Jones and Nisbett proposed that actors are inclined to attribute their behavior to situational causes, while observers of the same behavior are inclined to attribute it to dispositional qualities-stable attitudes and traits-of the actor. Some demonstrational studies consistent with this hypothesis were described. College student observers were found to (a) assume that actors would behave in the future in ways similar to those they had just witnessed (while actors themselves did not share this assumption); (b) describe their best friend's choices of girlfriend and college major in terms referring to dispositional qualities of their best friend (while more often describing their own similar choices in terms of properties of the girlfriend or major); and (c) ascribe more personality traits to other people than to themselves.

Two recent postmodern movements, constructivism and deconstruction, challenge the idea of a single meaning of reality and suggest that meanings result from social experience. We show how these postmodern approaches can be applied to the psychology of gender. Examining gender theories from a constructivist standpoint, we note that the primary meaning of gender in psychology has been difference. The exaggeration of differences, which we call alpha bias, can be seen in approaches that focus on the contrasting experiences of men and women. The minimizing of differences, beta bias, can be seen in approaches that stress the similarity or equality of men and women. From a deconstructivist position, we examine previously hidden meanings in the discourse of therapy that reveal cultural assumptions about gender relations. Paradoxes in contemporary constructions of gender impel us to go beyond these constructions. The Construction of RealityConstructivism asserts that we do not discover reality, we invent it (Watzlawick, 1984). Our experience does not directly reflect what is "out there" but is an ordering and organizing of it. Knowing is a search for "fitting" ways of behaving and thinking (Von Glaserfeld, 1984). Rather than passively observing reality, we actively construct the meanings that frame and organize our perceptions and experience. Thus, our understanding of reality is a representation, that is, a "re-presentation," not a replica, of

The number of psychologists whose work crosses cultural boundaries is increasing. Without a critical awareness of their own cultural grounding, they risk imposing the assumptions, concepts, practices, and values of U.S.-centered psychology on societies where they do not fit, as a brief example from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami shows. Hermeneutic thinkers offer theoretical resources for gaining cultural awareness. Culture, in the hermeneutic view, is the constellation of meanings that constitutes a way of life. Such cultural meanings – especially in the form of folk psychologies and moral visions – inevitably shape every psychology, including U.S. psychology. The insights of hermeneutics, as well as its conceptual resources and research approaches, open the way for psychological knowledge and practice that are more culturally situated.

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Recent work on the psychology of gender is pluralistic, stemming from varied specialty areas within psychology, grounded in several intellectual frameworks, and reflecting a spectrum of feminist perspectives. This article is a critical appraisal of diverse approaches to the study of women and gender. it first describes prefeminist or "womanless" psychology, then analyzes four coexisting frameworks that have generated recent research. The four frameworks are: Exceptional Women, in which empirical research focuses on the correlates of high achievement for women, and women's history in the discipline i s reevaluated; Women as Problem (or Anomaly), in which research emphasizes explanations for female "deficiencies" (e.g., fear of success); the Psychology of Gender, in which the focus of inquiry shifts from women to gender, conceived as a principle of social organization that structures relations between women and men; and a (currently relatively undeveloped) Transformation framework that reflexively challenges the values, assumptions, and normative practices of the discipline. Examples of research programs within each a p proach are described, and the strengths and limitations of each approach are critically examined.