Gender Differences & Development Flashcards
What is gender identity?
A person’s private sense, and subjective experience, of his or her own gender.
What are sex and gender?
Sex: a person’s biological identity (chromosomes, physical manifestations of identity, hormonal influences).
Gender: a person’s social and cultural identity as male or female.
What are psychological differences between males and females?
Girls are superior in verbal ability, while boys are better in visual/spatial abilities (this is evident by age 4, and persists across their life span).
In mathematical abilities, boys are better at arithmetic reasoning when in adolescence, while girls have superior computational skills.
How do males and females differ in terms of aggression?
Beginning at age 2, boys are more physically and verbally aggressive, while girls are more likely to display covert aggression.
How do makes and females differ in terms of emotional expressivity/sensitivity?
Beginning in toddlerhood, boys express more anger while girls express most other emotions more frequently.
Girls are also more compliant.
What are other sex differences between males and females?
Boys are more physically active (even before birth).
Girls are more fearful, timidity, and take fewer risks (no difference in cognitive impulsivity though).
What can we conclude from all of this?
- Differences reflect group averages.
- Differences are small.
- Differences are most apparent at the extremes.
- Males and females are much more psychologically similar than they are different.
What happens during ages 0-3 regarding gender identity?
By age two, gender awareness has emerged (children know whether boys or girls, can identify adult strangers as mommies or daddies, and can apply gender labels Mr., Mrs., etc.)).
By age 3, there is a rudimentary understanding that sex differences are life-long.
What happens during ages 4-5 regarding gender identity?
By age 4 or 5, there are big differences in toy performance (girls prefer dolls, painting, and soft toys, while boys prefer blocks, vehicles, tools, and rough-house play).
By school age, children tend to only play with children of their own gender.
What’s the summary of all of this?
Ages 0-3: Gender awareness develops.
Ages 4-5: Behavior and socializing patterns become gender-specific.
Around age 8: More specific awareness of gender/sex distinction emerges.
Gender Identity develops surprisingly early.
Although SEX differences are far less apparent in childhood, GENDER differentiation seems more important to children than adults.
What are the two main kinds of theories regarding HOW gender identity develops?
Biological: “it’s in the genes.”
Sociocultural: it’s the environment.
Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory was also very influential.
What do biological theories mean by different brains?
- Some research suggests that the development of gender identity is related to genetic or hormonal influences.
- Sex hormones produced by XX (female) and XY (male) chromosomes begin to circulate in the fetal stage.
- This affects the development of the brain throughout life (recent research in neurology finds biological differences between me and female brains).
What do biological theories mean by different hormones?
- Evidence suggests that differences in hormone secretions between males and females produce phenotypic differences in spatial ability, memory, and aggression.
- These brain and phenotypic differences combine to influence gender identity directly.
What are gender role standards?
Value, motive, or behavior considered more appropriate for members of one sex than the other (expressive role: female-kind, nurturing, cooperative, sensitive to other’s needs; instrumental role: make-dominant, assertive, independent, and competitive).
How do we decide which influence is stronger?
- Cross-cultural research
- Look for biological differences (brain, hormones, genes etc.)
- Not easy to tease these two explanations apart.
