Sex and Gender

Question 1

What is the assumption of the Social and Cultural Domain?

Answer 1

-personality impacts, and is impacted by, cultural and social contexts

Question 2

What are cultural and individual differences?

Answer 2

-Cultural differences between groups (e.g., in social acceptability of aggression)
-Individual differences within cultures - including sex and gender differences in personality processes, traits, and mechanisms

Question 3

What is the difference between Sex and Gender?

Answer 3

-Sex: whether an individual is biologically considered male, female, intersex
-Gender: the social and cultural interpretation of what it means to be a man or a woman, can change over time

Question 4

What are the sex differences?

Answer 4

-Average differences on certain characteristics, such as height, body fat distribution, hormone levels, certain personality characteristics, etc.
-No prejudgment about the cause of any difference

Question 5

What were the views on gender identity in the 1930s?

Answer 5

-Researchers assumed sex differences on various personality items were attributable to differences along the single dimension of masculinity-femininity
-But perhaps someone could score high on both masculinity and femininity
-This led to the concept of androgyny (first thought of as between M & F - wrong)

Question 6

What were the views on gender identity in the 1970s?

Answer 6

-With the rise of the feminist movement:
–the assumption of the single dimension challenged
–argued that masculinity and femininity might be independent
–one can be high on both masculinity and femininity, or low on both dimensions, high in one and low in other

Question 7

What is the conception of sex roles developed in the 1970s?

Answer 7

Low Masculinity + Low Femininity = Undifferentiated (no clear sense of gender identity)
High Masculinity + Low Femininity = Masculine
High Femininity + Low Masculinity = Feminine
High Femininity + High Masculinity = Androgynous
Bem said the best place to be is androgynous because it means you have balance

Question 8

What were Spence & Bem’s views on gender?

Answer 8

-Spence: measure doesn’t assess sex roles, but instead personality traits of instrumentality and expressiveness
-Bem: measure assesses gender schemas and cognitive orientations that lead people to process social information on basis of sex-linked associations
–gender-aschematic: to not use gender at all in one’s processing of social information.

Question 9

What is the history of sex differences?

Answer 9

-1974, Maccoby and Jacklyn
-Published The Psychology of Sex Differences
-Set off an avalanche of work on sex differences
-Presented an informal summary of research

Question 10

What are the Minimalists and Maximalists views on sex differences?

Answer 10

-Minimalists: sex differences as small and inconsequential
-Maximalists: the size of sex differences should not be trivialized; small effects can have important consequences

Question 11

What are the 4 sex differences in temperament of children?

Answer 11

-Inhibitory control = Largest sex difference favouring girls
-Perceptual sensitivity = Moderate sex difference favouring girls
-Surgency = Moderate sex difference favouring boys
-Negative affectivity* = no sex difference, contrary to stereotypes

Question 12

What are the sex differences in Extraversion?

Answer 12

-Women score slightly higher on gregariousness
-Men score slightly higher on activity level
-Men score moderately higher on assertiveness

Question 13

What are the sex differences in Agreeableness?

Answer 13

-Women score higher on trusting, & tender-minded
-Women smile more than men

Question 14

What are the sex differences in Aggressiveness?

Answer 14

-Men are more physically aggressive, as assessed on personality tests, in fantasies, and manifest behaviour (moderate to large effect sizes)
-Profound consequences for everyday life: men commit 90 percent of homicides worldwide; men commit more violent crimes of all sorts
-Sex difference in violent crimes accompanies puberty, peaking in adolescence and the early 20s

Question 15

What are the sex differences in Conscientiousness?

Answer 15

-Women score slightly higher on
order

Question 16

What are the sex differences in Emotional Stability?

Answer 16

-Men and women are similar on
impulsiveness
-Women score higher on anxiety

Question 17

What are the sex differences in Openness to Experience?

Answer 17

-No sex differences

Question 18

What are the sex differences in depression?

Answer 18

-In childhood – no sex differences
-After puberty, women show depression 2-3x than that of men
-Rumination: repeatedly focusing on one’s symptoms or distress
–women ruminate more, which contributes to the perseverance of depressive symptoms
-Largest sex difference is in ages 18–44
-Then sexes start to converge again

Question 19

What are the sex differences in self-esteem?

Answer 19

-Global self esteem: overall evaluation of self
-Across ages, effect size is small, with males scoring higher
-Young children (ages 7–10) show slight difference
-As children age, the gap widens: there is a higher difference (from 11-18)
* In adulthood, the gap closes: difference reduces (from 19-59)

Question 20

What are the sex differences in sexuality?

Answer 20

-many differences:
-high difference in interest in casual sex
-high difference in number of lifetime sex partners desired

Question 21

What are the sex differences in “people-things”?

Answer 21

-Vocational interests, a preference to work with things or with people
-Men are more toward “things” (systemizing)
-Women are more toward “people” (empathizing)

Question 22

What is gender identity?

Answer 22

-A person’s deeply felt, inherent sense of being a man, a
woman, both, neither, fluid
-ex: Cis gender; Trans gender; Non-binary; Gender fluid; Gender queer; Agender; Etc.

Question 23

What is gender expression?

Answer 23

-Gender expression: how you present to the world
-Feminine
-Masculine
-Androgynous
-Any personal expression

Question 24

What are gender stereotypes?

Answer 24

-Beliefs about how men and women differ or are supposed to differ, in contrast to what the actual differences are

Question 25

What are 3 components of gender stereotypes?

Answer 25

1. Cognitive
2. Affective
3. Behavioural
   -Stereotypic subtypes and subgroups

Question 26

How does prejudice and gender stereotypes affect people?

Answer 26

-Gender stereotypes can have important real-life consequences for men and women
-Consequences can damage people in health, jobs, odds of advancement, and social reputations

Question 27

What is Transgender?

Answer 27

-A person’s gender identity differs from the sex or gender assigned to them at birth.
-180,000 Canadians identify as transgender today
-Within a subset of 380 trans people (aged 16 years and older)
-35 percent reported having seriously considered suicide in the
past year
-11 percent had attempted suicide

Question 28

What are the 4 theories of sex/gender differences?

Answer 28

-Socialization and Social Roles
-Hormonal Theories
-Evolutionary Psychology Theory
-An Integrated Theoretical Perspective

Question 29

What is the Socialization theory & Bandura’s social learning theory?

Answer 29

-Socialization theory: roles reinforced by parents, teachers, and media for being “masculine,” or “feminine”
-Bandura’s social learning theory: observation; imitation; modelling

Question 30

What is the Social role theory?

Answer 30

-Sex differences arise because men and women are distributed differently into different occupational and family roles
-Some research supports social role theory
-physical differences –> different roles assigned –> psychological differences evolve because of assigned roles

Question 31

What is the Gender Schema Theory - Bem 1981?

Answer 31

-Once children know their own gender label they adjust their behavior to align with the gender norms of their culture from the earliest stages of social development (boys playing trucks)
-Bem proposed correcting this with gender-aschematic (removing gender norms)

Question 32

What is the Hormonal Theory?

Answer 32

-Sex differences in testosterone is linked with traditional sex differences in behaviours
-Aggression, dominance, career choice, and sexual desire (higher levels of testosterone)
-Problem: research suggests link between hormones and behaviour is bi-directional

Question 33

What is the Evolutionary Psychology Theory?

Answer 33

-Sexes are predicted to differ only in those domains in which people are recurrently faced with different adaptive problems
–problems must be solved to survive and reproduce
-Research supports many predicted sex differences, especially in sexuality
-Problem: no clear accounting of individual and within-sex differences

Question 34

What is the Integrated Theoretical Perspective?

Answer 34

-Integrated theory of sex differences would include all levels of analysis into account because they are compatible
-Socialization, Hormonal, & Evolutionary (*know how to link these 3)