Contextual Difference Research Articles

Biopsychosoc1al approaches to understanding human aggression: The first 30 years

Theorists and researchers have long been aware of the potential utility of multi-dimensional explanations of human behavior, including human aggressive behavior. Biopsychosocial models are multidimensional explanations that attempt to provide a framework for understanding how biologic, contextual, and individual difference variables combine to influence human behavior. In this paper, the rationale for giving contemporary investigators a forum to discuss research findings on aggressive behavior from a biopsychosocial perspective is developed. The advantages and potential shortcomings of viewing aggressive behavior from a biopsychosocial perspective are briefly discussed.

Personality and Judgment Heuristics: Contextual and Individual Difference Interactions in Social Judgment

Research on judgment heuristics has shown the importance of context in influencing the information used (and that ignored) in making judgments. The authors tested the hypothesis that personality differences also affect susceptibility to heuristic reasoning processes. Participants scoring high and low on the Sociable scale of the Personality Adjective Checklist were given problems like those used by Kahneman and Tversky to study the representativeness heuristic under experimental conditions that differed in the extent to which contextual cues intended to activate theoretically relevant motives and concerns about approval and rejection were present. Significant differences between sociability groups were found only in a sociability-relevant condition in which the judgment problem dealt with a theme of rejection and abandonment. Results are discussed in terms of the priming of relevant schemas by contextual cues and resulting effects on attentional deployment and judgmental processes.

Predicting cross‐sex first‐date sexual expectations and involvement: Contextual and individual difference factors

AbstractThis study investigates how individual difference variables (gender and self‐monitoring) and contextual factors (gender of the date‐initiator and alcohol consumption) influence sexual expectations for, and sexual involvement on, a first date. College students reported on their most recent male‐ or female‐initiated first date. Alcohol and gender were the strongest determinants of both sexual expectations and involvement. Binge drinkers engaged in more sexual involvement than did nonbinge drinkers who, in turn, engaged in greater sexual involvement than nondrinkers. Men reported more intimate sexual expectations and involvement than women. Individual difference and contextual variables explained more of the variance in males' (when compared to females') sexual expectations and involvement.

Effects of Gender and Specific Dating Behaviors on Perceptions of Sex Willingness and Date Rape

This study evaluated how heterosexual men and women perceived specific dating behaviors and how their attitudes toward the behaviors related to willingness to engage in sexual intercourse and date rape. Responses were analyzed according to the subject's gender and gender role identity, as measured by the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI). All participants (N=458) received a questionnaire where "who asked?" and "who paid?" for the date were varied. Subjects indicated how much they thought the woman and man in the scenario wanted sex (female sex willingness and male sex willingness, respectively) and how justified the man in the scenario would be to have sex with the woman without her consent (rape justifiability). Female sex willingness was highest when the woman asked and/or paid for the date, and male sex willingness was highest when the man asked and/or paid for the date. Men's ratings of both the woman's and the man's sex willingness were consistently higher than the women's ratings. Gender role identity did not significantly affect the subjects' perceptions of sex willingness or rape justifiability. Finally, the subjects' gender, "who paid?", or "who asked?" did not affect rape justifiability ratings. (Abstract Adapted from Source: Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 1992. Copyright © 1992 by Guilford Publications) Date Rape Rape Causes Adult Perceptions Adult Female Adult Male Male Perceptions Female Perceptions Gender Differences Sexual Assault Perceptions Sexual Assault Causes Dating Violence Perceptions Dating Violence Causes Violence Against Women 12-99

Christian Marriage: Contract or Covenant?

IN AN evaluation of a series of papers dealing with Intolerable Marriage Situations, Ladislas Orsy, S.J., observed: If I am permitted an aside here, let me say that I think the effort of historians and theologians in investigating the indissolubility of marriage or the possibility of divorce and remarriage can be misdirected. The main effort should be in investigating positively what a Christian marriage is. More recently, under the banner headline Time to Change Teaching on Divorce, the editors of the National Catholic Reporter gave space to the complaint of Raymond Goedert, president of the Canon Law Society of America: We are being criticized because of poor law. But law can only follow good theology. My quarrel is that theologians have not done their homework on what constitutes a sacramental For the past thirty years I have been engaged in research and teaching in the field of marriage. I have done my share of homework, much of it from secondary and contemporary material, but enough from primary sources to conclude that what we need is an altogether new approach to the theology of marriage. The newness should respect the traditional teaching of the Church, but it should recapture and reflect a dimension of Christian marriage which has been lost or obscured in much of contemporary theological writing, a dimension that alone can justify the Church's teaching on the indissolubility of Christian marriage and shed some needed light on the way intolerable marriage situations can be handled best in the external as well as the internal forum. Today, and for the last six centuries, Christian marriage has been discussed almost exclusively in terms of contract. In the first millennium of the Church's history, all marriage, pagan as well as Christian, was discussed almost wholly in terms of covenant. The contextual difference is basic, since it is only in terms of covenant that we can investigate positively what a Christian marriage is.