PSYCH 3AB3 Midterm 2

Gender Socialization

• process through which cultures teach children and adolescents about roles.

Traditionally sexuality is ______ controlled for girls, and ____ controlled for boys.

• girls; boys

Girls Traditional Skills 

• household chores, taking care of younger children. 

Boys Traditional Skills

• direct skills and character skills.

  • provide, protect, procreate.
    

Female Genital Mutilation

• considered a right of passage in some cultures.

• not purposefully harmful → being tough enough.

Genital Mutilation Laws

• legislations have been adopted against it → considered a violation of human rights.

Female Genital Mutilation Survey

• “do you believe it’s required by your religion?”

• “should it continue, or stop?”

Female Genital Mutilation Survey Results

• high endorsement indicates it’s a requirement of their religion (e.g., Egypt, Guinea, etc).

• huge drops in support by women in Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia → similar changes in religion around the same time.

• looks like society based changes not generational trends.

Global Economy and Women

• as value of info, tech, services increase → more financial benefit in training girls/women in the workplace than staying at home.

• 2/3 of countries have achieved parity education, remaining 1/3 have not.

18/19th Century American Girls

• narrow socialization

  • housewife, teacher, nurse, seamstress. 

• intellectual work was considered unhealthy.

• too weak to do physical work.

• virginity until marriage!

20th Century American Girls

• broader socialization, mentored by older women (watched what they did).

  • YMCA, girl scouts, etc.

Communal Manhood

• preparing for community and family responsibilities (work & marriage).

• 17/18th century.

Self-made Manhood

• individuals, independent, capable of self-control and making decisions.

• volunteer organizations → stressed self-control, service to others, belief in god.'

• freedom to engage with peers.

• 19th century.

Passionate Manhood

• passionate emotions (anger, sexual, desire) self-expression and self-enjoyment.

• 20th century.

Do teachers perceive adolescent boys and girls differently?

• teachers and student self-report.

• children’s social behaviour rated by teacher, perception of self-competencies, gender roles, and self-description.

Teachers rated girls…

• higher in prosocial behaviours.

  • correlated with feminine gender-role orientation → traditional gender stereotypes influence how girls are expected to behave.

Teachers rated boys…

• higher in physical and relational aggression.

Girls rated themselves…

• higher in behavioural conduct (prosocial behaviour).

Boys rated themselves…

• higher in global self-worth and physical appearance.

Gender & Careers → Gender Copying Study

• general knowledge questions paired with a female and male photo on an answer (deception as “past participants” who shared their answers)

  • “female” → art, performing arts, languages, care.

  • “male” → sports, machines, science, computers.

• for harder questions players often relied on the “past participants” answer and picked the male or female answer due to stereotypes.

Gender & Careers → Gender Copying Results

• female participants didn’t show as much bias as males.

• male participants often only trusted/copied other men → even in more feminine domains (e.g., art, music, etc)

Gender & Careers → Stereotype Endorsement Study

• “think about each subject/career listed”

  • who would most people think is better at this? (knowledge)

  • who do you think is better at this? (endorsement)

    • options: girls, boys, either, i don’t know

• “what courses are you taking this year?” (high school students)

Gender & Careers → Stereotype Endorsement Results (Adolescents)

• boys choose boys more often overall → underscore on feminine items, endorse masculine items.

• not much gender stereotype in girls.

Gender & Careers → Stereotype Endorsement Results (Adults)

• both men and women say other will view men as more capable.

  • but neither endorse those bias’ themselves.

Course Selection → Gender Stereotype Study

• males chose 73% “masculine subjects.

• females chose 47% “feminine” subjects.

Gender Intensification Hypothesis

• psychological and behavioural differences between boys and girls become more pronounced during puberty because of intensified socialization pressures.

  • girls more self-conscious.

  • girls better at forming intimate friendships.

Gender Bias

• Extent people make generalizations about characters in vignettes, with feminine/masculine/neutral characteristics.

• extend people adopt stereotypically masculine/feminine traits.

Gender Bias Study Methods

• “to what extent does this trait generalize to other boys/girls who look like this?”

  • scale 1 (almost none) to 7 (almost all).

• words like adventurous (shows a boy), affectionate (shows a girl), creative (shows boy), superficial (shows a girl).

Gender Bias Study Results

• gender bias shown in 9-year-olds.

• highest endorsement of stereotypes shown in 15-year-olds.

  • body is changing → seek a mentor who understands (boys & boys, girls & girls).

• girls show stereotypes more → but numbers are very similar to each other (not functionally sig.)

  • not convincing.

Gender Bias Study Findings

• adolescents generalize in a way that aligns with gender stereotypes more than kids or emerging adults.

• girls might be more likely to generalize (depends on context and questions).

• being a girl/boy, women/man, or not is more salient during adolescence then any other time.

Differential Socialization

• parents, teachers, peers, and society tend to treat girls/boys differently.

  • infancy: stereotypical toys & games for boys & girls.

  • childhood: stereotypical activities encouraged → teased if not ‘normal’.

Social Identity Theory

• being in a social group makes you more prone to biases that favour your group; might explain gender socializations.

• higher-status groups tend to guard in-group boundaries more than members of lower-status groups.

• boys & fathers behave more negatively to cross-gender behaviours than girls and mothers. 

  • potentially due to higher status in society.

  • not always intentional.

Adolescent Problems → Girls

• emphasis on thinness leads to dieting, and EDs.

• those overweight, obese, physically unattractive at risk for verbal, physical, relational and cyber harassment.

Adolescent Problems → Boys

• expected to be (and are) more aggressive.

  • establishes hierarchies (strongest vs weakest).

Girls & Social Media

• more exposed to photos that convey a very specific type of “attractiveness”.

  • thin, sexy look.

• more time spent on ______ ______ → worsens body satisfaction.

• exposure to “attractive” photos increases anxiety/body dissatisfaction.

• exposure to diverse bodies/”reality checks” → improves body satisfaction.

Gender Stereotypes & Articles Study

• college women evaluated quality of articles, written by either men or women.

  • women rated articles more highly if written by men (regardless of fields).

    • even though they were all written by the same person.

Gender Stereotypes → Values

• in almost all countries:

  • “having a good job” is more important for men.

  • “being good-looking” more important for women.

  • being kind and honest → important for both.

The Truth About Gender Differences

• there is more overlap than areas that don’t overlap…mostly. we are similar.

Smoking/Vaping Among High School Students

• overall neither are very popular.

• smoking cigarettes has declined over the years.

• lots of socialization not to smoke has led to vaping.

• vaping on the rise in adolescents.

Gender Identity

• internal perception of one’s gender and how the individual chooses to label themselves.

Gender Expression

• external display of one’s gender through clothing, grooming, demeanour, social behaviour, etc.

Gender Identity & Expression

• subjective and personal.

• can be dissonance between the two.

• not necessarily perceived correctly by outward appearance & behaviours.

Gender Desirability Studies

• original → asked college students to rate traits most desirable for an American man or woman.

  • studies after show consistency across countries and age groups.

• feminine: nurturing & compliant

• masculine: independent & aggressive

Androgyny

• having a combination of both feminine and masculine traits in one person. 

Gender Identity Issues

• a group of people who have “not” being in common will be more heterogeneous than a group of people with something in common.

  • e.g., dogs are dogs but “not dogs” can be any other animal.

• need to focus on supporting the individual not trying to group people.

Transgender Youth

• without support have higher rates of mental health issues, more likely to become homeless, at risk for verbal & physical aggression, being bullied, attempting suicide.

• some report resilience, greater self-esteem, and personal mastery.

Social Cognition

• how we think about other individuals, social relations, and situations.

• can be investigated through two concepts:

  • perspective taking & theory of mind.

  • adolescent egocentrism.

Cognitive and affective development during adolescence begins with _______, not with ______.

• puberty; age.

Cognitive and Affective Development → Early Adolescence

• puberty heightens emotional arous-ability, sensation-seeking, reward orientation.

• feeling all emotions and don’t have the skills to deal with it.

Cognitive and Affective Development → Middle Adolescence

• period of heightened vulnerability to risk-taking and problems in regulation of affect and behaviour.

Cognitive and Affective Development → Late Adolescence

• maturation of frontal lobes facilitates regulatory competence.

• stage to becoming an adult.

Social Development Evolutionarily

• social skills play a key role in developing effective survival strategies.

  • dominance is greatly determined by social skills → capacity to gather allies, assistance during conflicts, etc.

• baboons living in larger social groups tend to have larger brain sizes compared to smaller groups.

  • supports social brain hypothesis.

    • suggests group size effects brain size.

Social Reasoning

• during adolescents it’s not solely dependent on cognitive skills, also influenced by factors such as:

  • motivations

  • desires

  • emotions

  • interests

  • perspective-taking skills

Theory of Mind (ToM) Development

• ability to understand others’ mental states, intentions, emotions, desires and motives.

• early signs emerge in infancy → preference for faces, attend to social interactions.

  • around 9 months → understand others act with goals and intentions.

• age 4 → strongly develops and continues to develop into adulthood.

Theory of Mind Faucets

• Emotional Self-Regulation:

  • effortful control, executive function.

• Social Behaviour:

  • pro-sociality, aggression, peer relations.

• Academic Achievement:

  • reading comprehension, writing, math, science abilities.

Perspective Taking

• understanding one’s own perspective and involves comprehension of what others might think, feel, believe, or desire.

• not extensively studied during adolescence.

Choudhury et al. → Perspective Taking

• “you can’t go to your friends party, how do you feel”

  • your perspective and someone else’s.

• found perspective taking develops with age → maturation of parietal and frontal lobes contributing to development.

• improves during adolescence.

  • pre-adolescence struggle.

Sophisticated Theory of Mind: Faux Pas

• when someone unintentionally says something hurtful → requires advanced ToM to understand it wasn’t purposeful.

• involves taking speakers perspective to recognize their lack of awareness and the emotional impact of their words.

• typically develops from mid-childhood into adolescence.

Moral judgement: Outcome or Intention?

• in early childhood children tend to judge actions based on the outcome and ignore the intentions behind them.

  • by adolescence there’s a clearer understanding of intetions.

Two Process Model: Moral Judgement

• refers to two components of moral judgement:

  • fast: emotional, intuitive responses.

  • slow: deliberate, conscious reasoning.

• when intentions and outcomes don’t match, it can create a conflict in moral judgement. 

  • older children judged a case of accidental harm as less “bad”.

  • older children judged a attempt of hard as more “bad” → even without an actual harmful event.

Constraint Hypothesis

• understanding someone’s intent-based wrongness influences whether they deserve punishment.

Higher-Order Reasoning

• taking multiple people’s perspectives on multiple levels.

• ToM level 1: doesn’t require a lot of grammatical knowledge/understanding.

• ToM level 4: requires more recursive thinking.

Who am I?

• understanding yourself involves understanding others. 

• adolescence is often characterized by a period of self-discovery.

• development is based on culture.

Identity Formation

• Personal experiences, biological drives, culture.

• past, present and future.

Erik Erikson

• worked with war veterans and reflected on how soldiers often came back with “lost identity”.

  • identity can be most easily defined when it’s lost → allows you to miss it…want it back.

Erikson’s Stages

• a crisis must be resolved at each stage.

• there are 5 stages that encompass childhood-adolescence.

  • Stage 1: trust vs mistrust

  • Stage 2: autonomy vs shame/doubt

  • Stage 3: initiative vs guilt

  • Stage 4: industry vs inferiorityStage 5 (puberty): identity vs confusion

Stage 1: trust vs Mistrust

• 0-12 months.

• parents’ actions/reactions gives the infant a sense that it’s alright to be oneself.

• out of infants control.

Stage 2: Autonomy vs Shame/doubt

• 2-3 years

• understanding that I can control my own actions.

  • interacting with objects/environment creates a reaction.

Stage 3: Initiative vs Guilt

• preschool age.

• can imagine and actively translate thought to action.

• more intentional in actions.

Stage 4: Industry vs Inferiority

• elementary school age.

• practice skills and completing tasks that will be needed as adults.

• can you accomplish skills/tasks required of you.

Stage 5: Identity vs Confusion

• puberty.

• to become faithful/committed to a worldview.

• difficult to successfully get through this stage without properly getting through the others.

Criticism of Erikson’s Theory

• imprecise formulations (terms not clearly defined).

  • what is autonomy really?

  • how can we test it empirically?

    • it’s just a matter of did you do or fail to do these things.

• lack of evidence supporting “crises” 

  • was there even an issue to begin with?

• cultural bias → only applicable to societies where adolescents have choice in their social, ideological, and vocational roles.

James Marcia’s States

• identity achievement

• identity moratorium

• identity foreclosure

• identity diffusion

Identity Achievement

• thoughtful, introspective, flexible strength in reactions to the world.

  • better able to adapt to new challenges.

• score consistently high in autonomy, function well under stress, logical decision-making, not easily swayed by opinion, high satisfaction.

Identity Moratorium

• can be animated, anxious, or quietly thoughtful.

• good self-esteem, non-conformists, typically not in an intimate relationship.

• more anxious than “achievement” or “foreclosure”, shy away from committed relationships, cognitive abilities similar to “achievement”.

Identity Foreclsure

• similar to “achievement” (confident) initially.

• inflexibility and defensiveness, happy, very committed to vocational and ideological values (especially parents’).

  • most authoritarian attitudes, approval-seeking, rely on others’ opinions, least anxious, least open to new experiences.

Identity Diffusion

• most heterogeneous group, cultural limitations (dependent on), developmental deficits, superficial, unhappy (most).

• low self-esteem, low autonomy, least capable of complex reasoning.

Social Responses to Marcia’s States

• genuine opportunities must be given for adolescents to discover and realize their strengths.

• Achieved: should be supported in their explorations rather than rewarding premature commitment.

• Moratorium: seek most help but simply needs sound board, choices, and work study opportunities.

  • support their exploration

• Foreclosure: slow counselling in terms of vocational options.

  • don’t try to change their minds immediately → make sure they’re identifying in healthy way.

• Diffusion: professional therapy/counselling recommended.

Can identity status predict who transitions well from high school to university?

• informational: actively seek out, evaluate, and use self-relevant info, self-reflection, problem-focused coping, conscientious (achieved or moratorium).

• normative: conform to prescriptions and expectations of significant others, conscientious and agreeable, but need structure (foreclosed).

• diffuse/avoidant: reluctant to face up to and confront personal problems & decisions (diffuse/avoidant).

University & Identity - Berzonsky & Kuk Study

• Identity Diffusion was associated with lower levels of academic autonomy, informational processing improving and diffuse/avoidant styles making it worse.

• female students had better established sense of educational purpose.

• higher achievement and lower diffusion & moratorium led to stronger sense of educational purpose.

  • also higher with higher informational and normative scores & lower diffuse/avoidance.

• identity diffusion & foreclosure associated with worse mature interpersonal relationships.

  • effect of diffusion reduced when processing style is considered.

• bottom line: both contextual and stable understanding of self predicts extent to which adolescents adapt to demands of adult world.

Actual Self

• self-concept

  • who you are on a basic level.

Possible Self

• who you can become in the future.

  • more short-term.

Ideal Self

• who you would like to be.

  • more long-term, high goals.

Feared Self

• who you dread becoming.

  • who you are based on who you don’t want to be.

False Self

• a self presented to others to fit in or impress.

Self-Esteem

• overall sense of self-worth and well-being.

• self-image, concept, perception are related because they contain evaluations of to what extent you are worthy and well.

Global Self-Esteem

• universal findings that self esteem is high in childhood but drops during adolescence before rising again in adulthood.

• girls self-esteem drops more than boys.

Cultural Self-Esteem

• valued in individualistic cultures → something to strive for.

• not as valued in collectivistic cultures → self-criticism is expected as proper etiquette.

Ethnic/Cultural Differences in Self-Esteem Study

• compared black, white and asian students responses on collective self-esteem scale → no difference in overall self-esteem.

• measured private (your evaluation of group) and public (belief of other’s evaluation of their group) self-esteem.

Ethnic/Cultural Differences in Self-Esteem Results

• public vs private scales:

  • black students: no correlation (own evaluation differed)

  • white students: moderate correlation (somewhat matched)

  • asian students: strong correlation (private matched public)

Black Lives Matter Study

• how do black high school boys think about the extent to which they “matter”?

• mattering": value and significance indicated by the regard with which they are held, how they’re treated, and relational interests taken in them by society and their schools.

• interviews with 17 boys.

Levels of Mattering (Study)

• marginal mattering: baseline, minimal recognition that signals their insignificance.

• partial mattering: being valued selectively for talents/attributes.

• comprehensive mattering: aspirational mattering that liberates the individual form negativity, authentic understanding and validation.

Black Lives Matter Results

• experiencing and resisting interpersonal marginal mattering:

  • teachers/administrators → racial bias and stereotypes.

  • majority white peers → no effort to connect.

  • among black boys → coming from poor neighbourhoods, creating mistrust.

• mattering partially through selective love:

  • many athletes, felt they were valued only for their athletics.

Social Media Use and Effects

• many studies show the harms.

• if it was harmful to everyone it wouldn’t be used anymore → that isn’t the case.

  • good for some people, bad for others.

• everything is on an individual level → can’t generalize.

• there is a positive effect between increase social media use and increased self-esteem…

• there is also an effect between decreased social media use and increased self-esteem…

Alone Time

• due to increased autonomy and need for privacy, adolescents spend more time alone than during childhood.

• according to Larson & Richards study:

  • boys: spend less time with family and that time then gets spent alone.

  • girls: spend less time with family and that time then gets spent with friends.

Does affect change with Age, and depending on who you’re with? (Larson & Richards)

• how individuals interact with others is changing.

• affect more positive when with friends, and the effect increased with age.

• affect was more positive with family in Gr. 5 and Gr. 9.

• no effect of age when alone.

Time Spent Alone or with Others → Bottom Line

• influence of family declines during adolescence.

• not much changes in time spent with friends.

• alone time increased.

• moods are highest with friends → effect increases from Gr. 5-9.

Cognitive Control Study

• examined cognitive control under brief positive or negative emotional states.

• participants aged 13-25.

• happy, fearful, calm emotional expressions are presented as targets and non-targets.

• watched performance before/during “random” events (bad sound plays, money to win).

  • everyone heard the noise at the end of the block and they all won $20 once.

Cognitive Control Results

• adults were better at responding to fearful faces.

  • dorsolateral prefrontal cortex active in response to fearful cues.

• adults had the best performance in response to calm cues during the negative context.

• adults not using PFC during calm cues/negative context → not exerting much cog. control.

• young adults and teens responded similarly → showed diminished cognitive control compared to adults

  • bottom line: young adults (18-21) are not emotionally mature in terms of PFC in the same way adults are.

Dimensions of Emotional Expression

• frequency:

  • how many times in a given period.

• Intensity:

  • how strong was the emotion.

• Instability:

  • how much did emotions fluctuate in a given period.

• Clarity:

  • to what extent can you identify and characterize your emotions.