Androgyny

• What is androgyny?

  High levels of male and female traits, independent of stereotypes
• What was Bem’s prediction?

  She argued androgynous people were more psychologically healthy due to not acting to fit in and being more flexible in situations (different cognitive style)
• What was the BSRI?

  The first systematic attempt to measure androgyny
• BSRI creation

  50 males and 50 females given 200 traits. These were split into male and female, and later androgynous/neutral (top 20 of each)
• How the BSRI works?

  7 point likert scale with a score to determine if someone is male, female, androgynous or undifferentiated
• BSRI key stats

  34% of males and 27% of females were androgynous
• Bem strength

  Flaherty and Dusek found androgynous participants (found by BSRI) had high levels of adjustment, self-esteem and wellbeing
• Bem weakness

  Woodhills and Samuels argued it is down to the combination of traits a person has (Bem too simplistic)
• BSRI strength

  Results matched participants’ descriptions of their own gender identities
• BSRI strength

  Highly standardised procedure (replicable)
• BSRI weakness

  Social desirability bias
• BSRI weakness

  Low temporal validity due to generational changes. Borders and Hoffman asked undergrad students to re-categorise the traits and virtually no reliability was found (only two traits reliably re-classified)