Evaluation

• 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