androgyny

• Androgyny


  An individual who shows high levels of both masculine and feminine traits
• Androgyny


  • Sandra Bem challenged the idea that individuals are either exclusively masculine or feminine
  • Bem argued that rigid sex roles are detrimental to mental health
  • It is psychologically healthy to avoid fixed sex-role stereotypes
  • Androgyny is a positive and desirable condition
  • Men and women should be free to adopt masculine- and feminine-type behaviours to suit their personality
• A man who likes cooking shouldn't feel he has to avoid this activity because it isn't deemed 'manly' enough
• Inhibiting or suppressing personality traits that are seen as being too 'masculine' or 'feminine' could ultimately affect psychological health and in some cases lead to a mental disorder
• explanations for androgyny - Cognitive gender schema theory

  Androgynous people are gender aschematic (which means they are not influenced by sex-role stereotypes) arguably ppl are adrogoynus if they perceive the world without gender stereotypes
• explanations for androgyny - Orlofsky (1977) put forward a behavioural explanation for androgyny


  Individuals acquire masculine and feminine qualities through reinforcement instead, therefore learning which behaviours are applicable to which situations
• Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI)


  A self-report measure invented by Bem to measure androgyny
• BSRI development


  1. Bem asked 100 American undergraduates (in 1974) which personality traits they thought were desirable for men or women

  2. The original list of 200 items was narrowed down to 40 (20 masculine and 20 feminine) traits and 20 gender-neutral items were added as distractors

  3. Each person rates themselves on a 7-point Likert scale, ranging from never or almost never true to almost always true

  4. Numerical scores for all masculine items are added up and the same for all feminine items and gender-neutral items, to calculate their overall type
• BSRI categories


  • Masculine - high masculinity, low femininity
  • Feminine - low masculinity, high femininity
  • Androgynous - high masculinity, high femininity
  • Undifferentiated - low masculinity, low femininity
• Androgyny is the result of scoring above the median in both masculine and feminine categories
• Undifferentiated


  If the number of masculine and feminine items are roughly equal and both totals are low
• Androgynous


  If the number of masculine and feminine items are roughly equal and both totals are high
• Masculine or Feminine


  If the two scores are quite different, then you are classed as masculine or feminine (depending which score is bigger)
• Bem (1974) found 34% of males and 27% of females to be androgynous, suggesting a sizeable minority of people are predominantly androgynous rather than being masculine or feminine
• Flaherty and Dusek (1980) found that androgynous individuals have

  A higher degree of self-esteem, a better sense of emotional well-being and more adaptable behaviour
• Taylor and Hall (1982) suggested that

  Masculinity, in males and females, is a better predictor of psychological well-being than androgyny
• this may be due to Masculine bias in Western cultures

  Masculine qualities like independence and competitiveness are more valued than feminine ones such as co-operation and nurturing
• Test-retest reliability


  Consistency over time and is concerned with whether the same person will receive the same or similar score if they are assessed more than once. Research has demonstrated high test-retest reliability for the BSRI over a four-week period - correlations range from 0.76 to 0.94
• External validity


  The generalisability of the findings - Culture and time could lower the external validity of the BSRI since data generated by 1970's american students
• Hoffman and Borders (2001) found that only two terms on the BSRI were still endorsed as masculine or feminine - the adjectives masculine and feminine. All other terms failed to reach a 75% agreement level
• this lacks Temporal validity


  The BSRI lacks temporal validity as the adjectives used were selected back in the 1970's and people's attitudes towards masculinity and femininity have undoubtedly changed since then
• may not be a psychologically healthy state - Androgyny pressurises individuals to reach levels of adequacy in terms of both masculinity and femininity, rather than on a more traditional single level of competence, i.e. being either masculine or feminine
• Reductionist


  Bem's approach to measuring masculinity and femininity could be criticised for over-simplifying gender types by reducing masculinity and femininity down to single scores. More contemporary approaches to androgyny have attempted to measure additional aspects of gender-related behaviour, such as interests and abilities, rather than simply personality characteristics
• explanations for androgony: olds - andorgony is a higher developmental stage reached by some ppl. Bem - andorgonus ppl have different cognitive styles and adopt behaviours independent of any gender concepts
• see key study - burchardt and Serbian