible correlations of gender stereotypical bias to self-expression values, freedom of choice, people's influence on government's decisions, protection of freedom of speech and people's influence on issues in the professional and communal environment. This research does not find a correlation of gender based bias in selfies with gender equality or inequality measures among cultures.
Project description:The BBC Loneliness Experiment provided a unique opportunity to examine differences in the experience of lonelines across cultures, age, and gender, and the interaction between these factors. Using those data, we analysed the frequency of loneliness reported by 46,054 participants aged 16-99 years, living across 237 countries, islands, and territories, representing the full range of individualism-collectivism cultures, as defined by Hofstede (1997). Findings showed that loneliness increased with individualism, decreased with age, and was greater in men than in women. We also found that age, gender, and culture interacted to predict loneliness, although those interactions did not qualify the main effects, and simply accentuated them. We found the most vulnerable to loneliness were younger men living in individualistic cultures.
Project description:OBJECTIVES:Studies on hyperarousal have increasingly developed in the last decade. Nevertheless, there are still very few valid measures of hyperarousal. The aim of the study is to verify the psychometric properties of the Italian version of the Hyperarousal Scale (H-Scale), in order to provide researchers with a valid measure for the target population. METHOD:The questionnaire was translated, back-translated, pre-tested, and cross-culturally adapted. Subsequently, the Italian version of the H-Scale, the Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI-3) and the Health Survey Questionnaire (SF-36) were administered to 982 adults, 456 males and 526 females, aged from 18 to 80 years (M = 35.61 ± 12.47). RESULTS:Cronbach's alpha of the translated H-Scale was 0.81. Furthermore, positive correlations with the ASI-3 and negative correlations with the SF-36 emerged. The H-Scale is also sensitive to catch age and gender differences. CONCLUSIONS:The Italian version of the H-Scale demonstrated good reliability and validity. Its sufficient discriminative and evaluative psychometric properties provide the theoretical evidence for further application in evidence-based research studies.
Project description:The emergence of cooperation among unrelated human subjects is a long-standing conundrum that has been amply studied both theoretically and experimentally. Within the question, a less explored issue relates to the gender dependence of cooperation, which can be traced back to Darwin, who stated that "women are less selfish but men are more competitive". Indeed, gender has been shown to be relevant in several game theoretical paradigms of social cooperativeness, including prisoner's dilemma, snowdrift and ultimatum/dictator games, but there is no consensus as to which gender is more cooperative. We here contribute to this literature by analyzing the role of gender in a repeated Prisoners' Dilemma played by Spanish high-school students in both a square lattice and a heterogeneous network. While the experiment was conducted to shed light on the influence of networks on the emergence of cooperation, we benefit from the availability of a large dataset of more 1200 participants. We applied different standard econometric techniques to this dataset, including Ordinary Least Squares and Linear Probability models including random effects. All our analyses indicate that being male is negatively associated with the level of cooperation, this association being statistically significant at standard levels. We also obtain a gender difference in the level of cooperation when we control for the unobserved heterogeneity of individuals, which indicates that the gender gap in cooperation favoring female students is present after netting out this effect from other socio-demographics factors not controlled for in the experiment, and from gender differences in risk, social and competitive preferences.
Project description:BackgroundThe shortage of doctors and maldistribution among specialties are of great concern in the Japanese health care system. This study investigated specialty preference in medical students of one university, and examined gender differences and compared their preference with real needs.MethodsWe conducted a self-administered questionnaire including specialty preference in all students of one medical university. Preference was assessed by the five-level probability of their future choice: 1 = very low, 2 = low, 3 = moderate, 4 = high, and 5 = very high. The proportion of 4 or 5 was calculated as the preference rate. The real needs (magnitude of doctor shortage) in the prefecture were drawn from two different surveys. The relationship between the sex-specific preference rate by specialty and real needs was assessed by Spearman's correlation coefficient.ResultsInternal medicine showed the highest preference rate, followed by general surgery, pediatrics, and emergency medicine. There was no significant correlation between the preference rates of men and women (r = 0.27, p = 0.34). The preference rates for general surgery, orthopedics, neurosurgery, and emergency medicine were significantly higher in men than in women, while those of obstetrics & gynecology, pediatrics, and dermatology were significantly higher in women. The magnitude of doctor shortage by specialty from two surveys were significantly correlated with the total preference rate and men's preference rate (r = 0.54 to 0.74), but not with women's preference rate (r = 0.06 and 0.32).ConclusionsThis study elucidated not only gender differences in specialty preference but also the relationship to real needs. Critical gender differences and mismatch with real needs were found in women. In addition to traditional gender roles and insufficient support for women's participation in Japan, gender differences and mismatch influence the current and future maldistribution of specialties. Systematic changes in the working environment in medical society are required to solve these problems.
Project description:Procrastination describes a ubiquitous scenario in which individuals voluntarily postpone scheduled activities at the expense of adverse consequences. Steel (2007) pioneered a meta-analysis to explicitly reveal the nature of procrastination and sparked intensive research on its demographic characteristics. However, conflicting and heterogeneous findings reported in the existing literature make it difficult to draw reliable conclusions. In addition, there is still room to further investigate on more sociodemographic features that include socioeconomic status, cultural differences and procrastination education. To this end, we performed quantitative sociodemographic meta-analyses (k = 193, total n = 106,764) to fill this gap. It was found that the general tendency and academic procrastination tendency of males were stronger than females (r = 0.04, 95% CI: 0.02-0.05). No significant effects of differences in socioeconomic status (i.e., poor or rich), multiculturalism (i.e., Han nation or minorities), nationality (i.e., China or other countries), family size (i.e., one child or > 1 child), and educational background (i.e., science or arts/literature) were found to affect procrastination tendencies. Furthermore, it was noteworthy that the gender differences in procrastination tendencies were prominently moderated by measurements, which has a greater effect on the Aitken Procrastination Inventory (API) (r = 0.035, 95% CI: -0.01-0.08) than on the General Procrastination Scale (GPS) (r = 0.018, 95% CI: -0.01-0.05). In conclusion, this study provides robust evidence that males tended to procrastinate more than females in general and academic profiles, and further indicates that procrastination tendencies do not vary based on sociodemographic situations, including socioeconomic status, multiculturalism, nationality, family size, and educational background.