Sex and Gender, Sex Stereotypes and Androgyny

Question 1

what is sex?

Answer 1

• the biological difference between males and females
• assigned from conception through chromosomes

Question 2

what is gender?

Answer 2

the psychological distinction between masculine and feminine personality traits, may not match a persons biological sex

Question 3

what’s the difference between sex and gender?

Answer 3

sex refers to biological physical differences, whereas gender refers to how people identify

Question 4

what is androgyny?

Answer 4

having both feminine and masculine traits

Question 5

who introduced the concept of androgyny in psychology and when was it introduced?

Answer 5

Sandra Bem
the 1970s

Question 6

what did Bem say about androgyny and mental health?

Answer 6

androgyny is more psychologically healthy as it avoids sex-role stereotypes

Question 7

what are sex-role stereotypes?

Answer 7

a set of expectations, shared by a culture, of appropriate male and female behaviours

Question 8

how are sex-role stereotypes acquired?

Answer 8

learned from birth through society implicitly and explicitly

Question 9

how is androgyny measured?

Answer 9

using the BSRI

Question 10

describe how the BSRI was developed

Answer 10

• Bem (1974) asked 100 American undergraduate students to list personality traits associated with each sex
• list of traits was used to develop a 60 item list (20 feminine, 20 masculine and 20 neutral)

Question 11

how is the BSRI completed?

Answer 11

• self-report
• 7 point Likert scale
• scores calculates giving either famine, masculine, androgynous or undifferentiated

Question 12

give an evaluation point of the BSRI

Answer 12

• high test re-test reliability
• ethnocentric
• lacks temporal validity

Question 13

give an evaluation point of the concept of androgyny

Answer 13

• experimentally reductionist
• research evidence to support the benefits of androgyny on mental health

Question 14

how does the BSRI have high test-retest reliability?

Answer 14

Bet conducted a follow-up study 4 weeks later and found similar results, with correlations ranging from 0.76 to 0.94

Question 15

how is the BSRI ethnocentric?

Answer 15

• assumes the benefits of androgyny can be generalised to all cultures
• Mead found masculine traits are more desirable in New Guinea

Question 16

how does the BSRI lack temporal validity?

Answer 16

• adjectives chose in 1970s, societal norms have changed since then
• Hoffman and Borders (2001) found all, but two, terms failed to reach a 75% agreement level on whether they were feminine or masculine

Question 17

research support for the impact of androgyny on mental health

Answer 17

• Prakash et al (2010)
• tested 100 married women using a personal attributes scale and a range of measures related to health
• found females with high masculinity scores had low depression scores and those with high femininity scores has high depression scores

Question 18

research support for sex-role stereotypes

Answer 18

• Smith and Lloyd (1978)
• 32 mothers offered gender appropriate toys to the baby’s and encouraged motor activities to babies dressed as boys
• adults socialise children into gendered behaviour

Question 19

how is androgyny experimentally reductionist?

Answer 19

• too complex to be reduce to a single BSRI score
• androgynous theory is holistic
• BSRI ignores personal interests, so Personal Attributes Quiz may be better