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Psychology of Women > Exam 4 > Flashcards

Exam 4 Flashcards

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1
Q

What is intelligence?

A

Intelligence is the general capacity to understand ideas, think abstractly, reason, solve problems, and learn.

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2
Q

How has cognitive science been historically biased against women? Consider phrenology, head circumference and brain weight/volume, and fMRI and how they have been used to promote essential and sexist beliefs about gender.

A

Phrenology (a pseudoscience): infer intellectual and psychological attributes from skull

Head circumference, brain weight/volume (despite no link to intelligence)

fMRI shows some differences in size/density but overall similarity

Neurosexism (Chapter 2)

Structure =/= function

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3
Q

What is an intelligence quotient (IQ) and how is it interpreted? How does this methodology differ from previous approaches (in design)?

A

20th century: pivot toward cognitive tests to measure intelligence (eugenics)

Intelligence quotient (IQ): standardized score representing a person’s level of intelligence relative to same-age peers.

This methodology differs from previous approaches, by trying to measure intelligence through a test rather than measuring, fMRIs, and weight/volume of the brain

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4
Q

What does IQ research tell us about sex differences in intelligence?

A

No differences in men’s and women’s average IQ

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5
Q

What is the Flynn effect? Are there sex differences in this effect?

A

The Flynn effect is the increase of IQ over time.

Flynn effect shows no sex differences (IQ increasing at similar rate for men and women, no)

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6
Q

What overall conclusions can be made about the history of cognitive ability research?

A

The history of cognitive ability research has been overall a controversial one, but it is finally being used in a way to show cognitive differences though all on the premise that sex is binary.

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7
Q

What is general intelligence (“g”)? What does it predict? Are there sex differences (explain)?

A

General intelligence (“g”): ability in one domain (e.g., reading comprehension) should positively correlate with others (e.g., pattern recognition, working memory)

Predicts academic/job performance, health, longevity

Stable over lifespan

Moderately heritable

Most studies find small to no sex differences in “g”

Most IQ tests designed to be unbiased by sex – so the cognitive abilities that are sex differentiated are not tested in IQ tests.

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8
Q

What is an effect size (“d” value)? How is an effect size for a sex difference interpreted, in terms of direction and strength?
- Practice describing the following d values (direction and strength): -.49; .30; .05; -.88

A

An effect size is a value measuring the strength of the relationship between two variables in a population

Positive d = on average, men perform better than women

Negative d = on average, women perform better than men

0.00-0.10 - close to zero

0.11-0.35 - small

0.36-0.65 - medium

0.66-1.00 - large

> 1.00 - very large

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9
Q

What is the general pattern of sex differences in verbal performance? Quantitative? Visual-spatial?

A

Verbal, d = -0.11
(small to moderate)
Tends to favor women

Quantitative, d = 0.00
(close to zero or small)

Visual-spatial, d = 0.40
(moderate to large)
Tends to favor men

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10
Q

What is the sex difference in vocabulary (and when does it arise vs. disappear)?

A

Vocabulary: Small female advantage (early childhood only)

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11
Q

What is meant by verbal fluency? Who does the sex difference favor, men or women?

A

Verbal fluency (generation of words): female advantage (small to moderate).

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12
Q

What is the sex difference in reading and writing?

A

Reading: cross-culturally, small to moderate difference favoring girls

Sex difference increases with age and women’s educational opportunities

Writing: Moderate sex difference favoring girls

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13
Q

What is meant by verbal reasoning? How does this sex difference differ from the other verbal skills, and why might this be?

A

Verbal reasoning (understand and analyze concepts): small male advantage (often involves visual-spatial processing)

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14
Q

Where do women have a small quantitative advantage? At what ages?

A

Age 5-10: Small female advantage for computational ability

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15
Q

Where do men have a modest quantitative advantage? At what ages?

A

Age 15-25: Modest male advantage for complex problem solving

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16
Q

What is meant by mental rotation ability? Who does it tend to favor?

A

Mental rotation ability (being able to mentally rotate an object in one’s mind so that they can compare it to images of that object seeing which ones are the same object): moderate to large, favors men

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17
Q

What is spatial perception? Who does this sex difference favor?

A

Spatial perception: Male advantage small (childhood) to moderate (adulthood)

Spatial perception: the ability to perceive, understand, and remember spatial relations between objects in 3D space

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18
Q

What is spatial visualization? Are men or women better spatial visualizers, and when does this difference emerge?

A

Spatial visualization: small male advantage (emerges in teens)

Spatial visualization: ability to represent and manipulate two- and three-dimensional objects mentally; manipulate spatial information sequentially

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19
Q

What is meant by spatial location memory? How does this sex difference differ from other visual-spatial skills?

A

Spatial location memory (remembering where objects are): Small difference favoring women, differs because it favors women

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20
Q

What is the greater male variability hypothesis? What is the evidence for or against this phenomenon?

A

Greater male variability hypothesis: men show greater within-group variability in cognitive performance (more outliers) than women.

For:

Math SAT: boys make up higher proportion of top scorers; greater variation than girls

Higher rates of learning disabilities, developmental disorders in males

Alleles on X chromosome linked to sex differences in lower tail (e.g., disability)

Against:

Not present for all cognitive measures (e.g., verbal performance)

Not present across all racial/ethnic groups, cultures

Responsive to nation-level gender equality

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21
Q

What overall conclusions can be made about men vs. women’s cognitive abilities?

A

There are overall differences in cognitive abilities between men and women though most of them are small or close-to-zero. Also, it could reflect nature or nurture.

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22
Q

Culture can help us infer the extent to which cognitive abilities are due to nurture (e.g., socialization) vs. nature (e.g., genetics). For which sex difference do we see the greatest amount of cross-cultural variation (verbal, quantitative, or visual-spatial)? Which sex differences tend to be more consistent across cultures?

A

Nurture: sex differences vary across cultures.

Several large-scale studies show cross-cultural variation in the size of cognitive sex differences

Varies based on gender equality

Especially evident with math

Nature: sex differences hold across cultures.

Verbal and visual-spatial differences show less cross-cultural variation

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23
Q

Education debt: what is it? How does it disproportionately disadvantage low-income or racial minorities students?

A

Education debt: ongoing, cumulative lack of investment in education of low-income and racial minority students

More resources provided to majority White (vs. Black/Latinx) schools

Produces structural inequalities in education

Leads to poorer outcomes and achievement gaps

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24
Q

Math anxiety: what is the sex difference here? Who is more anxious about math vs. who is more confident / positive about math? How can socializers (i.e., parents, female teachers) affect girls’ math stereotypes and performance?

A

Math anxiety d = -.23

Math self-confidence d = .27

Positive attitudes about math d = .10 - .33

Socializers’ own math anxiety can increase girls’ math stereotypes and worsen math performance

Female teachers

Parents

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25
Q

Stereotype threat: remember this from an earlier chapter? What is it? How does it disproportionately affect women? What circumstances exacerbate its effects (consider subtle vs. blatant; level of identification with math)

A

Stereotype threat

Anxiety diminishes working memory capacity needed to work through difficult problems

Especially strong with subtle (vs. blatant) cues – harder to blame discrimination

Especially amongst women who identify moderately with math

26
Q

Achievement motivation: is there a sex difference?

A

Achievement motivation: Are there sex differences in individuals’ need to meet goals and accomplish tasks?

No sex difference

27
Q

Sensitivity to feedback: how might this produce a sex difference in certain cognitive domains?

A

Sensitivity to feedback: women’s self-evaluations are more responsive to feedback (good or bad) than men’s

Men more likely to deny negative comments

Can decrease women’s confidence (e.g., in scientific reasoning)

28
Q

What is effort-based vs. interest-based learning? What have studies shown about its effects on sex differences within and across cultures? To increase math performance, which would you encourage teachers to use: effort-based or interest-based learning?

A

Effort-based learning: East Asian cultures (e.g., Japan)

Interest-based learning: Western cultures (e.g., USA)

Overall, effort-based learning leads to better math performance than interest-based learning

Interestingly, sex differences in Taiwan and Japanese samples larger than USA sample (boys > girls)

However, East Asian girls outperform USA girls and boys despite less math interest than USA boys

29
Q

Over and above one’s sex, what other home or classroom factors predict math achievement?

A

Compared to one’s sex, math achievement by age 10 more strongly predicted by:

Childhood home learning environment

Mother’s educational level

Primary school effectiveness

Children may learn math anxiety from math-anxious parents who try to help with homework

Parent-level interventions can have downstream effects

Students learn gender stereotypes from teachers

Overt discrimination against racial and sexual minority youth reduces performance

30
Q

How can we intervene on socializers to reduce math anxiety?

A

Parent-level interventions can have downstream effects to reduce math anxiety.

31
Q

Why is benevolent (vs. hostile) sexism (from ambivalent sexism theory; remember from earlier chapters?) shown to be more hurtful for women’s STEM confidence?

A

Women report experiencing more benevolent sexism (BS) than hostile sexism (HS) in STEM courses.

BS can hurt STEM confidence and reduce intent to major in STEM

Particularly for women weakly identified with STEM

Harder to attribute BS to discrimination than HS

Sex-based harassment at work

Evidence for overt discrimination mixed

32
Q

How did Moss-Racusin et al (2012) demonstrate hiring biases against women? Understand the experimental design, the results, and their implications.

A

Hiring biases against women (Moss-Racusin et al., 2012)

Male and female science faculty evaluated an undergraduate student for a lab manager position

Randomly assigned a male or female name

Résumé held constant

Male and female faculty preferred the male (vs. female) candidate

33
Q

How might differences in job interests and math self-views predict lower participation of women in STEM?

A

Sex differences in job interests

Women: interact with others, interpersonal skills

Men: machines, computers

Having more communal goals is associated with less interest in STEM careers

Small to moderate sex differences in math self-views

Men: greater likelihood of taking math-intensive courses (e.g., computer science, physics)

Women: greater likelihood of taking less math intensive science courses (e.g., biology, health science)

34
Q

What is the sex-based division of labor in our culture? How might this reduce women’s participation or achievement in STEM careers?

A

Gendered family responsibilities may prevent women from advancing into the highest ranks of STEM careers at the same rate as men

Sex-based labor divisions: women primarily responsible for childcare, household management which takes away from work hours

Women with children are less likely to be promoted than men with children

Thus, lifestyle choices and household, childcare demands may be more responsible for STEM inequality than cognitive ability.

35
Q

What conclusions can you draw from this information? How can sex differences in education and STEM fields manifest?

A

Sex differences in education and STEM fields comes from social factors, discrimination, and some nature factors of interest in other fields, though this could always be linked back to social factors.

36
Q

What is the Whorfian hypothesis (what does it suppose about how language affects us)?

A

Whorfian hypothesis: a person who uses one set of words or speaks one language may actually see the world differently than a person who uses a different set of words or speaks a different language.

37
Q

What is grammatical gender? What outcomes is grammatical gender associated with? Consider:

  • Women’s economic and political
    participation
  • Stereotypical descriptions of
    inanimate objects or of animals
  • Sexist attitudes
A

Grammatical gender: in some languages, nouns are classified as masculine, feminine, or neutral.

Women’s economic and political participation: Associated with less economic, political participation among women

Stereotypical descriptions of inanimate objects or of animals: Inanimate objects, animals described in stereotypically masculine or feminine ways aligned with their grammatical gender

Sexist attitudes: Participants who completed a survey in a grammatically gendered language (e.g., Spanish) showed more sexist attitudes than when they completed it in English

38
Q

What is the generic masculine? How can it impact women negatively (consider Stout & Gasputa 2011’s study about job interviews)?

A

Generic masculine: tradition of using male-gendered terms to refer to mixed-sex groups, sex-unspecified groups, or people in general.

Suffixes, labels, qualifiers

Promote gendering

Imply gender violations

Diminutives used for women:

Infantilizing (like using girl to describe a grown women)

Stout & Gasupta (2011) Promotes belonging, motivation, identification with the job

Women more likely to pursue stereotypically male jobs

Decreased gender stereotyping

39
Q

Give an example of a suffix; a label; and a qualifier used to describe women’s roles. Why might these impact women negatively? What do they imply about gender?

A

A suffix is basically when the end of a word is changed when referring to women (vs. using the masculine version by default). For example, men and mixed-sex groups are called “actors,” versus women are called “actresses.”

A qualifier is when people feel the need to add a person’s gender to their role, implying they somehow deviate from the norm (e.g., female doctor vs. just doctor, male nurse vs. just nurse).

Don’t worry about labels

40
Q

What is a diminutive? Give an example. Why might this impact women negatively?

A

Diminutive: a form of a word used to indicate a smaller, less powerful, or more familiar version (e.g., booklet, duckling, mommy, daddy) … calling adult women “girls” lowers their status, infantilizes.

Calling a grown women a “girl”, this might impact women negatively by infantilizing them or making them feel less powerful.

41
Q

How can gender neutral or inclusive language positively impact women (consider Stout & Gasupta 2011’s study about job interviews)?

A

Stout & Gasupta (2011) Promotes belonging, motivation, identification with the job

Women more likely to pursue stereotypically male jobs

Decreased gender stereotyping

42
Q

Consider how women are called “pushy” and men “assertive” when engaging in leadership behaviors. What do these word choices reflect?

A

Words can reinforce stereotypes about sex differences in power (e.g., “pushy” women). This reflects stereotypes of sexes in the power that they hold.

Analysis of adjectives from millions of words from English-language texts from 1990-2012 found “pushy” was used to describe women more than men, and “condescending” to describe men more than women

Women = “pushy;” asserting more power than they have

Men = “condescending;” have more power and talking down to others

43
Q

What is active vs. passive voice? How are these grammatical choices used to blame women?

A

Active vs. passive voice

Active voice: blame perpetrators, “how many men kill women every year?”

Passive voice: blame victims, “how many women are killed by men every year?”

Rape, murder, domestic violence cases tend to use passive voice (more blame on women; less blame on male perpetrators)

44
Q

How can people revise gendered language to shed light on social issues, or destigmatize?

A

People sometimes intentionally invent words to give legitimacy to experiences or to raise awareness about social issues, e.g., terms like ”marital rape” and “sexual harassment” were created to bring awareness to these problems and to legitimize them.

Derogatory words can be reclaimed by stigmatized groups

Empowering

Lessen stigma

45
Q

What is the different cultures approach?

A

Different cultures approach: belief that boys and girls socialized to use language so differently they may as well be from “different cultures”

Thought to lead to miscommunication between sexes

46
Q

Gender stereotypes suppose women are more talkative than men. Is this supported or refuted by research? Under what circumstances are men vs. women more talkative?

A

Do women talk more than men? No.

Study recording spontaneous conversations found no sex differences.

Meta-analyses confirm sex differences are small and dependent on context.

Favors men: formal, task-oriented, mixed-sex groups

Favors women: early childhood, parenthood, small collaborations

47
Q

Who interrupts more, men or women? In which contexts and using what kind of interruptions?

A

interruptions 10x more frequent in mixed-sex (vs. same-sex) conversations

Men initiated 96% of them

May depend on context, type of interrupting.

Women: supportive interruptions (build rapport)

Men: dominate conversations, esp. high-stakes or competitive contexts

48
Q

Who engages in gossip / relational aggression more, men or women? Why might this be?

A

Women gossip more than men

Enforce moral norms

Enhance social bonds

Relational aggression

used to gain power (esp. when other routes unavailable)

49
Q

What are some common sex differences in communication over social media? What themes do you see for men’s communication vs. women’s communication?

A

Men:

Talk about objects

More argumentative; swearing

More assertive

Women:

More relational, affiliative, self-disclosure

More emotion, social words and symbols

More tentative

50
Q

What is code-switching? Give an example.

A

Code-switching: strategically switching between languages / dialects and their different cultural meaning systems

E.g., Black folks switch between vernacular Black English vs. more formal English

51
Q

Who engages in smiling more, men or women? How is this affected by culture?

A

Around 4th grade, girls smile more than boys

Culture: sex difference persists directionally, although variable in size

General rates of smiling across sex also depend on cultural norms

Expressing excitement, smiling more normative in the West

52
Q

How does gazing and eye contact differ between men and women (gazing at others; being gazed at; engaging in visual dominance)? How does culture impact this?

A

Gazing: women gaze & are gazed at more (mutual gazing highest between women)

Visual dominance: look at partners more while speaking vs. listening (men > women)

Culture: whereas eye contact is expected in Western cultures, averting the gaze is respectful in East Asia

53
Q

How does culture impact personal space preferences?

A

Culture & expected personal space

West: men’s zones greater than women’s; associated with dominance

Outside the West (e.g., Arabic, Latino, Mediterranean cultures) = smaller zones

54
Q

Who engages in touch more, men or women? When is male-male touch considered permissible?

A

Touching, comfort being touched greater among women

Male-male touching common, OK in sports, some cultures (e.g., India, Middle East)

Not all touch is positive – can be used to harass, demean, control others

55
Q

What are the sex differences in posture (expansive, restricted, and social engaging postures)?

A

Expansive posture = power, dominance (greater amongst men)

Restrictive & socially engaging postures (e.g., nodding, leaning in) more common among women

56
Q

What does the research say about sex, sexual orientation, and gait?

A

People can accurately guess sex, sexual orientation based on gait using point-light displays

57
Q

Subordination hypothesis: why might this pattern of nonverbal sex differences arise?

A

Subordination hypothesis: sex differences in nonverbal communication result from status and power differences.

58
Q

What are the basic human emotions?

A

Anger, Fear, Happiness, Sadness, Disgust, and (MAYBE) surprise.

59
Q

How are sex differences in emotional expression socialized? How do play behaviors reinforce certain emotional rules for boys and girls? What are display rules? How do they affect emotional expression? What role does race play in the acceptability of certain emotional displays? How does culture impact emotional expression in girls and women?

A

Boys & Men:

*Rough-and-tumble play = aggressiveness, competitiveness

*Display rules allow “high-status” (e.g., anger) but not “low-status” (e.g., sadness)

*Anger penalized for Black men; countered by teddy-bear effect

Girls & Women:

Cooperative play = relational, self-regulation

Display rules allow positive emotions but not negative

Dominance not punished in Black women

Expression more OK in individualistic (vs. collectivistic) cultures

60
Q

Who is better at interpreting the emotions of others accurately? Men or women? Consider encoding vs. decoding accuracy.

A

Women tend to have greater:

Encoding accuracy: ability to communicate emotion nonverbally

Decoding accuracy: ability to accurately read nonverbal cues of others

Men high in feminine traits (e.g., warm, kind) are also better at decoding – socialized?

61
Q

What is empathy? Is there a sex difference in empathy (if so, what is it)?

A

Tendency to feel what others feel; see the world from their POV

Women may be more empathic than men

Higher self-reports

Better at tests of empathic accuracy (esp. when observed)

Greater emotional contagion

EEG (but not fMRI) show more empathic responding

Women also show greater emotional intelligence

Psychology of Women (4 decks)

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