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Abstract. Intrasexual competition implies viewing the confrontation with same-sex individuals, especially in the context of contact with the opposite-sex, in competitive terms. After constructing the items for the preliminary scale and after conducting a pilot study, in two studies with a total of 706 participants from The Netherlands and Canada, a 12-item scale for individual differences in intrasexual competition was developed that was sex neutral, and that had a high degree of crossnational equivalence. In The Netherlands, sociosexuality, sex drive and social comparison orientation were independently related to intrasexual competition. In Canada, intrasexual competition was strongly, and independently of the Big Five, related to social comparison orientation, but only among women. There was no effect of birth order, but sibling rivalry did correlate with intrasexual competition. Among men, intrasexual competition was more strongly, and differently, related to the Big Five than among women. Among women, intrasexual competition was predicted by a lack of agreeableness, and among men by a high level of neuroticism and extraversion. Keywords: intrasexual competition, individual differences, Big Five INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN INTRASEXUAL COMPETITIONIntrasexual competition refers to rivalry with same-sex others over access to mates. Darwin (1871) already recognized the importance of intrasexual competition for sexual selection, and suggested that it evolved as an important behavioral adaptation for attracting mates and for gathering resources necessary for reproduction and offspring care. In most species males invest little in their offspring and engage in often fierce competition with other males over the access to females, whereas females show few signs of intrasexual competition. However, because in humans both

Prevailing evolutionary approaches to human mating have largely ignored the fact that mating decisions are heavily influenced by parents and other kin. This is significant because parents and children often have conflicting mate preferences. We provide a brief review of how parents have influenced their children's mating behavior across cultures and throughout history. Then, by drawing on evolutionary reasoning, we offer a hypothesis for why parents and offspring may have conflicting interests with respect to mate preferences. Specifically, parents may have a relatively stronger preference for children's mates with characteristics suggesting high parental investment and cooperation with the ingroup, whereas children may have a relatively stronger preference for mates with characteristics signaling heritable fitness. We review past research consistent with this hypothesis, and we report new results from an empirical study consisting of 768 participants from a variety of cultures that provided clear support for the hypothesis.

This article reviews research conducted on social comparison processes in the classroom since Festinger proposed his theory of social comparison. It covers the theoretical framework of social comparison theory, and it is organized around the following themes: motives for social comparison, dimensions of social comparison, direction of social comparison, and consequences of social comparison. The overall picture is an emerging one in which pupils prefer to compare their performances upward-specifically, with pupils who perform better than themselves but who resemble themselves on related and unrelated attributes. Although the magnitude of the effects of social comparison in the classroom is not examined, the review suggests that such upward comparisons not only lead pupils to perform better but evoke negative affect and lower academic self-concept. Topics discussed include inconsistencies (especially with regard to the direction of comparison and the motives underlying social comparison in the classroom), practical implications, and directions for future research.

Psychological differences between women and men, far from being invariant as a biological explanation would suggest, fluctuate in magnitude across cultures. Moreover, contrary to the implications of some theoretical perspectives, gender differences in personality, values, and emotions are not smaller, but larger, in American and European cultures, in which greater progress has been made toward gender equality. This research on gender differences in self-construals involving 950 participants from 5 nations/cultures (France, Belgium, the Netherlands, the United States, and Malaysia) illustrates how variations in social comparison processes across cultures can explain why gender differences are stronger in Western cultures. Gender differences in the self are a product of self-stereotyping, which occurs when between-gender social comparisons are made. These social comparisons are more likely, and exert a greater impact, in Western nations. Both correlational and experimental evidence supports this explanation.

B r a m E B u u n k University of Groningen This study evaluated a 5-week, group-based burnout intervention program among directcare professionals working with mentally disabled individuals. Equity theory was used as the theoretical framework. The main objective of the program was to reduce perceptions of inequity in the relationship with the organization and with the recipients of care by increasing the fit between the professional's goals and expectations and the actual work situation. One experimental group and 2 control groups participated. All 3 groups filled out 3 questionnaires: before the program started, 6 months later, and 1 year later. Individual absenteeism rates were assessed for 1 year before and after the program. Results showed that in the experimental group burnout, absence, and deprived feelings diminished compared with the control groups. The most profound effects were among participants who could draw on social resources to benefit from the intervention. Since its "discovery" in the early 1970s, burnout has been recognized as a serious threat, particularly for human service professionals (Schaufeli, Maslach, & Marek, 1993). Professional burnout is in general viewed as a syndrome consisting of three dimensions: emotional exhaustion (i.e., the depletion or draining of emotional resources), depersonalization (i.e., a negative, callous, and cynical attitude toward the recipients of one's care), and reduced personal accomplishment (i.e., the tendency to evaluate oneself negatively with regard to one's accomplishments at work; Maslach, 1993; Maslach & Jackson, 1986). Research over the past two decades has shown that burnout is not only related to negative outcomes for the individual, including depression, a sense of failure, fatigue, and loss of motivation, but also to negative outcomes for the organization, including absenteeism, turnover rates, and lowered productivity (for recent reviews,

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