Evaluation

Cards (3)

  • Support for changing gender roles

    • Hofstede - in industrialised cultures, changing expectations are due to changing roles
    • Women entering the workplace and men staying home more
    • Breakdown of stereotypes, unchanged in traditional societies
  • Methodological issues
    • Freeman - studied Samoan people and said Mead was misled by her participants
    • Mead's preconceptions influenced her reading of events (observer bias and ethnocentricism)
    • Therefore, Mead's interpretations may not have been objective
  • Criticism for cultural mate choice
    • Buss - surveyed 10,000 adults in 37 countries for mate choice
    • Found men and women looked for stereotypical features, regardless of economic development
    • Therefore, Eagly and Wood may have a biological bias