PS370: Gender, mate, selection, love

Sex

• Based on biology

• Variations (intersectionality)

Gender

• Socially constructed

• Multiply determined

• Biology ← → environment

• Not dichotomous

Gender roles

Behaviors exhibited by a typical male or female in a given culture

Gender role standard

• A behavior, value, or motive that members of society consider more
  typical or appropriate for members of one sex

• Expressive role – kind, nurturing, cooperative

• Instrumental role – dominance, assertive, comp.

Gender typing

• Process by which a child becomes aware of his or her gender and acquires motives, values, and behaviors considered appropriate for members of that sex

• Parents subtly encourage play with same-sex-typed toys

• Play in closer proximity with more verbal interaction w/ daughters

Kohlberg’s cognitive-developmental theory (gender concept)

1. Gender identity (30 mos): identify themselves and others as members of one gender or another
2. Gender stability (3/4 yrs): gender is stable over time
3. Gender constancy (5/7 yrs): gender is consistent across situations

Developmental snapshot

• Infancy

  • 18-24 mo: Gender toy preference

• By approximately 2½ yr: Gender identity

• 3 yrs: Gender stereotypes

  • “Mommies should take care of children.”

• Ages 4-6 yrs: Gender rigidity

  • Exaggerating gender roles may help cognitively clarify gender roles

• Ages 5 – 7

  • Gender Constancy/Consistency: stability over contexts: superficial changes in appearance do not change gender

Home and school

• Parents expect sons to outperform daughters, have belief before children have received formal math instruction

• Parents attribute sons’ success in math to ability but credit daughters’ successes to hard work

• Six-grade math instructors believe that boys have more ability in math but girls try harder at it

• Underrepresentation of girls in STEM careers

National Science Foundation Study: How Beliefs about Gender and Race Shape Children’s STEM Learning

• Adults may imply through their language that boys have a natural ability (e.g. “He’s a math whiz!”) whereas girls and underrepresented minorities must work hard to succeed in STEM (“She tried really hard on that problem.”) by highlighting and essentializing a group of people as “scientists”, children might implicitly recognize that this designates a second group of people as “not scientists.”

• Indeed, some research shows that such essentialized language is associated with significant gender differences in STEM
  motivation by age 5 (Rhodes et al., 2019).

• From as young as five years, girls are less likely to choose a game for “really smart” people than a game for people who “work really hard” (Bian & Cimpian, 2017).

Social constructions of gender (gender and family life)

• Gender stereotypes

  • Actively constructed through interactions with others

  • More between- than within-group similarities

• The value of masculinity over femininity

The influence of gender in the family

• Partners

• Kinds of families

• Interactions with family members

Working mothers and the family

• Women whose mothers worked outside the home are more likely to

  • have jobs themselves

  • to hold supervisory responsibility at those jobs

  • earn higher wages than women whose mothers stayed home full time

• Men raised by working mothers are more likely to

  • Contribute to household chores

  • Spend more time caring for family members.

Gender similarity hypothesis

• Men and women are similar in their needs, desires, and yarning for intimate connections with others. Socialized to conform to gender role expectations.

• Comprehensive meta-analysis by Hyde and colleagues (2008) finds gender differences across traits, skills, and behaviors to be remarkably small in magnitude.

• Variation within group is much greater than any mean difference between group.

The attachment theory

• Attachments form internal working models

• Secure attachments

  • Relationships are safe

  • Self as worthy of love

• Anxious, preoccupied, or ambivalent

  • May be overly self-reliant, uncomfortable with intimacy or expressing emotions

• Disillusionment model

  • People are not what they seem …

Dating timeline

• Financial or political gain was driving force in mate selection

• Enlightenment contributed to increase in value and personal happiness and fulfillment

• Industrial revolution and rising middle class, increase in leisure time, hobbies, and education brought adolescents together

• Westward expansion contributed to a “freedom” to break away from strict religious views on sexuality

• Mass production of automobile changed sex and datinf forever, gave rise to romantic consumerism

• SNAF vs. sexual freedom, birth control

• The internet

Evolutionary perspective

• Average/symmetry: humans generally like symmetry, the reason for this is that it conveys health and fertility, symmetrical physiology is healthier and more capable of having offspring

• Resources: displays of resource (fancy clothes/cars), likelihood of survival of offspring is more attractive

  • Men more concerned with sexual infidelity, women more concerned with emotional infidelity

  • Men cannot be sure if their baby is theirs

  • Women want financial security, if emotional infidelity happens then they have nothing

• Competition: anything that increases attractiveness is good, creativity/art/music, person who has time to be creative because that means they are secure in resources

• Limitation: not just reproduction–more about connection

Structural functionalism theory

• androcentric–emphasizes SNAF gender roles

• Schemas of relationships and families, partners need to share them and a willingness to enter into those schemas, assessing long-term compatibility

• Attracted to people that share the same qualities we do, i.e., independent go-getter likely wants wife that loves her job

Conflict theory

conflicts help to negotiate change and growth with new partners, role of market maximization or matching

Filter theory

• Pool of eligibles: the group of people who meet your social, cultural, and personal criteria for a acceptable partner

  • Navigation process influenced by frequency, exposure, etc.

• Propinquity

• Attractiveness

• Social background, consensus, and complementarity filters

Propinquity

the physical or functional closeness between people that greatly increases the chance of forming friendships or romantic relationships

Exposure effect

people tend to develop a preference for a person, object, or idea simply because it is familiar

Similarity attraction effect

• People tend to like and be drawn to others who are similar to themselves; an economic idea people apply to humans

• People are attracted to individuals with similar attachment classifications

Expectancy value theory

• Explains dating choices and relationship commitment by multiplying a person's expectancy of success (the belief that a romantic pursuit or relationship will succeed) by the subjective value they place on the outcome

• Perceived attractiveness, compatibility, similarity

• Self may not match up with what potential mates think of them

• View of your number is influenced by your perceived value on the things you find important