A03 Psychologists for Gender

Question 1

Research Support from Bem

A03: Sex-role Stereotypes and Androgyny

Answer 1

✩ Bem measured 561 males and 356 female students using the BSRI questionnaire.

✩ She found that most males were grouped with masculine personality traits and most females were grouped with feminine personality traits.

✩Provides evidence for the concept of distinct sets of sex typical gendered personality traits.

Question 2

What further evidence did Bem find?

A03: Sex-role Stereotypes and Androgyny

Answer 2

✩ 34% of males and 27% of females were classified as androgynous.

✩Provides evidence for the concept of androgyny.

Question 2

What does this evidence further imply?

(Social Learning Theory, Biological & Atypical Development)

A03: The Role of Chromosomes and Hormones in Sex and Gender

Answer 2

✩The results also show that girls with female co twins had been less likely to develop cross gender behaviour than girls with male co twins.

✩This is opposite to what the SLT expected, showing that atypical gender development is a biological rather than a psychological process.

Question 2

How does research support from ______ show that gendered behaviours may be learnt as a consequence of early interactions with adults?

A03: Sex Role Stereotypes

Answer 2

✩Smith and Lloyd used 6-month-old babies named and dressed as either boy or girl where the gender of the baby was not always consistent with the biological sex.

✩Mothers were then video recorded whilst playing with a baby for ten mins.

✩Observers found that if the mother thought she was playing with a boy, she verbally encouraged more motor activity and offered ‘gender-appropriate’ toys (e.g. squeaky hammer for boys).

✩Different treatment is seen in parents when children are born, reinforcing sex role stereotypes and the development of either masculine or feminine behaviours.

Question 2

What did Adams and Sherer find in their research that contradicts Bem’s suggestion?

A03: Sex-role Stereotypes and Androgyny

Answer 2

✩ Adams and Sherer compared 101 undergraduate participants using the BSRI with a test of personality traits.

✩ They found that masculine males and masculine females were best adjusted on measures of of assertiveness and self-efficacy.

✩ This suggests that males and females who are more masculine are well adjusted, which counters Bem’s suggestion that androgynous individuals are the most psychologically healthy than other types.

Question 2

How do animal studies support the role of hormones in determining sex?

A03: The Role of Chromosomes and Hormones in Sex and Gender

Answer 2

✩ Van de poll et al found that injecting female rats with testosterone led to an increase in aggression, also when he castrated male rats it had resulted in temperament changes, where they become calmer and less aggressive.

✩ These results suggest hormonal changes result in changes to sex typed behaviour.

Question 2

Outline research support for Kohlberg’s Gender Development theory: children story.

A03: The Cognitive Explanation of Gender

Answer 2

✩ Research support comes from Damon, who told children story about George who liked to play with dolls and were asked to comment on it.

4-year-old children said it was fine for George to play with dolls whereas 6-year-olds said it was wrong for George to play with dolls.

This provides support for the gender development theory because at the age of 6 children who are at the gender consistency had formed rigid stereotypes regarding gender-appropriate behaviour.

Question 2

Research support for gender schemas.

A03: The Cognitive Explanation of Gender

Answer 2

✩ There is evidence supporting the idea that gender schemas may actually change or distort memory.

For example, Martin and Halverson found that children are more likely to remember gender-consistent, as opposed to gender-inconsistent, photos that have been displayed to them.

It appears schemas may also impact the cognitive processing of gender-relevant information in such young children, as they have been shown the change the main characters in gender-inconsistent photographs to meet their own personal ideas and perceptions of gender constancy.

✩ This provides significant support for the influence of gender schemas on our behaviour.

Question 2

Freud’s case study

A03: The Psychodynamic Explanations of Gender Development

Answer 2

✩ Freud reported on a case study of a 5y old boy with a phobia of horses and a range of dreams.

✩ Using letters from Han’s father, Freud theorised that the boy’s fear of horses biting him was actually a fear of his father in relation to castration anxiety while his dreams of sitting on a crumpled giraffe with a larger giraffe called out was an expression of Han’s desire for his mother.

✩ This was used by Freud to support his psychodynamic theory of gender.

Question 2

How does cultural studies provide support for sex-role stereotypes?

A03: Sex Role Stereotypes

Answer 2

✩ Mead worked with tribal communities and found in New guinea three communities that had very unusual gender roles.

✩For example, the Tchambuli people had completely reversed gender roles with females to show leadership and dominance while males were passive, emotional and were responsible for child rearing.

✩The fact that human communities can vary so radically suggests sex-role stereotypes exist as a product of our culture rather than due to biological processes.

Question 2

Outline research support for Kohlberg’s Gender Development theory: gender and models

A03: The Cognitive Explanation of Gender

Answer 2

✩ Slaby and Frey used interviews to assess the stage of gender development of 23 boys and 32 girls.

✩ Children watched a film with a male and female model performing the same activity (e.g. playing an instrument, drinking juice) on either side of the screen.

✩ Researchers measured how long each child focused on each model and found that children in the gender consistency stage spent longer looking at the same sex mode, especially boys.

✩ This suggests that children do have observable stages to gender development as predicted by Kohlberg and children do look to same sex models for gender self-socialisation.

Question 2

Martin and Little

A03: The Cognitive Explanation of Gender

Answer 2

✩ They assessed the stage of gender development of children aged 3-5.

✩ They then judged the children’s preference for sex-typed toys, knowledge of sex typed clothing and preference for novel items that experimenter said was ‘for boys’ or ‘for girls’

✩ They found that the youngest children had strong sex typed preferences and stereotyped knowledge of clothes and toys, before children reached the gender consistency stage.

✩ This suggests gender stereotypes and gendered behaviour form early as predicted by Gender Schema Theory.

✩ While the existence of Kohlberg’s stages is supported, it is wrong in suggesting gendered preferences only start after children are in the consistency stage.

Question 2

What research support is there for atypical gender development being inherited?

(Social Learning Theory, Biological & Atypical Development)

A03: The Role of Chromosomes and Hormones in Sex and Gender

Answer 2

✩Van Beijsterveldt collected data about childhood gender identity from over 8000 twin pairs (MZ and DZ)

✩This data showed that 70% of the variance in gender identity was due to genetic factors, showing that atypical development can be inherited.

Question 2

Research contradiction for the role of hormones in determining sex-typed behaviour.

A03: The Role of Chromosomes and Hormones in Sex and Gender

Answer 2

✩O’Connor et al. (2004)

✩ Double-blind, placebo study, increased testosterone levels in healthy young men —> no significant increase in aggression or sexual behaviour

—> does not have the role of aggression and therefore not a role in affecting gender development

Question 2

Perhaps biological explanations may be a better explanation of gender development…

Research support: Male Vervet Monkeys

A03: The Cognitive Explanation of Gender

Answer 2

✩ Alexander and Hines showed that male vervet monkeys were more likely to play with masculine toys such as cars and females with feminine toys such as dolls without prior experience.

✩ This shows that preference for gendered objects may be instinctual and have an evolutionary basis.

Question 2

What is research support for cognitive explanations of gender development?

A03: The Cognitive Explanation of Gender

Answer 2

✩ Ruble et al had instructed pre-schoolers watched advertisements showing toys represented in a sex specific way and found the children high in gender consistency were more influenced than those with low gender consistency.

✩ This is an important finding as it shows that children do not passively respond to stereotypes shown in the media. Instead, the degree to which they are influenced is determined by their own cognitions.

Question 2

Contradictory research regarding testosterone levels

A03: The Role of Chromosomes and Hormones in Sex and Gender

Answer 2

✩ Van Anders showed testosterone levels significantly increased in women who took part in a task where they wielded power over another person.

✩ The researchers suggest this is evidence for a gender –> testosterone pathway, in which socialisation encourages men to be more competitive, raising testosterone even more.

✩ (Basically, men are raised to be aggressive, as seen in toys they are given, and thus have even more testosterone levels)

✩ This means a reductionist biological approach to explaining masculine behaviour is likely too simplistic, a holistic approach including social factors may be more valid.

Question 2

Outline criticism from Horney (haha, really funny!) regarding Freud’s theories that suffer from gender bias and androcentrism.

A03: The Psychodynamic Explanations of Gender Development

Answer 2

✩ Horney has criticised the Electra Complex as suffering from androcentrism and gender bias, because it has assumed that girls have an innate predisposition to ‘aspire’ towards men, due to their penises, rather than conversely.

✩ For example, the same logic can be used to suggest that men are envious of the unique female ability to have children!

✩ Therefore, this may be considered a social construct based on his beliefs in the Victorian society rather than a scientifically proven maturational stage of gender development, which all children experience i.e. is not universal.

(basically, only sees development in terms of men rather than women, why can’t men have the desire for babies too?)

Question 2

Research support for effectiveness of oestrogen replacement therapy

(medical intervention to treat atypical chromosomal patterns)

A03: Atypical Sex Chromosome Patterns

Answer 2

✩ Quigley et al. (2014) investigated the positive effects of oestrogen replacement therapy in treating TS and found that if treated before puberty, then females with TS would have a greater increase in breast tissue, suggesting early diagnosis and treatment is vital

Question 2

Green: further contradictory evidence seen in lesbian houses.

A03: The Psychodynamic Explanations of Gender Development

Answer 2

✩ Green found that when compared to boys raised in heterosexual households, there was no significant difference in the gender development of boys raised in lesbian households.

Question 2

Research support for social learning from role models in media: Williams et al

A03: The Social Learning Explanation of Gender Development

Answer 2

✩ Williams (1986) carried out a natural experiment in an isolated community called Notel where TV was about to be introduced for the first time.

✩ He found that, in the two years following the introduction of TV, the children of Notel became much more stereotyped in the gender attitudes.

✩ Children were re-assessed 2 years after the introduction of TV into Notel and it was found that behaviours/attitudes had become significantly more sex-typed.

✩ This implies that the media and media stereotypes can have a profound effect on how children think about their own and others’ gender

Question 2

What methodological issues does Mead’s research suffer from?

A03: The Influence of Culture and Media on Gender Roles

Answer 2

✩ Mead’s research may have suffered from observer bias and investigator effects because Mead had already developed hypotheses and so may have been more inclined to detail the behaviours which matched this hypothesis, as opposed to providing a true representation of the observed behaviours.

✩ Therefore, this reduces the validity of the conclusions that Mead drew about cultural differences in gender roles.

Question 2

Martin and Little

A03: The Psychodynamic Explanations of Gender Development

Answer 2

✩ Martin and Little found children as young as three displayed strong sex-typed behaviours such as favouring gendered toys.

✩ This suggests that gendered behaviour can begin with only a limited understanding of gender and before the identification aspect of the phallic stage as predicted by Freud.

Question 2

Stevenson and Black contradictory evidence in absence.

A03: The Psychodynamic Explanations of Gender Development

Answer 2

✩ Stevenson and Black conducted a meta-analysis of 67 studies on father absent families.

✩ Finding boys over 6 years old without father figures actually showed slightly stereotypically masculine behaviours than boys with fathers.

Question 2

Research support from Drummond regarding social psychological factors impact on gender dysphoria,

A03: Atypical Gender Development

Answer 2

✩ Drummond assessed 25 girls as having gender dysphoria from age 3-12.

✩ When followed up only 12% had gender dysphoria from age 15-36.

✩ This suggests that gender identity in children is not innate and fixed as would be suggested by biological arguments, but gender identity formation can be influenced by social psychological factors experienced in childhood such as social learning factors.

Question 2

Theisen

How does this provide support for the importance of genes in determining gender dysphoric behaviours?

A03: Atypical Gender Development

Answer 2

✩ Theisen sequenced the genomes of 13 transgender individuals and compared these to 88 controls.

✩ Finding 21 gene variations associated with oestrogen reception in areas of the brain show to become sexually dimorphic before birth,

✩ This basically suggests that sex hormone exposure before birth results in sexually dimorphic brain development contributing to gender dysphoria.

✩ (These genetic variations may be resulting in variations in gender identity, showing the importance of chromosomes and hormones in influencing gendered behaviour).

Question 2

Research support for same-sex models… (Perry)

A03: The Social Learning Explanation of Gender Development

Answer 2

✩ Research support showing children copy same-sex models and therefore learn gender-appropriate behaviour from observations.

✩ Perry found that when children were shown a video of a boy and girl picking up different fruits, later when children were given a choice of fruit and picked same fruit as same-sex model.

✩ This is a strength because children have enough similarity to adults in the way they learn to make this research credible

Question 2

How can we use Smith and Llyod’s study to support the Gender Schema theory?

A03: The Cognitive Explanation of Gender

Answer 2

✩Smith and Lloyd used 6-month-old babies named and dressed as either boy or girl where the gender of the baby was not always consistent with the biological sex.

✩Mothers were then video recorded whilst playing with a baby for ten mins.

✩Observers found that if the mother thought she was playing with a boy, she verbally encouraged more motor activity and offered ‘gender-appropriate’ toys (e.g. squeaky hammer for boys).

✩Different treatment is seen in parents when children are born, supporting the existence of ingroup and outgroup schemas (stereotyped behaviour for their gender).

Question 2

Research support for sex-role stereotyping in advertising: Furnham et al

A03: The Influence of Culture and Media on Gender Roles

Answer 2

✩ Furnham et al investigated the use of sex-role stereotypes in advertising and found that men tended to be used in power positions, showing autonomy and professionalism, and women in familial roles within domestic settings.

✩ The voiceovers tended to be male suggesting that males are deemed to speak with more authority. This suggests that the media may play a role in reinforcing widespread social stereotypes concerning male and female behaviour.

Question 2

Mixed evidence for media influencing gender - Eisend.

A03: The Influence of Culture and Media on Gender Roles

Answer 2

✩ Eisend reviewed 64 studies, again finding stronger gender stereotyping in ads, but that this has reduced over time.

✩ Also data analysis showed that the reduction in gender stereotyping was the result of changes in wider society. This suggests that advertising ‘mirrors’ society and that it does not mould society via SLT.