PSYCH 102

• feminism - was coined in France in the late 1800s. It combined the French word for “woman,” femme, with the suffix ism, meaning “political position.” Thus, feminism means “a political position about women.”
• Quantitative Research - gather and analyze data that can be quantified
• Descriptive statistics - describe populations, proportions, and frequencies.
• Experiments - controlled studies that manipulate one thing (independent variable) to determine how it affects another thing (dependent variable)
• surveys- which can be written or oral, ask people to report their feelings, thoughts, and experiences
• Qualitative research methods - sometimes called interpretive methods, aim to understand meanings that cannot be quantified.
• textual analysis - involves studying communication texts, which may be written, oral, or nonverbal.
• Ethnography - relies on extensive observation to discover what things mean to people and has provided detailed descriptions of how gender is enacted in diverse

  cultures.
• Critical research methods - identify and critique the means by which power relations are created or challenged.
• Mixed research methods - exactly what the name implies—a combination of two or more of the methods described above.
• Essentializing - reducing something or someone to certain characteristics that are assumed to be central to its nature and present in every member of its group. it ignores characteristics that differentiate individuals from one another.
• Sex (female or male)- is a designation based on biology and assigned at birth.
• Gender - socially constructed and expressed.
• gender identity - one’s \internal sense of self as a woman, man, or neither
• gender expression - the external communication of one’s gender identity through clothing, hairstyles, behavior, and voice
• gender role - as the cultural expectations assigned to one’s sex
• XY chromosomes- males have
• XX chromosomes - females have
• intersex people - that is born with biological characteristics of both sexes
• androgyny- combined Greek word aner or

  andros, which means “man,” and the Greek word gyne, which means “woman.”
• Androgynous - individuals embody qualities that our culture considers both feminine and masculine.
• Sexual orientation - refers to a person’s preference for romantic and sexual partners.
• Transgender - individuals find that their biologically assigned sex and its accompanying gendered expectations don’t match their gender identity
• culture - structures (also called institutions) and practices (also called activities) that reflect and uphold a particular social order.
• patriarchal - The word patriarchy literally means “rule by the fathers.”
• Communication - is a dynamic, systemic process in which two levels of meanings are created and reflected in human interaction
• Communication Is a Dynamic Process - which means

  that it continually changes.
• Communication Is Systemic - Communication occurs in particular systems that influence how we interact and what meanings we attach to messages.
• Communication Has Two Levels of Meaning

  content level of meaning is its literal meaning.

  relationship level of meaning defines the relationship between communicators.
• theory - is a way to describe, explain, and predict relationships among phenomena.
• Theories of gender development and behavior can be classified into four broad types:

  (1)

  biological, (2) interpersonal, (3) cultural, and (4) critical.
• Biological theory maintains that biological characteristics such as chromosomes, hormonal activities, and brain specialization account for gender differences.
• Estrogen causes fat tissue to form around the hips, which provides cushioning for a fetus during pregnancy.
• Males tend to have more developed left lobes, which

  control linear thinking, sequential information, spatial skills, and abstract reasoning.
• Females tend to have more developed right lobes, which control imaginative and artistic activity, holistic

  and intuitive thinking, and some visual tasks.
• In females, the prefrontal cortex, which restrains

  aggression, is larger and develops earlier than in males and the insula, which affects intuition and empathy, is larger
• In males, the amygdala, which is the center of emotions such as anger and fear, is larger
• gender binary refers to the division of humans into two sexes that are presumed to be opposite, distinct, natural, and enduring.
• Psychodynamic theories claim that the first relationship we have fundamentally influences how we define our identity, including gender.
• social learning theory - claims that individuals

  learn to be masculine and feminine by imitating others and getting responses from others to their behaviors.