Unit 4: Gender, Gender Research, Gender Development

Question 1

What are some common beliefs about sex and gender that do not stand up to empirical scrutiny?

Answer 1

Men possess greater math ability than women&raquo_space; no overall sex differences; predicted less by sex than by socioeconomic status, primary school effectiveness, home learning

Women are more talkative than men&raquo_space; no sex differences in words spoken per day

Women are less interested in sex&raquo_space; while women might decline casual sex more often, when these factors are controlled for, women show just as much interest as men

Question 2

What questions are left unanswered by looking only at “sex differences”?

Answer 2

1) Comparing girls against boys speaks to the average, not individual, girl or boy
2) We might see that girls differ from boys in a certain category, but don’t see how girls or boys vary against each other (variance)
3) What is the size of the difference? Is it significant or negligable?

Question 3

What is the MAXIMALIST APPROACH?

Answer 3

a tendency to emphasize differences bw members of different sex groups and view them as quantitatively different

Question 4

What is the MINIMALIST APPROACH?

Answer 4

a tendency to emphasize similarities bw members of different sex groups

Question 5

What is a danger of the maximalist approach?

Answer 5

encourages people to ignore the overlap that often characterizes people of different sexes
minimalist approach argues that studying sex differences in this way promotes stereotypes and is irresponsible

Question 6

What is a GENDER DIAGNOSTICITY (GD) SCORE?

Answer 6

Used by researcher Richard Lippa, refers to the estimated probability that an individual is male or female given the individual’s gender-related interests
GD scores do a better job - compared to M and F trait scales - at predicting gender-related outcomes
the core of masculinity and femininity consists of occupational interests, hobbies, everyday activities, nonverbal behaviour, sexual orientation

Question 7

What is the special challenge that gender research faces when it comes to experimental methods?

Answer 7

Sex cannot be treated as an independent variable because it cannot be manipulated ethically

Question 8

What methods do researchers do to conduct true experiments with sex and gender?

Answer 8

Manipulate perceived sex of a target

Manipulate a variable that is related
EX: dominance in the workplace

Question 9

What is a QUASI-EXPERIMENT?

Answer 9

a design that mimics the appearance of a true experiment, but in which the researcher lacks control over one or more manipulations

EX: teachers emphasize gender in the classroom by grouping the kids by gender, researcher observes responses

Question 10

What is PERSON-BY-TREATMENT DESIGN?

Answer 10

a quasi-experimental design involving at least one participant variable and at least one true independent variable with random assignment

Question 11

What is a PARTICIPANT VARIABLE?

Answer 11

a naturally occurring feature of participants, such as sex, gender identity, or cultural background

Question 12

Give an example of a person-by-treatment design.

Answer 12

A researcher randomly assigns women and men to play either a supervisory or subordinate role in an activity

Question 13

What is an EX POST FACTO DESIGN?

Answer 13

a nonexperimental design in which groups of people who differ on a participant variable (sex) are compared on some dependent variable

EX: a researcher wants to test the hypothesis that women smile more than men

Question 14

What is the THIRD VARIABLE PROBLEM and why is it particularly important to consider in sex and gender research?

Answer 14

In correlational research, the possibility that an unmeasured third variable is responsible for the relationship between the 2 correlated variables

we have to be able to parse out whether it was indeed sex/gender which was the cause of a relationship

Question 15

What is POSTPOSITIVISM?

Answer 15

an orientation that views empirical investigation as a useful method for acquiring knowledge but recognizes its inherent biases and values

Question 16

What is SCIENTIFIC POSITIVISM?

Answer 16

an orientation that emphasizes the scientific method and proposes that objective and value-free knowledge is attainable through empirical investigation

Question 17

What are the guidelines for gender-fair research? Researchers should…

Answer 17

1) work to eliminate sex bias from sampling and avoid using men as the standard or norm
2) use precise, non-gender-biased, nonevaluative terminology when collecting data and describing their participants and research findings
3) should not exaggerate the prevalence and magnitude of sex differences
4) should not imply or state that sex differences are due to biological causes when biological factors have not been properly tested

Question 18

What are the guidelines for more inclusive research?

Answer 18

1) Academic psychology would benefit from more ethnic, racial, and class diversity among its professional ranks
2) Academic psychologists should strive to diversify their research samples, not just within the US but cross-culturally as well
3) Researchers should routinely measure and report the demographic characteristics of their samples
4) Researchers should avoid language about sex differences that implies generalizability to all people without considering the conditions under which these differences emerge and disappear
5) Researchers should examine how structural inequalities and power differences associated with sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, class, age, ability, religion, and culture interact to shape experiences (intersectionality)

Question 19

What 3 factors should be considered when addressing sex differences in cognitive domains?

Answer 19

Biology
Discrimination
Variables other than cognitive ability (preferences, expectations, confidence, competitiveness)

Question 20

What is INTELLIGENCE?

Answer 20

the general capacity to understand ideas, think abstractly, reason, solve problems, and learn

Question 21

Are there any proven sex differences re: brain structure and brain function?

Answer 21

Overall, sex differences in brain structure do not map cleanly onto sex differences in brain function, despite a number of 19th century studies trying to prove the reason for believed differences that women were less intelligent

Question 22

What is PHRENOLOGY and how was it used to “measure” intelligence?

Answer 22

measuring the size and shape of bumps on the surface of the skull to infer various intellectual and psychological attributes
used to reinforce gender, class, race roles

Question 23

What did earlier theories state about sex differences and brain size re: IQ?

Answer 23

Theories identified the frontal cortex as responsible for IQ (it’s not), scientists reported men’s frontal cortexes as larger (forehead size)

Question 24

How has research based on brain structure and sex differences changed?

Answer 24

advanced imaging techniques such as fMRI allow accurate estimates of brain size overall and regionally, percentages of white and grey matter, length of dendrites, etc.

some researchers do find sex differences in size and density; others note significant overlap
» these do not link well to cognitive abilities

Question 25

What is the danger in relying on neuroscience findings re: sex differences?

Answer 25

can be used to sustain ESSENTIALISM: the belief that human differences arise from stable and integral (biological) qualities within individuals

Question 26

Who developed the first modern IQ test and how was it initially used?

Answer 26

Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon

shifted consensus on the supposed superiority of male intelligence; Lewis Terman found no sex differences in IQ scores

linked to eugenics and sterilization of those deemed mentally deficient

Question 27

What are contemporary views on intelligence and sex differences therein?

Answer 27

intelligence consists of several separate yet correlated components

general mental ability does predict important outcomes such as academic performance, job performance and health and longevity; stable over the lifespan, generally heritable

negligible sex differences on scores of general mental ability; small and do not consistently favour one sex

Question 28

What is the FLYNN EFFECT?

Answer 28

substantial and long-sustained increase in intelligence test scores in many parts of the world over the 20th century

Question 29

What 3 areas of cognitive ability have been found to demonstrate significant and consistent sex differences ?

Answer 29

Verbal performance
Quantitative skills
Spatial abilities

Question 30

What are the findings re: female advantage in verbal skills?

Answer 30

1) on average, girls learn to talk younger and vocabularies grow earlier, by a small effect size
2) small sex difference in verbal fluency (ability to generate words), present across all ages and sexual orientations
3) no overall sex differences in reading comprehension
4) moderate effect size for writing skills

Overall, girls outperform boys on some tests of verbal ability but not others, and sex differences are small to moderate

Question 31

What are the findings re: sex differences in quantitative skills?

Answer 31

1) small sex differences appear in specific math domains > small female advantage in computation, small male advantage in complex math problem solving &laquo_space;age-dependent (younger girls, older boys)
2) cross-culturally, there is variability in the magnitude of the sex differences in math performance; gender equality of culture may play a role in reducing these

Question 32

What are the findings favouring men re: visual-spatial performance?

Answer 32

1) sex differences favouring boys are larger and more consistent, especially re: mental rotation tasks > the size of the difference depends on the specific task and age
2) male advantage in mental rotation appears in infancy and emerges consistently across cultures
3) small male advantage in childhood for spatial perception and visualization, movement perception

HOWEVER: women receive teh slight advantage in spatial location memory

Question 33

Why do men generally display advantages in visual-spatial skill?

Answer 33

1) Play preferences > boys tend to play more games involving hand-eye coordination, manipulate worlds in 3D video games
2) Possibly, prenatal exposure to hormones and hormone levels can influence the brain in ways that shape cognitive abilities
EX: female fetuses exposed to unusually high levels of androgens demonstrated better spatial performance and mental rotation

Question 34

What is the GREATER MALE VARIABILITY HYPOTHESIS?

Answer 34

the prediction that men show greater variability than women in their distributions of scores on cognitive performance measures, leading them to be overrepresented in the very bottom and very top of score distributions

sex differences will be more pronounced at the high and low tails of distributions

men are disproportionately represented at both ends of the cognitive ability

Question 35

How do individual differences and context influence cognitive performance?

Answer 35

Biology (genetic predispositions and prenatal hormones) and environment (culture and learning experiences) are inextricably linked and mutually shape each other to produce cognitive abilities

people’s learning experiences influence the structure and growth of their neurons > the structure of the brain leads people to develop certain skills and aptitudes and select experiences that reinforce and strengthen the brain’s architecture

Question 36

What do we know about the influence of culture, race, and educational access?

Answer 36

evidence of how sex differences in cognitive ability hold is mixed and depends on the domain, with math performance showing the greatest variability from culture to culture

girls outperform boys in reading literacy in every country

there are a host of contributing factors to achievement gaps, including school funding, teaching practices, curriculua, discrimination, social and physical environments, family background, resources and culture

Question 37

What sex differences do we see in the area of math anxiety? What is STEREOTYPE THREAT?

Answer 37

girls and women have more math anxiety in general; boys report somewhat more positive attitudes and more confidence

STEREOTYPE THREAT: the anxiety people feel when they risk confirming a stereotype about their group

subtle cues like asking for sex designation before taking a test can have an impact on female math achievement scores

Question 38

How does achievement motivation function to sometimes explain girls’ lower performance in math reasoning tests?

Answer 38

longtime studies do not show that girls are any more likely to give up after academic failures
girls actually tend to get better grades in math class, but boys perform better on achievement tests
women and men respond to evaluative feedback differently: men are more inclined to acknowledge positive comments and deny negative ones
women tend to have less confidence in their scientific reasoning abilities, and therefore less likely to enter a science competition, reducing their opportunities for feedback

Question 39

What is the benefit of increasing educational access for girls?

Answer 39

psychological and physical health benefits for individual girls
economic benefits for entire communities > as the level of girls’ education increases, the degree of poverty within a community decreases

Question 40

What is the relationship between EFFORT-BASED LEARNING vs. INTEREST-BASED LEARNING?

Answer 40

regardless of sex, students in Taiwan and Japan performed better in math than their American counterparts > sex differences favouring boys were larger, but T/J girls outperformed American girls and boys
emphasis on effort-based learning led girls to achieve better math performance

Question 41

What predicts math achievement more strongly than sex?

Answer 41

factors like at home learning environment from ages 3-4, mother’s education level, effectiveness of primary school

Question 42

How do parents affect their child’s math anxiety?

Answer 42

unwittingly transfer math anxieties to children > children of parents with higher math anxiety learned less math and showed increases in anxiety over the school year, especially when parents helped with homework

Question 43

How do teachers’ gender stereotypes affect students?

Answer 43

teachers’ perceptions of their students’ math abilities tend to be accurate rather than just based on stereotypes BUT teachers’ gender stereotypes can influence their students’ stereotypes

Question 44

What are some factors which may influence perceived sexism in STEM fields?

Answer 44

women and men differ in ways that can steer them toward different career paths > women like interpersonal, interactional careers; men like working with machines and computers

women may lack interest in STEM careers because they do not view them as offering opportunities for communal jobs

women may opt out of the competitive field of STEM careers to focus on family goals

Question 45

What is FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR?

Answer 45

the tendency to attribute other people’s actions to their personality or characteristics without taking into account situational factors; cognitive bias