PSYC 1315 1st Edition Lecture 23Last LectureGender, sex, sexuality Current Lecture Gender, sex, sexuality Bem Sex-Role Inventory (BSRI) • Developed by Sandra Bem in 1974. • Masculinity and femininity have been long conceptualized as bipolar ends of a single continuum. • The BSRI contains both a masculinity AND femininity scale. Item Selection • A personality characteristic qualified as masculine if it was independently judged by both males and females raters to be significantly more desirable for a man than for a woman (opposite for feminine characteristics). Bem Sex-Role Inventory • People who were high on both dimensions were considered to be androgynous. • People who are androgynous can incorporate both masculinity and femininity into their personalities. • They feel comfortable engaging in any kind of behavior depending on the situation, whether it is stereotyped as masculine or feminine. Cross-Sex Behavior • Bem & Lenney (1976)– Hypothesized that sex-typed individuals (high on M, or high on F) would prefer sex-appropriate activities and resist sex inappropriate activities more than those who are androgynous. – They also predicted that sex-typed individuals would experience discomfort and even temporary loss of self-esteem if required to perform cross-sex behavior. Results • Sex-typed individuals tended to prefer an activity simply because of its stereotype as sex-appropriate. • Sex-typed individuals felt significantly worse after performing a cross-sex behavior that participants who were androgynous. Results • When performing cross-sex behavior in front of an opposite-sex experimenter, sex-typed individuals felt less comfortable than those who were androgynous. • In the presence of a same-sex experimenter, sex-typed individuals reported feeling less masculine (if they were male), or less feminine (if they were female) than any of the other participants. Gender Differences Differences in Aggression – overt aggression (physical/verbal harm) • males more than females – relational aggression (harm social standing) • females more than males – why the difference? • testosterone? • evolutionary pressures? • socialization? Sexual Orientation Direction of erotic interests; refers to more than just sexual behavior. Orientations:– Heterosexual • (90% of population)– homosexual – bisexual Sexual Behavior What Constitutes Sexual Behavior? - – infidelity or loss of virginity - – activities involved in reproduction - – arousal and sexual response - – unusually intimate and personal activity as defined by the
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