Sex, Gender, and Gender Identity

Sex, Gender, and Gender Identity

• Sex is determined by biological features like internal sex organs, external genitalia, chromosomes (XX or XY), hormones, and secondary sex characteristics.
• Sex chromosomes determine whether a person is classified as female (XX) or male (XY).
• Gonads (glands) produce sex hormones and gametes (ova/sperm), defining sexual characteristics.
• Gender encompasses social and cultural beliefs about masculinity and femininity.
• Gender identity is a deeply personal sense of being a boy/man, girl/woman, both, neither, or fluid.

Social Role Theory

• Social role theory suggests that gender differences arise from cultural stereotypes and social roles taught to young people, which are influenced by physical differences between men and women.
• These physical differences lead to gendered social expectations and structures.
• Division of labor, based on sex, leads to beliefs about what each sex can or cannot do.
• Gender roles are cultural expectations for how females and males should think, act, and feel.
• Stereotypes are oversimplified images or ideas of a person or thing.
• Gender stereotypes associate women with warmth, caring, and emotionality, while men are seen as strong, dominant, and rational.
• Social role theory posits that individuals internalize these roles and stereotypes, evaluating their behavior and choices accordingly.

Gender Differences in Aggression

• Aggression is defined as behavior intended to harm another person.
• Men are more likely to exhibit overt aggression, which involves physically or verbally harming another directly.
• Girls are more prone to relational aggression, which harms social standing through exclusion or spreading rumors.

Evaluating Evidence for Gender Differences

• Gender differences are most pronounced in physical aggression.
• Differences in cognitive ability and sexuality are less significant.
• Gender similarities hypothesis proposes that men and women are more similar than different.
• A primary difference lies in sexual attraction: men are generally attracted to women, and vice versa.

Issues Regarding Sexual Orientation

• Sexual orientation denotes the direction of an individual's erotic interests.
• Homosexuality is attraction to the same sex (gay).
• Heterosexuality is attraction to the opposite sex (straight).
• Bisexuality is attraction to both sexes.
• Pansexuality is attraction regardless of sex, gender, or gender identity.
• Asexuality is the lack of sexual attraction to others.
• Heterosexuality tends to be stable over time, while diverse sexual orientations may shift, especially during adolescence for young women.
• Sexuality is distinct from gender identity.
• Homosexual behavior is common across nature and cultures, though heterosexuality is most prevalent.
• Non-heterosexual orientation ranges from 2% to 15% of the population.
• Factors such as being raised by a gay parent, parenting style, or childhood sexual experiences do not predict sexual orientation.
• Understanding sexual orientation requires considering multiple factors, within-group variation, measurement issues, research challenges, and explaining diverse orientations.
• Twin studies suggest a heritability of 35% for same-gender sexual behavior in men and 19% in women, indicating genes do not directly impact psychological characteristics.

Human Sexual Response Pattern

• Excitement phase involves increased blood flow to genital areas, lasting minutes to hours.
• Plateau phase is the continuation and heightening of arousal.
• Orgasm is the peak of sexual response, with release of bodily fluids and oxytocin.
• Resolution phase involves a return to baseline. Males enter a refractory period, while females may not.

Fetishes, Paraphilias, and Pedophilias

• A fetish is an object or activity that causes sexual arousal and desire.
• Transvestic fetish involves arousal from wearing clothing of the opposite sex.
• Sadomasochism involves one person gaining sexual pleasure from dominating another, who enjoys being dominated.
• Paraphilic disorders involve sexual interests that cause personal distress, harm to others, or desire for sexual behavior involving unwilling persons.
• Includes exhibitionism (exposing genitals) and voyeurism (watching others).
• Some paraphilias are harmless and some require treatment.
• Pedophilic disorder is a psychological disorder in which an adult is sexually attracted to prepubescent children; more common in men.
• Most people who were sexually molested do not go on to molest others.
• It is associated with low self-esteem, poor social skills, low IQ, and head injuries.
• It involves cognitive distortions, such as minimizing harm or believing impulses are uncontrollable.
• Brain-imaging studies show brain dysfunction in individuals attracted to children.

Disorders of Sexual Desire and Sexual Response

• Paraphilic disorders are unusual, more common disorders are with sexual desire and sexual response.
• Low interest in sex is troubling for ¼ of men and ½ of women.
• Low interest in sex stems from low androgen, stress, anxiety, depression, physical illness or medicine
• Erectile dysfunction is the failure of the penis to become erect; rooted in psychological and physical factors.
• Erectile dysfunction can be a symptom of diabetes and increases with age. Viagra can be a treatment.
• Premature ejaculation is the experience of orgasm before the person wishes and can be caused by psychological, physical, and relationship factors.
• For women, disorders include problems in sexual arousal and orgasm, linked to childhood sexual abuse, religious beliefs, and negative sexual attitudes.
• Dysfunction in arousal can be linked to problems in the automatic nervous system. Some women don't have subjective feeling of arousal even with physical changes.
• Involve delayed or absent orgasms.
• These problems stem from androgens on psychotherapy and address underlying physical causes.
• Sexual response disorders are common and normal, and are only considered disorders in need of treatment when they cause stress for person or difficulties in important relationships.

Psychodynamic Perspectives View of Personality

• Personality is an enduring pattern of distinctive thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that characterize how an individual adapts to the world.
• Psychodynamic perspectives emphasize that personality is primarily unconscious, and that behavioral differences are surface characteristics.
• Understanding symbolic meanings is what helps people understand the inner workings of the mind.
• Early childhood experience shapes adult personality.
• Freud thought that the human sex drive was the main determinant of personality development, psychological disorders, dreams, and all human behavior.
• These represented drive of unconsicous sexual drive and the demands of civilized human society.
• Freud came to understand that the hysterical symptoms stemmed from unconscious conflicts and that what we do has a multitude of unconscious causes.
• From his work in analyzing patients, Freud developed his model of the human personality in which he describes the structures of personality.

Freud's Structures of Personality

• The Id represents the primitive, biological side of personality and is entirely unconscious, supplies energy and demands pleasure following the pleasure principle.
• It is the individual's reservoir of sexual energy.
• The Ego operates primarily at the conscious level and is the executive part of personality that directs rational behavior.
• It incorporates the reality principle (norms of society) by delaying action until it is appropriate to get the Id what it wants within the norms of society.
• The Superego is the harsh internal judge of behavior and is reflected in what we call conscience and evaluates the morality of behavior. Conscience is the part that incorporates parental and societal standards.
• The Id and the Superego are unrealistic and irrational in separate but competing ways.
• There is a never-ending battle between the two irrational forces (Id, Superego), with a mediator: the ego.

Defense Mechanisms

• Defense mechanisms reduce anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality, tactics the ego uses.
• Repression pushes unacceptable impulses out of awareness, back into the unconscious mind and is the most powerful and pervasive.
• Rationalization replaces a less acceptable motive with a more acceptable one.
• Displacement shifts feelings toward an unacceptable object to another, more acceptable object.
• Denial refuses to acknowledge anxiety-producing realities.
• Regression seeks the security of an earlier developmental period in the face of stress.
• These mechanisms are unconscious, and moderate or temporary use is not necessarily unhealthy.

Maslow's Perspective on Personality

• Maslow believed we can learn about human personality by focusing on self-actualizers.
• Self-actualization is the motivation to develop to one's full potential as a human being.
• Maslow says self-actualizers are spontaneous, creative, and possess childlike capacity for awe.
• People at this highest level are tolerant of others, have a gentle sense of humor, and pursue the greater good.
• Maslow's list of self-actualizers is biased, selecting people successful in a particular historical context.

Roger's Perspective on Personality

• Carl Roger's work led the way for more contemporary studies of personal growth and self-determination.
• Rogers says we simply need the right conditions to thrive and believed that each person is born with natural capacities for growth and fulfillment
• We can evaluate whether an experience is good or bad for us and have a need for positive regard from others.
• We need love, liking, or acceptance by those around us.

Promoting Optimal Functioning

• The person must reconnect with true feelings and desires. He proposed that to achieve this reconnection, the individual must experience a relationship that includes three essential qualities: unconditional positive regard, empathy, and genuineness.

• Unconditional positive regard: refers to the individual's need to be accepted, valued, and treated positively regardless of the person's behavior.

• Empathy: becoming more fulfilled by interacting with empathetic people by being a sensitive listener and understanding another's true feelings.

• Genuineness: being open with one's feelings and dropping pretenses and facades.

• Unconditional positive regard, empathy, and genuineness are the three essential ingredients of healthy human relations.

Trait Theories on Personality

• Traits are broad, enduring dispositions that tend to lead to characteristic responses.
• Traits are summary terms, that describe tendencies to respond in particular ways and that account for differences among people (Davis & Palladino, 2012).
• Traits are the language of personality and as such they are the building blocks of personality.
• Traits date back to the first use of language.
• Gordon Allport is the founder of the trait approach and considered the father of American personality psychology.
• Gordon Allport focused on people's lives in the present, not on their childhood experiences. and healthy, well-adjusted individuals.
• Allport believed that personality psychology should focus on understanding healthy, well-adjusted individuals.
• In defining personality, Allport stressed each person's uniqueness and capacity to adapt to the environment is the trait and said that is the unit we should use to understand personality.
• In 1963, W.T. Norman reanalyzed the Allport and Odbert traits and concluded that only five factors were needed t o summarize these traits.

The Big Five Factors of Personality

• Extraversion vs. introversion: Extraverts are the more likely than others t o engage i n social activities. Introverts are those that are retiring, somber and reserved.
• Agreeable vs. disagreeable: Agreeable display generosity, altruism, religious faith, and more satisfying romantic relationships. Those disagreeable are ruthless, suspicious, and uncooperative.
• Consciousness vs. undependable: Those that are conscientious are organized, careful and disciplined. Those not conscientious are disorganized, careless, and impulsive are.
• Neuroticism vs. emotional stability: Those higher in neuroticism report feeling negative emotion more often. Those emotionally stable are calm, secure, and self-satisfied.
• Open to experience vs. closed to experience: Those with openness demonstrate liberal values, open-mindedness, tolerance, and creativity. Those with less openness are practical, routine, and have tendency to conform.
• These five factors are theoretically independent of o n e another and a person can be any combination of the five.
• Traits can be strengths or weaknesses, depending on the types of situations we encounter and the kinds of situations we seek out for ourselves.
• Even a trait like agreeableness maybe a liability when the situation calls for confrontational behavior.

Life Story Approach to Identity

• Dan McAdams' Life Story Approach understands the uniqueness of people and focuses on individual's life story.
• This centers on the idea that each of us has a unique life story, full of ups and downs.
• Our life story represents our memories of what makes us who we are.
• This is a constantly changing narrative that provides us with a sense of coherence.
• McAdams introduced intimacy motive which is an enduring concern for warm interpersonal encounters for their own sake revealed in the warm, positive interpersonal imagery in the stories people tell.

Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory

• Social cognitive perspectives emphasize the influence of conscious awareness, beliefs, expectations and goals incorporating behavioral principles (social) with cognitive processes.
• Social cognitive theorists investigate h o w beliefs related to behavior and performance.
• Reciprocal Determinism is where the person, environment, and behavior influence one another.
• In addition, people can influence the environment and the environment can influence people which gives full understanding o f personality requires recognition of the mutual influences among the person and cognitive factors in the situation.
• Personal Control comes from the inside the person the sense and behavioral control is called an internal locus of control or a sense of behavioral control that comes from outside the person called an external locus of control.
• Self-efficacy is the belief that one can master the situation and produce positive change.

Mischel's Contributions

• Walter Mischel explored how personality influences behavior.
• Mischel is known for;

1. His criticism of the idea of consistency in behavior, and
2. A new way of thinking about personality which he called the CAPS model.

• The consistency of behavior is where a person tends to behave consistently in different situations, the individual should exhibit cross-situational consistency.
• Mischel thus concluded there was no evidence for cross-situational consistency in behavior - therefore there was no evidence for the existence of personality. Mischel believed that behavior is discriminate, that a person looks at each situation and responds accordingly.
• The research also found that:
• The narrower and more limited a trait is, the more likely it will predict behavior.
• Some people are consistent on some traits, and other people are consistent on other traits.
• Personality traits exert a stronger influence on an individual's behavior when situational influences are less powerful.
• Individuals select the situations they are in. Consequently, even if situations determine behavior, traits play a role by influencing which situations people choose.

CAPS Theory

• CAPS stands for Cognitive Affective Processing Systems set of interconnected.
• According to this approach, our thoughts and emotions about ourselves and the world affect our behavior and become linked in ways that matter t o behavior.
• Personal control and self-efficacy are psychological connections in cognition.
• Raoul response may vary to depending on who gives the assignment, what it is, or whether he feels he can do a good job.
• Personal control and self-efficacy are the