No abstract

Methodological and conceptual problems in existing psychological androgyny research are illuminated by application of the two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) model, which views masculinity and femininity as a pair of "crossed" independent variables, with androgynous, male-typed, female-typed, and undifferentiated sex-role categories represented in the cells of the resultant two-bytwo table. Foremost among previously overlooked theoretical points is that the Spence, Helmreich, and Stapp (1975) "high/high" and the Bern (1974) "balance" androgyny formulations represent two independent hypotheses, a main effects hypothesis and an interaction hypothesis. Androgyny research findings are summarized in terms of the main effects and interaction predicted by these two androgyny theories, and the results do not support either hypothesis. There is no evidence of consistent interaction effects favoring the balanced over the sex typed. Furthermore, the consistency and strength of the masculinity effect relative to the femininity effect suggest that masculinity rather than "main effects" androgyny predicts psychological well-being. The data provide no support for the traditional model that masculinity is best for men and femininity best for women. Implications of these empirical results are considered, and suggestions are offered for future androgyny research.

This article focuses on stratification beliefs and racial policy opinions among white and black Americans who differ in religious preference. First, it summarizes earlier research on white conservative Protestants and outlines characterizations of Black Protestant church congregants. It then reports patterns of stratification beliefs and racial policy opinions among blacks and whites varying in religious preference who responded to the 1996 through 2006 General Social Surveys. Comparisons across twelve race-by-religion categories did not provide persuasive evidence that white conservative Protestants are uniquely conservative in their stratification beliefs, once background characteristics are controlled, nor was the Black Protestant group distinctive. Compared to blacks, whites were less inclined to structuralist explanations of racial inequality, slightly more inclined to individualist explanations, and consistently more negative about policies and programs to aid blacks. What is more, white Christians were more racially conservative in all these ways than non-Christian whites.

Tracing the roots of racial attitudes in historical events and individual biographies has been a longstanding goal of race relations scholars. Recent years have seen a new development in racial attitude research: Local community context has entered the spotlight as a potential influence on racial views. The race composition of the locality has been the most common focus; evidence from earlier decades suggests that white Americans are more likely to hold anti-black attitudes if they live in areas where the African American population is relatively large. However, an influential 2000 article argued that the socioeconomic composition of the white community is a more powerful influence on white attitudes: In low-SES locales, “stress-inducing” deprivations and hardships in whites’ own lives purportedly lead them to disparage blacks. The study reported here re-assesses this “scapegoating” claim, using data from the 1998–2002 General Social Surveys linked to 2000 census information about communities. Across many dimensions of racial attitudes, there is pronounced influence of both local racial proportions and college completion rates among white residents. However, the economic dimension of SES exerts negligible influence on white racial attitudes, suggesting that local processes other than scapegoating must be at work.

Recent discussions of the Masculinity X Femininity interaction as evidence for psychological androgyny are flawed by misunderstandings of the nature of statistical interaction, especially as it is assessed using multiple regression procedures. The present article clarifies three proposed models of androgyny: the additive model, which simply predicts main effects of masculinity (M) and femininity (F); the balance model, which predicts only M X F interaction; and the emergent properties model, which predicts by effects and M X F interaction. In addition, the article compares the interaction effect assessed in a 2 X 2 analysis of variance (ANOVA), by a multiplicative M x F term in regression, and by the absolute value of the M -F difference in regression. The ANOVA and multiplicative interaction terms are generally satisfactory operationalizations of balance, though each has strengths and weaknesses, whereas the absolute difference term yields unpredictable results and should be avoided in most situations.