Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Feminists are sexy, rubbishy study finds

Stupid propaganda only below:

Popular stereotypes of feminists as unattractive and sexually unappealing are wrong -- in fact feminism may improve romantic relationships, a new study suggests. The findings, by Laurie Rudman and Julie Phelan of Rutgers University in Piscataway, N.J., appear this week in the research journal Sex Roles.

Rudman and Phelan surveyed 242 American college students and 289 older adults. They examined people's perception of their own feminism and its link to relationship health, measured by a combination of overall relationship quality, agreement about gender equality, relationship stability and sexual satisfaction.

Feminism was linked to healthier heterosexual relationships for women, they found, while men with feminist partners reported more stable relationships and greater sexual satisfaction.

The findings provided no evidence for the notion that females who champion women's rights are likelier to be single or lesbian than others, Rudman and Phelan added. Indeed, they found that feminist women were more likely to be in a heterosexual romantic relationship than nonfeminist women.

Source. Journal abstract here.


This study is a prize example of how deeply unserious and totally unscholarly most psychological research is. It draws inferences about whole population subgoups ("feminists") from groups of respondents that are ludicrously unrepresentative of any known population. The use of an accessible group of undergraduate students is simply boring. We all know that students can usually be relied on to give the "right" answers to questionnaires. But in this case an even more unrepresentative group of respondents was also used: 289 respondents to an online questionnaire. Who answers online questionnaires? Heaven knows. That their responses will differ from the vast majority who do not answer computer surveys seems more than a little likely, however.

The plain boring old truth is that facts about a group can only be gleaned either by surveying the whole group or a representative sample of them. As there was no attempt at any kind of representative sampling on this occasaion, no inferences can be drawn from the results. In my own psychological research, I almost invariably used general population sampling but I was one of the very few who were interested enough in truth to do so.

I showed years ago that a major feminist myth was the reverse of the truth when examined on a general population sample so I have little doubt what a serious examination of the hypothesis allegedly examined above would show.

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ELSEWHERE

Money not good for marriage: "Wealth has many perks: great vacations, beautiful houses and nice cars. But if its marital bliss you're looking for, don't expect money to help. Almost half of America's rich say they're unhappy in marriage, a study found. What's worse: More than that say they've been unfaithful in the last three years. Of those confessing to an affair, more were women (61%) than men (43%). The reason cited most frequently by both sexes: variety. That's according to Prince and Associates, a Connecticut firm that tracks the habits of the rich. They asked 433 breadwinners (56% male and 44% female) with a net worth over $1 million about their relationships. Thirty-eight percent of the participants had a net worth of $10 million or more. So it's probably not a surprise that 30% of Prince's survey group said they were considering a divorce. Most men responding to the Prince & Associates survey (75%) said cost is their main obstacle to getting a divorce, and 61.5% said they feared it would hurt business dealings and opportunities. Just 7.7% of men cited harm to the kids" [Caution: No information about sampling method]

GWB defends free trade: "Alarmed by slipping support for free trade even among Republicans, President Bush is arguing that protectionism will cut Americans out of chances for more - and better - jobs. Bush has launched a blitz on behalf of pending free trade pacts with four nations. He continued the push Saturday in his weekly radio address "More exports support better and higher-paying jobs," the president said. "And to keep our economy expanding, we need to keep expanding trade."

Norwegian Government to Companies: Include 40 % Women on Boards or be Dissolved: "The left-leaning government of Norway has issued an ultimatum to businesses: increase the number of women on the board of directors or be dissolved. 140 Norwegian companies must increase the number of women on their boards of directors to 40 per cent or face state-enforced dissolution, according to the Norwegian news service Aftenposten".

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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