Gender psychology

• Sex role stereotypes and gender are concerned with the development of various roles such as behaviour, interests, appearance, and personality traits that are associated with being male or female
• Gender is a psychological/social construct, not solely determined by biological sex (XX or XY)
• Gender


  • Masculine
  • Feminine
• Gender stereotypes


  Shared beliefs about what members of a social category (e.g. gender group) should do and think
• Gender stereotypes are not directly expressed but are learned through social learning and modelling
• Androgyny is the concept of psychological androgyny proposed in the 1970s, suggesting that a person can be both masculine and feminine
• Androgyny


  • Contrasts with the traditional view that masculine and feminine behaviours are two separate clusters
  • Argues that it is psychologically healthier to not be constrained by rigid sex roles
• Measuring androgyny - the BSRI

  1. Asking 100 American undergraduates which personality traits they thought were desirable for men or women

  2. Narrowing down to 40 items (20 masculine, 20 feminine, 20 neutral)

  3. Participants rate themselves on a 7-point scale

  4. Scores calculated for masculinity, femininity and androgyny
• The BSRI has been criticised for not distinguishing between androgynous (high in both masculine and feminine traits) and undifferentiated (low in both masculine and feminine traits) individuals
• Gender schema theory


  Suggests the difference between an androgynous and traditionally sex-typed person is one of cognitive style - an androgynous person responds independently of gender concepts
• Parental behaviour


  Can impact on learning of gender stereotypes
• Research has found a positive correlation between androgyny and psychological health
• There are real-world applications of androgyny, such as encouraging parents to raise children free to assume characteristics of either gender, but this is controversial and faces resistance due to persisting beliefs in gender stereotypes
• Reliability of the BSRI

  • High test-retest reliability
  • Development of a shorter form improved internal reliability
• The BSRI has been criticised for lacking validity - the link between androgyny and psychological health may be explained by self-esteem, and the scores may be an artefact of the measurement rather than representing true differences
• The adjectives used in the BSRI were selected in the 1970s and people's attitudes have changed since then
• Someone who scores high on both masculine and feminine traits is considered androgynous
• Androgynous individuals would also be higher in self-esteem than someone who chose only male or female traits
• Androgyny doesn't explain psychological health at all but rather well-being
• The validity of the inventory has also been criticized in terms of response bias
• Liberman and Gaa (1) analyzed the data from 133 graduate students and found that those students classified as androgynous simply had higher overall scores than those classified as other masculine or feminine
• Some individuals have a tendency to select answers at the higher end of the scale and thus become classified as androgynous
• The scores may be an artifact of the measurement rather than representing a true difference
• The adjectives used in the BSRI were selected back in the 1970s and people's attitudes have changed since then
• Hoffman and Barclay (2001) asked 400 undergraduates to rate the items on the BSRI as masculine or feminine and found that only two terms were endorsed as masculine and feminine - the adjectives 'nice' and 'gentle'
• All other items failed to reach a 75% agreement level
• This suggests that the BSRI no longer has temporal validity
• The BSRI can be criticized for lacking both internal validity and temporal validity
• Sandra Bem


  Psychologist who developed the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI)
• Sandra Bem: 'When Sandra Bem found that psychological androgyny led to higher self-esteem, they decided that an equal sharing of masculine and feminine traits and responsibilities was ideal for many couples'
• Sandra Bem's contribution was to the feminist movement - the idea that men were constrained by traditional gender roles
• Sandra Bem was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and decided to write essays about her experiences before the disease progressed