20180617 《Competent Woman》：More

1972 斯宾塞研究意外证明女汉子更受欢迎

20180617 《Competent Woman》：More likeability

WHO LIKES COMPETENT WOMEN?

Until the women’s liberation movement took hold in the 1970s, Janet Taylor Spence’s research had focused primarily on anxiety. However, after reading a study conducted by two of her colleagues about how competence in men correlated with likeability, the American psychologist turned to issues relating to gender. Noticing that the study did not consider the female gender, she decided to conduct a similar study that focused entirely on women. The resulting paper – Who likes competent women? – was published in 1972. Working with Robert Helmreich, Taylor Spence set out to test whether men and women preferred competent women to incompetent ones. The two psychologists suspected that only people who believed in sexual equality would prefer competence. To test their hypothesis, they designed the Attitudes Toward Women Scale, which assesses attitudes towards the roles and rights of women by asking questions about education, marriage, professional life, habits, intellectual leadership, and social and economic freedom. The results were surprising. Contrary to the researchers’ expectations, subjects not only preferred more competent to less competent women, but even awarded the highest ratings to the women who were competent in stereotypically masculine ways.

This landmark study was seminal(有深远影响的) in launching gender research as a subcategory(子范畴) within the field of social psychology.

"Even our conservative subjects… rated highest the woman who was competent in stereotypically masculine areas."

Janet Taylor Spence

MORE TO KNOW…

IN CONTEXT

APPROACH

Gender studies

BEFORE

1961 Albert Bandura develops social learning theory, which suggests that boys and girls behave differently because they are treated differently.

1970 Robert Helmreich and Elliot Aronson publish a study showing that men find competent men more likeable than incompetent ones.

AFTER

1992 US psychologist Alice Eagly finds that women are evaluated more negatively when they display leadership in a traditionally masculine way.

2003 Simon Baron-Cohen suggests the female brain is predominantly hardwired(固有的) for empathy(移情), whereas the male brain is hardwired for understanding systems.

FLASHBULB MEMORIES ARE FIRED BY EVENTS OF HIGH EMOTIONALITY

In the late 1970s, Harvard University professor Roger Brown co-wrote a paper called Flashbulb Memories that became the classic study on a memory phenomenon. Brown and his colleague, James Kulik, coined this term to refer to a special kind of autobiographical memory in which people give a highly detailed, vivid account of the exact moment that they learned about an event with a high shock value. The paper argues that culturally and personally significant events, such as the shooting of J.F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King, trigger the operation of a special biological memory mechanism (“now print”) that creates a permanent record of the event and the circumstances in which we first become aware of it. Almost like a flash photograph, we can picture where we were, who we were with, and what we were doing when we heard shocking news – such as the destruction of the twin towers on 9/11. Brown and Kulik claim these memories are vivid, accurate, and enduring. However, researchers such as Ulric Neisser have contested the special mechanism theory, suggesting that the memories’ durability stems from the fact that they are thought about (or rehearsed) repeatedly after the event, by the individual and the wider world, and so are continually reinforced within memory. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 was shocking and culturally significant. Brown claims these kinds of events cause the formation of “flashbulb(闪光灯)” memories.

MORE TO KNOW…

IN CONTEXT

APPROACH

Memory studies

BEFORE

1890 William James makes a distinction between short-term (primary) memory and long-term (secondary) memory.

1932 Frederic Bartlett’s studies show that recollective memory is not simply a matter of retrieval; it is an active reconstruction of past events.

AFTER

1982 US psychologist Ulric Neisser argues that flashbulb memories do not use a special mechanism and can be inaccurate due to multiple “rehearsals” after the event.

1987 in Autobiographical Memory, US psychologist David Rubin suggests that we remember landmark events that define us as people.