Our purpose for this study was to investigate the roles of migration in rural Mexican migrant-sending communities. Specifically, we examined the effects of changing gender role ideology on the mental health of wives whose spouses migrated to the United States. The sending group scored significantly higher in egalitarian gender role ideology but lower in general mental health than the nonsending group. We found through mediation analysis that the difference in gender role ideology mediated the difference in mental health between the two groups. Results are contrary to some psychological and feminist literature advocating benefits of masculine or androgynous ideology.

In laboratory and quasi-laboratory settings, testing and feedback about the correct answer improve participants' retention of the material. With the recent focus by university administrations and accrediting agencies on improving learning outcomes, teachers may want to use testing and feedback as a way to improve learning outcomes. However, little ecologically valid research has been performed on testing and feedback; therefore, little is known about the proper implementation of testing and feedback in the classroom. In this study, I used quiz scores, exam scores, and final grades to assess testing and feedback throughout a semester by implementing a quasi-experimental design that compares students across semesters. I expected that testing and feedback would result in higher exam scores and final grades in a classroom context. Students who received feedback had considerably higher final grades, likely because these students received more points when taking quizzes a second time. When controlling for the additional points earned, feedback was slightly negatively related with final grades, but not enough to affect classroom performance. Testing was not significantly related to exam scores or final grades. Further research that determines how to implement testing and feedback in the classroom is needed before teachers can confidently adopt these practices.

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Much of the understanding of the nature of science in contemporary psychology is founded on a positivistic philosophy of science that cannot adequately account for meaning as experienced. The phenomenological tradition provides an alternative approach to science that is attentive to the inherent meaningfulness of human action in the world. Emmanuel Levinas argues, however, that phenomenology, at least as traditionally conceived, does not provide sufficient grounds for meaning. Levinas argues that meaning is grounded in the ethical encounter with the Other such that meaning arises in rupture. For Levinas, the physical world (i.e., the elemental) and the I provide constraints on the meaning given by the Other, even as the Other is logically prior to all other experience. This Levinasian perspective advocates an epistemology that is open to the rupture of the Other as a way to knowledge. This emphasis on openness to rupture entails a methodology in which psychologists must allow the objects of study to guide their methods of research. Finally, the Levinasian perspective implies a scientific community that is sensitive to the rupture occasioned by the encounter with the Other.

This study employed a quasi-experimental design to test the effects of three pedagogies on learning outcomes in a simulated psychology of gender lecture. Results showed that meaning and relational pedagogies, as well as a combination of meaning, relational, and explanatory pedagogies, significantly improved participant learning beyond self-study and produced a significant improvement in retention as well. Interestingly, participants in the relational condition excelled on these learning outcomes even though the instructor covered very little reading material in that condition. Despite the benefits of these pedagogies, participants showed a clear preference for the lower performing explanatory instructional approach, which suggests that students may not readily recognize pedagogies that best contribute to effective learning and retention in classes like the psychology of gender.