03: Psychoanalytic and Developmental Explanations for Gender Differences

Question 1

Freud’s Theory of Psychosocial Development

Answer 1

id = our desire to satisfy basic needs -> knows what it wants but has neither morality nor the means to acquire what it wants -> the selfish part of us, to hell with the consequences!
ego = rational problem solving side -> rational big sibling with a gameplan
super ego = seat of morality -> angel on your shoulder

Question 2

Freud’s stages of Personality Development

Answer 2

Oral Stage
Anal Stage
Phallic Stage
Latency period
Genital stage

Question 3

oral stage

Answer 3

the first period of freud’s personality development; occuring during first year of life (comfort in breastfeeding)

Question 4

anal stage

Answer 4

year 1-3; children get a sense of pleasure out of bodily functions; child feels they are in control

Question 5

phallic stage

Answer 5

begin differentiation of males vs females, higher interest in genitals

Question 6

latency period

Answer 6

lasts until puberty

Question 7

genital stage

Answer 7

after puberty, people move into a period of mature sexuality

Question 8

oedipal crisis

Answer 8

freud theory of psychosexual stages of development; describes a child’s feelings of desire for his or her opposite-sex parent (view their same sex parent as a rival for their opposite sex parent?? bruh kinda messed up)

Question 9

castration anxiety

Answer 9

fear of emasculation in both the literal and metaphorical sense; basically the fear of damage to or loss of one’s penis lol -> coined by FREUD in his psychoanalytic theories

Question 10

electra complex

Answer 10

freud believed women experience penis envy; girl’s psychosexual competition with mother for possession of father (female version of oedipal complex)

Question 11

sex role theory

Answer 11

a broad body of theory, drawing from both psychology and sociology, that studies individuals’ socialization into gender roles and acquisition of gender identities

Question 12

terman and miles’ study

Answer 12

research designed to investigate deviance in personality and/or sexuality; test instrument constructed to determine sex differences in responses; suggesting females would choose feminine oriented words and males masculine -> similarities were discarded, so overlap in masculine feminine personality types also eliminated

Question 13

findings of t&m’s study

Answer 13

females and males are far more alike than different across most of the factors tested (what they found, not concluded)

Question 14

talcott parsons & sex role theory

Answer 14

argued society had 2 types of major functions, production and reproduction, and that these required 2 separate institutional systems, the occupational system and kinship system, which required 2 types of roles; focus shifts away from need of infant to be masculine/feminine compared to need of society to have those roles fulfilled

Question 15

instrumental roles (occupational)

Answer 15

demanded rationality, autonomy, and competitive ness

Question 16

expressive roles (kinship)

Answer 16

demanded tenderness and nurturing so that the next generation could be socialized

Question 17

problems with sex role theory

Answer 17

1. unable to account for varities of masculinities and feminities and more broadly, within-sex differences
2. obscures the power difference btwn traditional men’s roles and women’s roles and cannot account for male domination
3. locates gendering in individuals, without giving enough attention to institutions

Question 18

cognitive development theory

Answer 18

kohlberg and otherproponents argue children develop a sense of gender identity in a sequence of distinct stages

Question 19

Kohlbergian sequence of gender identity development

Answer 19

1. Children born gender neutral
2. by age 2, children have relatively stable and fixed understandings of themselves as gendered
3. age 5-6 most children can recognize gender as an attribute of the person and not the result of material props we use to display gender i.e. purses. children begin to develop gender constancy

Question 20

problems with understanding gender differences in psychology

Answer 20

theories fail to fully account for power, relationality, and institutional dimensions of gender

Question 21

Gilligan

Answer 21

critiqued Kohlberg’s theory; said it did not account for the fact that women approach moral problems from an ‘ethics of care’ rather than an ‘ethics of justice’ pov ; challenges fundamental assumptions of Kohlberg’s theory

Question 22

gender constancy

Answer 22

the a child’s emerging sense of the permanence of being a boy or a girl and an understanding that occurs in a series of stages that include gender identity, gender stability and gender consistency.