Chapter 16.docx

**Chapter 16** **Sex, Gender, and Personality (26)** **The Science and Politics of Studying Sex and Gender** Some argue that both scientific psychology and social change will be impossible without coming to terms with the real sex differences that exist, while others argue that sex differences ha...

**Chapter 16** **Sex, Gender, and Personality (26)** **The Science and Politics of Studying Sex and Gender** Some argue that both scientific psychology and social change will be impossible without coming to terms with the real sex differences that exist, while others argue that sex differences have been exaggerated and that there is so much overlap between the sexes on most personality traits that the differences are minimal. **History of the Study of Sex Differences** men and women are essentially the same (or do not differ by much) on most measures of cognitive ability. About the only well-documented exception to this conclusion pertains to spatial rotation ability, such as the spatial ability involved in throwing a spear (or football) so that it correctly anticipates the trajectory of a moving object, such as an animal or a receiver. **Minimalists and Maximalists** Those who describe sex differences as small and inconsequential take the **minimalist** position and offer two arguments. The first is that, empirically, most findings of sex differences show small magnitudes of effect. A second argument advanced by minimalists is that whatever differences exist do not have much practical importance for behavior in everyday life. In contrast, those who take the **maximalist** position tend to argue that the magnitude of sex differences is comparable to the magnitude of many other effects in psychology and should not be trivialized (Eagly, 1995). Some sex differences tend to be small in magnitude, others are large in magnitude, and many are in the moderate range, according to this view. **Sex Differences in Personality Temperament in Children** **Inhibitory control** showed the largest sex difference, which refers to the ability to control inappropriate responses or behaviors, favouring girls. **Perceptual sensitivity---**the ability to detect subtle stimuli from the environment---also showed a sex difference favoring girls. Inhibitory control is related to the later development of the personality trait of Conscientiousness. Interestingly, the sex difference appears to fade, because adult men and women do not differ much in conscientiousness. **Surgency,** a cluster including approach behavior, high activity, and impulsivity, showed a sex difference (d = 0.38), with boys scoring higher than girls. Perhaps the combination of high surgency and low inhibitory control accounts for the fact that boys tend to get into more disciplinary difficulties in school in the early years of their lives as well as their physical aggressiveness. girls and boys showed virtually no difference in a summary variable called negative affectivity, which includes components such as anger, difficulty, amount of distress, and sadness. **Five-Factor Model Extraversion** Three facets of extraversion have been examined for sex differences: gregariousness, assertiveness, and activity. Women score slightly higher on gregariousness than men, but the difference is quite small. Similarly, men score slightly higher on activity level. A study of personality in 50 different cultures revealed a relatively small gender difference (d = 0.15) on extraversion. men place a greater importance on the value of power than do women. **Agreeableness** A study of 50 cultures revealed a small to medium gender difference (d = −0.32) on Agreeableness, indicating that women score higher than men. Two facets of agreeableness have been examined: trust and tender-mindedness. Trust is the proclivity to cooperate with others, giving others the benefit of the doubt, and viewing one's fellow human beings as basically good at heart. Tender-mindedness is a nurturant proclivity--- having empathy for others and being sympathetic with those who are downtrodden. Another facet of Agreeableness is Modesty; women are more modest than men in general. Another finding related to Agreeableness pertains to smiling. Meta-analyses show that women smile more often than men, however, it's possible that smiling reflects agreeableness in some contexts and submissiveness in other contexts. **Aggressiveness** falls at the opposite end of agreeableness. It will not surprise you that men are more physically aggressive than women. **Conscientiousness** The 50-culture study revealed a negligible sex difference (d = −0.14) on overall levels of Conscientiousness. Only one facet of Conscientiousness has been scrutinized for sex differences--- order. Women score slightly higher than men on order. **Emotional Stability** Emotional Stability shows the largest sex difference (d = −0.49) in the five-factor model, indicating that women are moderately lower than men on this dimension. **Intellect--Openness to Experience** The 50-culture study revealed essentially no sex differences (d = −0.07) in Intellect-- Openness to experience. Nonetheless, a facet analysis reveals that women score higher on two facets of Openness---Fantasy and especially Ideas. **Basic Emotions: Frequency and Intensity** There are small, but statistically significant differences in the experience of emotions in this international sample. All point to women experiencing both positive emotions and negative emotions more frequently and intensely than do men. perhaps men don't express their emotions because they literally don't experience emotions as frequently or as intensely as do women. **Other Dimensions of Personality** dimensions of personality are related to, but not directly subsumed by, the fivefactor model of personality. We will examine three: **self-esteem, sexuality and mating, and the people--things dimension.** **self-esteem** **global self-esteem**, is defined as the level of global regard that one has for the self as a person, it can range from highly positive to highly negative and reflects an overall evaluation of the self. The overall effect size is relatively small (d = 0.21), with males scoring slightly higher than females in self-esteem. The fascinating finding, however, emerged when the researchers analyzed sex differences in self-esteem according to the age of the participants. Young children (ages 7--10) showed only a slight sex difference in self-esteem (d = 0.16). As the children approached adolescence, however, the gap between the sexes widened. At ages 11--14, d was 0.23. And the sex difference peaked during the ages of 15--18 (d = 0.33). Females seem to suffer from lower self- esteem than males as they hit their mid- to late teens. The good news is that in adulthood the self- esteem gap starts to close. During the ages of 19--22, the effect size shrinks to 0.18. During the ages of 23--59, the sexes come even closer, with a d of 0.10. And during older age, from 60 on up, the d is only −0.03, which means that the males and females are virtually identical in self-esteem. **Sexuality, Emotional Investment, and Mating** men have more difficulty than do women in being friends with the opposite sex. women typically score higher in "emotional investment," a cluster of items including loving, lovable, romantic, affectionate, cuddlesome, compassionate, and passionate. **People--Things Dimension** This refers to the nature of vocational interests. The people--thing distinction is similar to the empathizing--systemizing distinction. **Empathizing** refers to tuning in to other people's thoughts and feelings. **Systemizing** is the drive to comprehend how things work, how systems are built, and how inputs into systems produce outputs. women more than men prefer teaching and helping professions; men more than women gravitate toward construction and engineering. **Masculinity, Femininity, Androgyny, and Sex Roles** does a single scale with masculinity at one end and femininity at the other end really capture the important individual differences? Can't someone be both masculine and feminine? This question led to a new conception of sex-linked personality differences---**androgyny.** **The Search for Androgyny** The **masculinity** dimension contained items reflecting assertiveness, boldness, dominance, self- sufficiency, and instrumentality. Those who agreed with personality trait terms connoting these qualities scored high on masculinity. The **femininity** dimension contained items that reflected nurturance, expression of emotions, and empathy. Those who agreed with personality trait terms connoting these qualities scored high on femininity. Those who scored high on both dimensions were labeled **androgynous**, to reflect the notion that a single person could possess both masculine and feminine characteristics. **Instrumentality** consists of personality traits that involve working with objects, getting tasks completed in a direct fashion, showing independence from others, and displaying self-sufficiency. **Expressiveness,** in contrast, is the ease with which one can express emotions, such as crying, showing empathy for the troubles of others, and showing nurturance to those in need. **gender schemata**, or cognitive orientations that lead individuals to process social information on the basis of sex-linked associations. According to this conception, the ideal is not to be androgynous but, rather, to be gender-aschematic. That is, the ideal is not to use gender at all in one's processing of social information. **Gender Stereotypes** The beliefs that we hold about men and women are sometimes called gender stereotypes. Gender stereotypes have three components. The first is cognitive and deals with the ways in which we form **social categories**. The second component of gender stereotypes is **affective**. You may feel hostile or warm toward someone simply because you place that person in a particular social category. The third component of gender stereotypes is **behavioral**. For example, you may discriminate against someone simply because he belongs in a social category---in this case, "man." **Stereotypic Subtypes of Men and Women** Men were viewed as falling into five subtypes. The playboy subtype, The career man subtype... Stereotypes of women fell into a smaller number of subtypes. One might be called the "classically feminine" and A second subtype is defined by short-term or overt sexuality. A comparison of a diagram Description automatically generated with medium confidence **Prejudice and Gender Stereotypes** Categories of gender, and the stereotypes associated with them, are not merely cognitive constructions that rattle around inside people's heads. They have tral world implications. These consequences can damage people where it counts most---in their health, their jobs, their chances for advancement, and their social reputations. **Theories of Sex Differences Socialization and Social Roles** **Socialization theory,** the notion that boys and girls become different because boys are reinforced by parents, teachers, and the media for being "masculine," and girls for being "feminine," is probably the most widely held theory of sex differences in personality. Over time, according to socialization theory, children learn behaviors deemed appropriate for their sex. In Bandura's (1977) social learning theory, a variant of socialization theory, boys and girls also learn by observing the behaviors of others, called models, of their own sex. Boys watch their fathers, male teachers, and male peers. Girls watch their mothers, female teachers, and female peer models. Boys see their fathers work. Girls see their mothers cook. Over time, even in the absence of direct reinforcement, these models provide a guide to behaviors that are masculine or feminine. One potential difficulty, however, pertains to the direction of effects---whether parents are socializing children in sex-linked ways or whether children are eliciting their parents' behavior to correspond to their existing sex-linked preferences (e.g., Scarr & McCartney, 1983). Perhaps the interests of the children drive the parents' behavior rather than the other way around. Parents may start out by giving a variety of toys to their children; however, if boys show no interest in dolls and girls show no interest in trucks, then over time parents may stop purchasing masculine toys for their daughters and feminine toys for their sons. The theory that the causal arrow runs one way---from parents to children---is open to question. A theory closely related to traditional socialization theories is social role theory. According to **social role theory**, sex differences originate because men and women are distributed differently into different occupational and family roles. **Hormonal Theories** Hormonal theories of sex differences argue that men and women differ not because of the external social environment, but rather because men and women have different underlying hormones. Some of the best evidence for this comes from a condition called **congenital adrenal hyperplasia** (CAH), in which the female fetus has an overactive adrenal gland. This results in the female being hormonally masculinized. Young girls with CAH show a marked preference for "male" toys, such as Lincoln logs and trucks. As adults, CAH females show superiority in traditionally masculine cognitive skills, such as spatial rotation ability and throwing accuracy, as well as preferring traditionally masculine occupations. These findings suggest that fetal exposure to hormones can have lasting effects on gender-linked interests and abilities. Men and women do differ in their levels of circulating hormones. Women's level of circulating testosterone typically falls between 200 and 400 picograms per milliliter of blood at the lowest part of the menstrual cycle and between 285 and 440 at the highest part of the menstrual cycle (just prior to ovulation). Men, in contrast, have circulating testosterone levels ranging from 5,140 to 6,460 picograms per milliliter of blood. Following puberty, there is no overlap between the sexes in their levels of circulating testosterone. Men typically show more than 10 times the level of women. These sex differences in circulating testosterone are linked with some of the traditional sex differences found in behavior, such as aggression, dominance, and career choice. Women's testosterone levels peak just prior to ovulation, and women report a peak in their sexual desire at precisely the same time. **Limitations:** These findings do not prove that the differences between men and women in sexuality, dominance, aggression, and career choices result from differences in testosterone levels. Correlation does not mean causation. link between hormones and behavior is **bidirectional**. Higher testosterone may result from, as well as cause, behavior changes. **Evolutionary Psychology Theory** According to the evolutionary psychology perspective (see Chapter 8), men and women differ only in some domains of personality and show large similarities in most domains. The sexes are predicted to be similar in all the domains in which they have faced similar adaptive problems over human evolutionary history. Adaptive problems are problems that need to be solved in order for an individual to survive and reproduce, or whose solution increases overall reproductive success.