gender differences Flashcards
Point: Research has suggested that women do not just adopt a tend-and-befriend response to stress.
Example: For example, it would also be adaptive for women to be aggressive, in order to protect their offspring. Taylor et al. note that, while females are less aggressive in general than males, they are aggressive towards an intruder who threatens their offspring. In other words, they are aggressive in situations requiring defence rather than the more generalised ‘fight or flight’ response in males.
Evaluation: This suggests that the female response to stress is not straight forward/clear cut. Their response is not just tend-and-befriend but it encompasses a whole range of strategies that are adapted to parental investment by females.
Point: There is a lack of research support for difference between male and female coping focus.
Example: For example, the finding that men are more problem-focused and women more emotion- focused is not upheld by most research studies. Hamilton and Fagot (1988) assessed male and female first-year undergraduates over an 8-week period and found no gender differences in the type of ‘focus’
males and females adopt.
Evaluation: This is a weakness because there is a lack of reliability surrounding the findings into gender differences and stress.
Research relies on self-report methods as a way of collecting data.
Example: For example, Peterson et al (2006) used the Ways of Coping Questionnaire to assess how females and males cope with stressors. This requires participants to think retrospectively about stressors that they have experienced and the ways in which they have dealt with such stressors.
Evaluation: This is a weakness because the data collected may
not be accurate, in which case the study would not be measuring what it intends to measure and
therefore would lack internal validity (a cause-and-effect relationship would not be able to be
established).
