Lecture 10A: Sex and Gender Differences in Personality Flashcards
What are sex differences?
Average differences in personality or behavior between men and women according to biological sex
What are gender differences?
Social interpretations of what is means to be a man or a woman
What are gender stereotypes?
Beliefs that we hold about how men and women differ, which are not necessarily based on reality.
What are the arguments against studying sex differences?
- Findings might be used to support political agendas or status quo
- Findings merely reflect gender stereotypes, not real differences
- Findings reflect biases of scientists, not objective reality
What are the arguments for studying sex differences?
Scientific psychology and social change will be impossible without coming to terms with real sex differences that do exist
What is the history of the study of sex differences?
- Before 1973, little attention paid to sex differences
- 1974, Maccoby and Jacklyn published a book that informally summarized current research findings
- Set off an avalanche of work on sex differences
How can an effect size be calculated?
-Researchers developed more precise quantitative procedures for examining conclusions across studies and thus for determining sex differences: Meta-analysis
- Effect size (d statistic): used to express the average difference in standard deviation units
-Effect size can be calculated for each study of sex differences, then averaged across studies to give an objective assessment of the difference
Effect size (d): (-).20 = small, (-).50 = medium, (-).80 = large
-Convention: positive d means men higher than women, and negative d means women higher than men
-Even the large effect size for the average sex difference does not necessarily have implications for any one individual
What are minimalists?
- Minimalists describe sex differences as small and inconsequential
- Most effect sizes are small
- Differences that do exist do not have practical importance
What are maximalists??
- Maximalists argue that the size of sex differences should not be trivialized
- Magnitude of sex differences similar to other effects in psychology
- Small effects can have important consequences
What was the consensus on masculinity, feminity and androgeny in the 1930’s
1930s: Researchers assumed sex differences on various personality items were attributable to differences along the single personality dimension of masculinity (Assertiveness, Dominance and instrumentality)-femininity (Nurturing, empathy and emotional expression)
What was the consensus on masculinity, feminity and androgeny in the 1970’s?
- 1970s: researchers challenged the assumption of the single dimension
- Two new measures were developed to assess two dimensions, now assumed to be independent
- Androgynous: person who scores high on both and has both masculine and feminine characteristics
- Researchers who developed sex-role measures believed androgyny was ideal (most valuable elements of both sexes)
What do recent studies suggest about androgyny?
- Several recent studies suggest that masculinity and femininity are not independent and likely describe a single bipolar trait
- Those scoring high on masculinity tend to score low on femininity and vice versa
- Both constructs are multidimensional, containing many facets
- This has called into question notion of androgyny
- Androgyny measures were likely assessing personality traits of instrumentality and expressiveness (Janet Spence)
What are the theories of sex differences?
- Socialization and Social Roles Theories
- Hormonal Theories
- Evolutionary Psychology Theory
- An Integrated Theoretical Perspective
What are the socialization and social role theories?
- Boys and girls become different because boys are reinforced by parents, teachers, and media for being “masculine,” and girls for being “feminine”
- Bandura’s social learning theory: Boys and girls learn by observing behaviors of same-sex others
Cross-cultural evidence for different treatment of boys and girls. Criticism: too simple in suggesting that pathway is unidirectional (parents to children); lacks origin. - Social role theory: Sex differences arise because men and women are distributed differently into different occupational and family roles. Some research supports social role theory. Criticism: No account of origins of sex-differentiated roles.
What are the hormonal theories?
- Hormonal, physiological differences cause boys and girls to diverge over development
- After puberty, little overlap in the levels of circulating testosterone (with men having about 10 times more)
- Sex differences in testosterone linked with traditional sex differences in behaviours (e.g., aggression, dominance, career choice, sexual desire)
- Criticisms: Research suggests link between hormones and behaviour is bi-directional. No account of origins of hormonal differences
