New research suggests recently graduated college men and women may have differing expectations concerning salaries and possibilities for promotions.

After surveying more than 23,000 university students, researchers found that the women both expected to be paid less and have to wait longer for a promotion than the men did.

While there has long been proof that women are typically paid less than equally qualified men, the results surprised researchers because these students are a part of the ‘millennial generation’ that is considered to be more egalitarian.

The gap in wage expectations widens over the course of their careers.  After five years on the job, women anticipate their earnings to be 18 percent less than men.

There is also a wider expectation gap among women who plan to enter fields that are typically male-dominated, such as science and engineering.

Women also anticipate having to wait two months longer than men for their first promotion.

“It’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg-situation,” said study author Sean Lyons in a press release. “Women know that they currently aren’t earning as much as men so they enter the workforce with that expectation. Because they don’t expect to earn as much, they likely aren’t as aggressive when it comes to negotiating salaries or pay raises and will accept lower-paying jobs than men, which perpetuates the existing inequalities.”

“This study shows that women aren’t blissfully ignorant and know the gender gap exists,” he added.

However, he went onto explain that a number of other factors could be influencing the gender disparaties in job expectations.

For example, the men tended to overshoot what their starting salary would likely be.  The women’s answers were actually more realistic.

Also, women tended to weigh their personal lives more heavily when considering career expectations, while the men preferred priorities that were associated with higher salaries.

“It may be that women expect to trade off higher salaries for preferences in lifestyle,” Lyons said.

Despite their differing expectations, the study found women and men have the exact same levels of self confidence and self-efficacy.

“Our study shows women don’t feel inferior to men and view themselves as every bit as capable as their male counterparts,” Lyons said.

Current strategies to improve workforce equality include increasing the number of women in male-dominated fields. Lyons also suggested advising post-secondary students on accurate salary information before they begin working.

“Professors and career counselors should make it a priority to provide students with accurate information regarding actual salaries and expected promotion rates for university graduates in their field,” he said. “Awareness is essential to empowering these young women to think differently about the way they value themselves relative to their male colleagues.”

It seems we’ve come to expect bad behavior out of the people who are in positions of power, new research suggests.

A new study says that when people do not respect basic rules of social behavior – such as smiling less, interrupting others and speaking loudly – others are more likely to believe that they have power.

In the study, people read about an office visitor who took a cup of employee coffee without asking or a bookkeeper that broke accounting rules, as opposed to counterparts who behaved more politely or followed proper practices.  The rule breakers were rated as more in control and more powerful than those who followed typical social convention.

Researchers speculate this effect may due to the limited restrictions powerful people have.  In general, the powerful do in fact have fewer rules to follow and have more money, knowledge and support.  Meanwhile, people who are not powerful have more rules to follow.

So, the researchers say, it makes sense when we see a person not following the rules, we assume it may be because they don’t have to have to worry about rules at all.

Acting rudely also makes a person seem more powerful.  Study participants viewed a video of a man eating at a sidewalk café who put his feet on another chair, dropped cigarette ashes on the ground, and ordered his meal brusquely.  The participants thought the man was more likely to “get to make decisions” and able to “get people to listen to what he says” than other participants who saw a video of the same man behaving politely.

The study was published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

Small ritualistic or repetitive behaviors can be a source of comfort for both humans and animals, according to a new study.

The study finds that ritualistic behavior can be used as a way to induce calm and manage stress caused by unpredictability and uncontrollability, heightening people’s belief that they are in control of a situation that is otherwise out of their hands.

According to the study researchers, nearly every human and animal activity can be divided into three categories: preparatory, functional and confirmatory. However, preparatory and confirmatory actions are not necessarily required to get a task done, and not always related to the task itself.

For the study, the researchers analyzed videotapes of people performing common tasks, such as getting dressed, locking a car or making coffee, as well as basketball players completing a free-throw.

The researchers concentrated on questions like these: if all a basketball player needs to do is shoot the ball in a hoop, why would he engage in ritualistic behaviors, like dribbling the ball exactly six times beforehand?

“The routine they perform in the moments before shooting the ball is a method to focus their full concentration and control their actions,” explained Professor David Eilam, study researcher.

Routine can actually help, he added. If people feel that completing their repetitive actions will enhance performance, they tend to be more successful.

But what about people who are performing more ordinary tasks with minimal pressure? Everybody engages in repetitive, non-functional routines, according to the researchers.

These routines are exaggerated, of course, among people who suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). OCD are also more likely to engage in confirmatory actions rather than preparatory.

This means, for instance, after performing a task such as turning the oven off, an OCD sufferer may need to confirm that task by checking to make sure the oven is off dozens of times afterward.

Because people with OCD can set themselves complicated routines, they often cannot trust that they have fully completed an action, thereby extending the confirmatory phase of an action. This is the key difference between normal and pathological rituals, Professor Eilam said.

The study was published in the journal Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews.

Resisting peer pressure may be more challenging than you think – especially since new research shows that it’s actually hardwired into our brains.

A study by University of Southern California researchers helps explain why people are willing to take stupid chances when friends are watching that they would never take by themselves. Brain scans show that the human brain actually places more value on winning in a social setting than it does on winning when you’re alone.

For the study, the researchers focused on brain activity in the striatum, the part of the brain that is associated with rewards. This section of the brain showed significantly higher activation when study participants beat peers in a lottery, as opposed to when participants won while alone.

The medial prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain linked to social reasoning, showed more activation in the presence of others as well.

In terms of physical action, the participants who won in social settings were more likely to engage in risky and competitive behaviors in subsequent lotteries.

Evolutionarily, there are strong incentives for winning or being “dominant” over others. Animals in a dominant position have privileged access to resources such as foods or mates.

According to study researcher Georgio Corcicelli, there is also another logical reason why people are more likely to take risks in social settings: while engaging in risky behavior alone can easily be life-threatening, people in groups have a social support network in place to help them if something goes wrong.

The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The economic turmoil that has plagued America since 2008 is sometimes called the “mancession” due to its harsher impact on men than women. Statistics indicate that 10.4 percent of men are unemployed in comparison to eight percent of women.

Due to this shift, researchers say they are observing changes in traditional gender roles, as men increasingly become financially dependent on female partners. In the past, of course, men were always considered the “breadwinners” in traditional families.

“It changes how men think of themselves,” said Ilana Demantas, study researcher. “Usually men see themselves as supporters of the family, and since a lot of them are no longer able to do that alone on their income, they have to construct their identity in a new way to allow them to still think positively of themselves.”

While some of men suffer from depression, many are embracing domestic chores such as childcare or housework.

“Before unemployment, while they very much valued ‘women’s work,’ men still constructed their identity in a way that allowed them to remain in charge,” said Demantas. “Working was a way to say, ‘I’m the man.’”

“But now,” she continued, “managing the family is a way to see themselves as men. So they’ve actually used ‘women’s work’ to see themselves as contributing to the family. This seems to be a silver lining in a very bleak recession.”

Furthermore, the men involved in the study did not seem to resent their wives or girlfriends for being employed while they were not. Rather, the men felt positively about the situation.

“They very much felt grateful that women were employed,” said Demantas. “One subject said, ‘I’m so lucky that my wife is still working, and she has a great insurance policy.’ Another said, ‘If she weren’t working, I’d be sleeping in a car or something.’ And some of our subjects take up more household work. One of the subjects said he woke up early and made coffee for his wife because it was the one nice thing he could do for her since he wasn’t contributing economically.”

Though the disparity between men’s and women’s employment levels has evened out somewhat over time, the researchers still say that the idea of masculinity is at a new crossroads thanks to the recession.

“Men’s identities have changed,” Demantas said. “They’re proud to contribute to the household, to make up for the work their wives are doing. Yet, they still maintain household authority, holding onto their identities as ‘men’ any way they can.”

The study will be presented at 106th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association.

The scenario: He comes home tired, cranky and with something clearly on his mind. Despite repeated attempts to get him to open up, he brushes them aside and turns on the television, still stewing in silence.

Sound familiar?

While, psychologists have told us that males avoid talking about their feelings out of the fear of appearing weak, a new study suggests the real reason is actually much simpler: They feel that discussing problems is a waste of time.

University of Missouri researchers conducted four different studies of nearly 2000 males and females. They found that while females had positive expectations of how talking about problems would make them feel, such as expecting to feel cared for, understood, and less alone, males simply said that talking about problems would make them feel “weird” and as if they were “wasting time.”

Contrary to what the researchers expected, males did not express any more negative sentiments towards discussing problems than females did. For example, they did not expect to feel embarrassed, worried about being teased or bad about not taking care of the problem themselves.

“For years, popular psychologists have insisted that boys and men would like to talk about their problems but are held back by fears of embarrassment or appearing weak,” said associate professor Amanda Rose.

“However, when we asked young people how talking about their problems would make them feel, boys didn’t express angst or distress about discussing problems any more than girls,” she said. “Instead, boys’ responses suggest that they just don’t see talking about problems to be a particularly useful activity.”

The findings, according to the researchers, indicate that parents and psychologists advocate a middle ground when discussing problems.

“For boys, it would be helpful to explain that, at least for some problems, some of the time, talking about their problems is not a waste of time,” Rose said. “Yet, parents also should realize that they may be ‘barking up the wrong tree’ if they think that making boys feel safer will make them confide. Instead, helping boys see some utility in talking about problems may be more effective.”

In fact, Rose said, too much problem talk has been linked with depression and anxiety.

The study results may also play into romantic relationships, many of which involve a “pursuit-withdraw cycle” in which one partner (usually the woman) pursues talking about problems while the other (usually the man) withdraws.

“Women may really push their partners to share pent-up worries and concerns because they hold expectations that talking makes people feel better,” Rose said. “But their partners may just not be interested and expect that other coping mechanisms will make them feel better. Men may be more likely to think talking about problems will make the problems feel bigger, and engaging in different activities will take their minds off of the problem. Men may just not be coming from the same place as their partners.”

The study will be published in the journal Child Development. It was funded by the National Institute for Mental Health.