Gender and developmental differences in adolescents' conceptions of moral reasoning

Eighth graders, 11th graders, and college sophomores wrote open-ended essays that characterized their own approaches to moral reasoning. Their essays were scored for the presence of various themes. Students also responded to three dilemmas from the Defining Issues Test (Rest, 1979). Students then rated their own use of justice and care orientations in moral reasoning, using a previously developed instrument (Ford and Lowery, 1986; Lyons, 1983). Characterizations of moral reasoning became more multifaceted and thorough with grade, and correlated with many traditional measures of moral reasoning. Males and females showed some, but relatively few, differences in characterizing their own moral reasoning, although females tended to respond more thoroughly to the open-ended task. Gender differences, when they occurred, were mostly found on measures that assessed so-called feminine issues or concerns, but not on traditional measures of moral reasoning. Characterizations of moral reasoning clustered into five dimensions, raising questions about the utility of the constructs of justice and care orientations.The first and third authors received financial support from a Ford-Mellon grant made to Carleton College. Results of this study were presented at the 1990 meeting of the Society for Research in Adolescence.Received Ph.D. in Psychology and M.S.E. in Computer and Information Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, and has research interests in the development of reasoning skills, decision making, and conceptual development.Received Ph.D. in Counseling and Guidance from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and has research interests in adolescent development and adolescent psychopathology.Received B.A. in Psychology from Carleton College in 1990. Has interests in adolescence and chemical dependence.     

Adolescent depression: Why more girls?

Although there has been evidence for some time of a sex difference in depression, relatively little research has examined the developmental process by which women come to be at greater risk than men for depression. In this paper, the developmental pattern of depressed affect is examined over early and middle adolescence, with a special focus on the patterns of boys as compared to girls. In addition, a developmental model for mental health in adolescence is tested for its power in explaining the emergence of gender differences in depression. Longitudinal data on 335 adolescents randomly selected from two school districts were used to test the hypotheses. Results revealed that girls are at risk for developing depressed affect by 12th grade because they experienced more challenges in early adolescence than did boys. The sex difference in depressed affect at 12th grade disappears once early adolescent challenges are considered.This research was supported in part by grants MH30252/38142 to A. Petersen. We gratefully acknowledge the contributions of study participants and staff. Portions of this material were presented in a symposium at the 1988 meeting of the Society for Research on Adolescence, and one at the 1989 meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development.Received Ph.D. from University of Chicago in 1973. Research interest in biopsychosocial development in adolescence, with a focus on sex differences in mental health.Research interests include adolescent mental health, and parent and peer relationships.Received Ph.D. in psychology from The Pennsylvania State University. Research interests include development of affective and conduct disorders, especially sex differences in these problems.     

The influence of the gramm-rudman-hollings act on federal budgetary outcomes, 1986—1989

This article analyzes the impact of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings (GRH) Act on federal budgetary and fiscal outcomes. Rather than portraying it as a two-on federal budgetary and fiscal outcomes. Rather than portraying it as a two-party game between Congress and the president, each with monolithic policy preferences, we view GRH as a multiparty negotiation game among advocates of different programs and agencies. In this game, agencies subject to sequestration and their congressional advocates have an incentive to reach a budget accord, while those exempt from sequestration do not. Consistent with this argument, we find that GRH has restrained outlays for nonexempt programs and that exempt programs have, if anything, experienced more rapid growth. Overall, GRH is estimated to have restrained outlays by $59 billion by fiscal 1989, and to have restrained outlays more effectively after the 1987 modifications in the Act. The Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act signals another phase in the decade-long struggle between the White House and Congress over public spending priorities. Our final counterfactual analysis suggests that GRH partially returned federal fiscal and budgetary relationships and priorities to those that prevailed before Reagan.     

The cognitive and affective components of political attitudes: Measuring the determinants of candidate evaluations

Past research suggests that beliefs and emotions operate as partially distinct determinants of political attitudes. In addition, while positive and negative beliefs about a political object are bipolar in structure, positive and negative emotions have been demonstrated to be relatively independent. In this past research, beliefs and emotions have been assessed with different measures. Yet current models of survey responding suggest that responses to survey items are often influenced by the manner in which the researcher poses the questions. As such, it is not clear whether the uniqueness of these belief and emotion measures reflects a bona fide difference between two underlying constructs, or merely an artifactual difference induced by differing methods of measurement. In this study, beliefs and emotions are shown to operate as partially unique predictors of candidate evaluation even when employing corresponding methods of measurement. The independence of positive and negative emotion, however, only arises when employing a dichotomous measure. When employing ordinal measures, positive and negative emotions contain a substantial component of bipolarity. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.