appreciate you without judging
join you without invading
invite you without demanding
leave you without guilt
criticise you without blaming
and help you without insulting
If I can have the same from you,
then we can truly meet and enrich each other.
Text by Virginia Satir
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http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=3162
Feb. 13, 2007
What we learned from Barbie about women and math
ANN ARBOR, Mich.—As if listening to an inner Teen Talk Barbie saying "Math is hard!" young women whose gender is central to their identity may be more vulnerable to underperforming in math.
According to a new study of college undergraduates, women who said that their gender was central to their self-concept and who also showed evidence of believing the stereotype that girls don't do math performed worse in an introductory calculus course than women who were less identified as being female and who did not show evidence of unconscious or implicit stereotyping.
Their math performance suffered even when the women explicitly rejected the notion that males are better at math than females, the researchers showed.
The study, conducted by psychologists Amy K. Kiefer at the University of California, San Francisco, and Denise Sekaquaptewa at the University of Michigan, was published in the January issue of Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science.
To assess the presence of implicit stereotypes, researchers showed study participants lists of words, then measured their reaction times as they matched the words. Evidence for holding implicit stereotypes included linking words like "he" and "him" more quickly than "she" and "her" to math concepts like "calculate" and "compute," for example. For participants holding implicit stereotypes, female-related words were more quickly paired with arts and humanities concepts like "English" and "classics."
According to Sekaquaptewa, who is a member of the U-M Department of Psychology and a faculty associate at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR), women who strongly agreed that their femininity was central to their sense of who they were and who also showed they held implicit gender stereotypes performed worse on the final exam and were less likely to express interest in a math-related career.
"This was true even when we controlled for SAT scores in math and prior performance in the calculus class," she said.
The majority of women in the study disagreed with the idea that men have superior math ability, the researchers noted. But even when women explicitly disavowed this stereotype, the speed with which they linked "male" and "math" indicated that many in fact linked the two concepts.
According to the authors, the research may provide insight into why women remain less likely than men to major in math or go into math-heavy professions like engineering or computer-science.
"It's the combination of embracing a feminine identity, which women are encouraged to do in our society, and of holding beliefs that math is for men, even when these beliefs are not consciously expressed," Sekaquaptewa said. "Such implicit beliefs are likely left over, like a residue, from stereotypic messages that women were exposed to while growing up."
The research was supported by a grant from the U-M Institute for Research on Women and Gender.
Established in 1948, the Institute for Social Research (ISR) is among the world's oldest survey research organizations, and a world leader in the development and application of social science methodology. ISR conducts some of the most widely-cited studies in the nation, including the Survey of Consumer Attitudes, the National Election Studies, the Monitoring the Future Study, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the Health and Retirement Study, and the National Survey of Black Americans. ISR researchers also collaborate with social scientists in more than 60 nations on the World Values Surveys and other projects, and the Institute has established formal ties with universities in Poland, China, and South Africa. ISR is also home to the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), the world's largest computerized social science data archive. Visit the ISR Web site at for more information.
A group of 4 to 10 year-olds was asked, "What does love mean?" Here's a selection of the answers......from the mouths of babes!
"When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn't bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That's love." (Rebecca - age 8)
"When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth." (Billy - age 4)
"Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other." (Karl - age 5)
"Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs." (Chrissie - age 6)
"Love is what makes you smile when you're too tired to think." (Terri - age 9)
"Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is OK." (Danny - age 7)
"Love is the silent sound in the room when the people you care about are all together." (Luis - age 10)
"Love is when you tell a boy you like his shirt, and then he wears it everyday." (Noelle - age 7)
"Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other too well." (Tommy - age 6)
"During my piano recital, I was on a stage and I was scared. I looked at all the people watching me and I saw my daddy waving and smiling. I wasn't scared anymore. Love does that." (Cindy - age 8)
"My mommy loves me more than anybody. You don't see anyone else kissing me to sleep at night, do you?" (Clare - age 6)
"Love is when Mommy gives Daddy the best piece of chicken and doesn't even think about it." (Elaine - age 5)
"Love is when Mommy sees Daddy smelly and sweaty and still says he is handsomer than Robert Redford." (Chris - age 7)
"Love is when you give someone a mint instead of telling them that their mouth smells like old cheese." (Jamal - age 8)
"Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day." (Mary Ann - age 4)
"When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you." (Karen - age 7)
"You really shouldn't say 'I love you' unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget." (Jessica - age 8)
And the final one to melt anybody's heart:
Author and lecturer Dr. Leo Buscaglia once talked about a contest he was asked to judge. The purpose of the contest was to find the most caring child.The winner was a four year old child whose next door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife. Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman's yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there. When his Mother asked him what he had said to the neighbor, the little boy said, "Nothing, really. I just helped him cry."
"Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around."
- Leo Buscaglia 1924-1998
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