Lecture 8: Temperament, Personality, Sexuality & Gender Glossary

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards generated from Sigelman & Rider Chapter 12 Key Terms and Dr. Bertus Jeronimus’s Lecture 8 slides on temperament, personality, sexuality, and gender.

transgender

Pertaining to individuals who identify with a gender other than their biological one.

biological sex

The physical characteristics that define male and female.

gender

A combination of all those features that a society associates with or considers appropriate for being a man and woman.

gender role

A pattern of behaviors and traits that defines how to act the part of a female or a male in a particular society.

gender stereotypes

Overgeneralized and largely inaccurate beliefs about what males and females are like.

communality

An orientation that emphasizes the well-being of others and includes traits of emotionality and sensitivity to others; considered feminine.

agency

An orientation toward individual action and achievement that emphasizes traits of dominance, independence, assertiveness, and competitiveness; considered masculine.

systemize

To analyze things and explore how they work; male brains (and the brains of autistic individuals) are hypothesized by Baron-Cohen to excel at systemizing, whereas females excel at empathizing.

gender similarities hypothesis

The hypothesis that males and females are similar on most, but not all, psychological variables.

social-role theory

Eagly’s view that gender-role stereotypes are created and maintained by differences in the roles that men and women play in society rather than being inherent in males and females.

gender identity

Individuals’ basic awareness that they are either a male or a female.

gender typing

The process by which children become aware of their gender and acquire the motives, values, and behaviors considered appropriate for members of their biological sex.

gender segregation

The formation of separate boys’ and girls’ peer groups during childhood.

biosocial theory

Money and Ehrhardt’s theory of gender-role development that focuses on how biological events influence the development of boys and girls and how early biological developments influence how society reacts to children.

androgenized female

A genetic female who was exposed to male sex hormones during the prenatal period and therefore developed malelike external genitals and some masculine behaviors.

gender constancy

A solid understanding of oneself as male–female, man–woman, over time and across situations.

gender stability

The stage of gender typing in which children realize that their sex remains the same over time.

gender consistency

The stage of gender typing in which children realize that their sex is stable across situations or despite changes in activities or appearance.

gender schema (schemata)

Organized sets of beliefs and expectations about males and females that guide information processing.

posttraumatic stress disorder

A psychological disorder involving flashbacks to traumatizing events, nightmares, and feelings of helplessness and anxiety in the face of danger experienced by victims of extreme trauma such as soldiers in combat and sexually abused children.

gender intensification

A magnification of differences between males and females during adolescence associated with increased pressure to conform to traditional gender roles.

sexual orientation

A person’s preference for sexual partners of the same or other sex, often characterized as primarily heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual.

childhood gender nonconformity (CGN)

Lack of adherence as a child to the typical gender-role norms for members of one’s assigned gender group.

hookup

A sexual encounter between two people who have often just met and have little expectation of forming a romantic relationship.

double standard

The view that sexual behavior appropriate for members of one gender is inappropriate for members of the other.

oral sex

Sexual activity involving contact between the mouth and genitals.

sexual assault

Unwanted and nonconsensual sexual contact or behavior ranging from unwanted touching to rape.

parental imperative

The notion that the demands of parenthood cause men and women to adopt distinct roles and psychological traits.

androgyny

A gender-role orientation in which the person blends both positive masculine-stereotyped and positive feminine-stereotyped personality traits.

self-socialization

The process by which children actively socialize themselves instead of being passive targets of social influence.

coming out

Beginning to acknowledge to oneself and to others that one is gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender.

mean level (mean-level change)

How a trait changes on average for a group over time (for example, the group average of conscientiousness rising from age 20 to 80).

rank order (rank-order stability)

How people stand relative to one another on a trait, and whether that ordering stays the same over time.

ipsative profile

The pattern of several traits within one person, showing which of that person’s traits are relatively highest and lowest, and how that ordering changes over time.

positive emotionality

The lecture’s label for the temperament dimension marked by smiling and laughter, soothability, activity, and social behavior (shyness at the low end); linked to the Big Five trait extraversion.

negative emotionality

The lecture’s label for the temperament dimension marked by frustration, distress, anxiety, sadness, and anger; linked to the Big Five trait neuroticism.

reactivity and regulation (temperament)

Two basic ways infants differ in temperament: reactivity (sensitivity to danger or stimulation; how strongly one responds) and regulation (recovery after disruption; how well one calms or controls one’s own responses).

anoetic

The lecture’s label for the most basic, raw level of experience: feeling without self-reflection, covering primary-process emotion systems, homeostatic and sensory affects, and basic wants and needs.

affective circumplex (valence and arousal)

A circle-shaped model that places every emotion on two dimensions: valence (negative to positive) and arousal (low to high energy).

social investment

The idea that taking on adult roles with responsibilities (a job, a partner, parenthood) pushes personality toward maturity.

cross-temporal meta-analysis

A research method that compares scores from samples collected in different years to see how a trait differs across birth cohorts or historical time.

autobiographical reasoning

Using one’s life story to look back, reflect on the past, and draw meaning about who one is.

personal myth

In McAdams’s approach, the internalized, evolving life story a person builds to give life unity and purpose.

levels of biological sex (genetic, gonadal, phenotypic)

The division of biological sex into layers: genetic sex (chromosomes such as XX or XY), gonadal sex (testes or ovaries), and phenotypic sex (the body’s observable anatomy).

intersex

A person whose chromosomes, gonads, hormones, or anatomy do not fit typical definitions of male or female.

cisgender

A person whose gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth; the counterpart of transgender.

queer

An umbrella label for people who are not heterosexual and/or not cisgender.

bisexual

Sexual and/or romantic attraction to more than one gender.

pansexual

Sexual and/or romantic attraction to people regardless of their gender.

gender dysphoria

Distress that can arise when a person’s gender identity does not match the sex they were assigned at birth.

Tanner stages

A five-stage scale of pubertal development, from prepubertal (no secondary sexual characteristics) to adult secondary sexual characteristics.

things vs. people axis

A dimension on which toy and interest preferences differ on average: boys’ toys tend to be object-oriented (vehicles, tools, blocks) and girls’ toys tend to be person-oriented (dolls, kitchen sets).

effect size (Cohen’s d)

A standardized measure of how large a difference between two groups is, expressed in standard deviations ($d$ below $0.10$ close to zero, $0.11\text{--}0.35$ small, $0.36\text{--}0.65$ moderate, $0.66\text{--}1.00$ large, above $1.00$ very large).

Mahalanobis’ distance (D)

A standardized distance ($D$) between the male and female average profiles when several variables are considered together, taking the correlations among them into account.