quiz 2: chapter 5 - adolescent development

The Gender Intensification Hypothesis

 Psychologists John Hill & Mary Ellen Lynch proposed that adolescence is a particularly important time in __ socialization, especially for boys/girls.

 According to their __, psychological and behavioral differences between boys and girls become more pronounced in the transition from childhood to adolescence because of intensified socialization ? to conform to culturally prescribed gender rolls.

 Believed that it is this intensified socialization ?, rather than biological changes of puberty, that results in increased differences between boys and girls as adolescence progresses.

 T/F: They also argue that the intensity of gender socialization in adolescence is greater for girls than for boys and that this is reflected in a variety of ways in adolescent girls’ development.

gender. girls.

gender intensification hypothesis. pressures.

pressure.

TRUE.

The Gender Intensification Hypothesis

 In support of their hypothesis, Hill & Lynch offered several arguments and sources of evidence.

↪ During adolescence, girls become notably more __ than boys about their physical appearance and more interested and adept than boys in forming intimate friendships.

 Other studies that have supported the hypothesis that entry into adolescence accelerates attention to gender differences--

↪ One study showed that adolescent/emerging adult boys and girls both embraced gender stereotypes more than younger children.

↪ Another study showed that compared to children and emerging adults, adolescents described themselves more in terms of __.

self conscious.

adolescent.

stereotypically masculine and feminine traits.

The Gender Intensification Hypothesis

 Gender intensification among girls may be especially pronounced for issues of __ appearance.

↪ A study in Germany found that while both adolescent girls and boys subscribed to a thin ideal for women’s bodies, this ideal was more strongly endorsed by __.

↪ A national American study found that adolescent boys and girls responded differently to __ gain, with girls/boys expressing more body dissatisfaction than girls/boys who gained a comparable amount.

↪ A study in Sweden that followed early adolescents into emerging adulthood found that during adolescence, girls/boys were more likely than girls/boys to grow dissatisfied with their physical appearance.

physical.

girls.

weight. girls. boys.

girls. boys.

Gender Socialization: Family, Peers, and School

 __: the term for socializing boys and girls according to different expectations about the attitudes and behavior appropriate to each gender.

 It begins early/later, in virtually every culture - parents dress their boys and girls differently, give them different toys, and decorate their bedrooms differently.

→ Studies have shown that American adults react positively/negatively when infant boys are dressed in pink, as compared to blue.

→ In another study where adults were asked to play with a 10-month-old infant, some were told it was a girl, some were told it was a boy, and some were told no information about its gender.

↪ When thinking it was a boy, 50% of men & 80% of women played using a __.

↪ When thinking it was a girl, 89% of men & 73% of women played using a __.

Differential gender socialization.

early.

negatively.

football.

doll.

Gender Socialization: Family, Peers, and School

 In the course of growing up, children get encouragement from parents, peers, and teachers to conform to ? roles.

↪ Numerous studies attest that parents encourage ?-specific activities in their children and discourage activities they perceive as inconsistent with their child’s gender.

 During middle/emerging childhood, gender roles often become temporarily more flexible.

 However, with the gender intensification of adolescence, __ becomes more pronounced.

↪ Parents tend to monitor and restrict adolescent girls/boys more tightly than adolescent girls/boys with respect to where they are allowed to go and with whom.

gender.

gender.

middle.

differential socialization.

girls. boys.

Gender Socialization: Family, Peers, and School

 With regard to school, research has found that __—both men and women—generally reinforce the traditional cultural messages regarding gender.

 Specifically, teachers often assume that boys and girls are inherently the same/different, with different interests and abilities.

↪ T/F: That boys are more aggressive and dominant, and that girls are more silent and compliant.

 Girls/Boys have made remarkable gains in academic achievement in recent decades and now exceed Girls/Boys in nearly every area of school performance.

→ However, the educational and occupational interests and choices of adolescents/emerging adults remain the same/different in some gender-specific ways.

→ These differences are at least partly a result of __ in the school, beginning in primary school and continuing in college/graduate school.

↪ Research indicates that among college instructors, women/men are more likely to hold an “implicit bias” [the unconscious attitudes, stereotypes, or beliefs that involuntarily affect an individual's understanding, actions, and decision-making] against women/men.

teachers.

different.

TRUE.

Girls. Boys.

different.

gender socialization.

men. women.

Gender Socialization: Family, Peers, and School

 The findings about differential socialization at home and at school do not mean that parents and teachers consciously and intentionally treat adolescent boys and girls differently.

↪ Sometimes they do, but often differential socialization simply results from the different ? that parents and teachers have for boys and girls as a consequence of their own __.

 T/F: At this point, we know relatively little about how young people themselves perceive the gender socialization process; it may be especially interesting to investigate this question with emerging adults.

expectations. gender socialization.

TRUE.

Media and Gender

 In today’s world, gender socialization takes place not just through parents, peers, friends, and schools, but through the media.

 T/F: The television shows, movies, music, and magazines most popular with adolescents promote many stereotypes about gender.

 Adolescents now use __ more than any other media form.

 For decades, studies have shown a relation between consumption of traditional media and __, especially among adolescent girls.

↪ Several analyses of the content of girls’ magazines have reported that the magazines relentlessly focus on __ appearance.

TRUE.

social media.

body image.

physical.

Media and Gender

 Researchers have concluded that exposure to unrealistic physical ideals in traditional media has negative effect on girls’ __.

 T/F: While magazines present unrealistic ideals of models who are “airbrushed” with photography techniques to eliminate any imperfections, the content of social media is NOT diverse, including realistic photos that people post of themselves.

↪ Perhaps, then, one might expect social media usage would not have comparable negative effects on girls’ self-evaluation of physical appearance…

body image.

FALSE! While magazines present unrealistic ideals of models who are “airbrushed” with photography techniques to eliminate any imperfections, the content of social media is much more diverse, including realistic photos that people post of themselves.

Media and Gender

 However, research has shown that girls’ use of social media is correlated with dissatisfaction with __ appearance.

↪ The research findings have been consistent across studies in many countries, and for adolescents as well as ? adults.

↪ Research focusing on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube have similarly found that use of these social medias is related to adolescent girls’ __ dissatisfaction.

↪ For example, girls feel a need to “look perfect” on social media, and they edit their posts to conform to idealized views about beauty.

 Most of the research on social media and body dissatisfaction has shown correlations, but not __.

↪ An experimental study showed adolescent girls YouTube-style videos about doing yoga, applying sunscreen, and drinking water that focused on either physical appearance or health.

↪ The girls who watched the appearance-focused videos were more likely to express ? about their looks.

physical.

emerging.

body.

causation.

anxiety.

Media and Gender

 When adolescent girls are exposed to social media focused on physical appearance, which is inevitable, it represents a risk to their __ image.

 Moreover, in recent years, there has been a movement on social media to challenge narrow beauty ideals and to post body positive content that promotes acceptance of ? bodies.

 Some research shows that when adolescent girls and emerging adult women see social media images of diverse bodies or “reality check” comments by others that critique idealized images of women, they feel more satisfied with their __ appearance.

 Most of the research on social media and body image has been with girls, because physical appearance is more prominent part of gender socialization for girls/boys; however, a few studies have found a link between social media use and negative self-evaluations of physical appearance in boys.

body.

diverse.

physical.

girls.

Gender Self-Socialization

 Socialization interacts with cognitive development to produce adolescents’ ideas about gender.

 As a result of gender socialization, from early childhood onward, we use __ schemas as a way of understanding and interpreting the world around us.

↪ Recall that scheme is Piaget’s term for a __…

↪ A __ is a gender-based cognitive structure for organizing and processing information.

↪ According to gender schema theory, __ is one of our most important schemas from early childhood onward.

gender.

cognitive structure for organizing and processing information.

gender schema.

gender.

Gender Self-Socialization

 By the time children are about 3 years old, they understand __; that is, they commonly understand themselves as either a boy or a girl.

 Once children possess gender identity, they use ? as a way of organizing information obtained from the world around them.

 By age ? or ?, children identify a wide range of things as appropriate for either boys and men or girls and women, including toys, clothing, colors, activities, and occupations.

gender identity.

gender.

4 or 5.

Gender Self-Socialization

 Once young children possess gender schemas, they seek to maintain consistency between their schemas and their behavior, a process called __.

 Children actively internalize gender schemas as part of their ?.

↪ T/F: Boys become quite insistent about doing things they regard as “boy things” and avoiding things that girls do, NOT vice versa.

 As part of the cognitive development of ? and ?, adolescence leads to asking questions about what it means to be a woman or man, and to making judgements about how one measures up to cultural gender expectations.

 As adolescents become more capable of reflecting on these issues, their concerns with compliance to __ intensify, for themselves and others.

↪ Additionally, __ maturity makes adolescents more conscious of the gender of themselves and others in social interactions.

self-socialization.

identity.

FALSE! Boys become quite insistent about doing things they regard as “boy things” and avoiding things that girls do, vice versa.

self-reflection and idealization.

gender norms.

sexual.

Gender Self-Socialization

 Thinking of oneself and others as members of a social group, such as being a boy or a girl, leads to __, according to social identity theory.

↪ These biases include in-group __, conformity to in-group ?, ? of group contrasts, and out-group ?.

 T/F: An important aspect of the differentiation between social groups is that members of higher-status groups tend to guard in-group boundaries more strictly than members of lower-status groups.

↪ This may be why adolescent boys/girls exceed boys/girls in enforcing gender conformity; boys react more negatively to cross-gender behavior than girls.

↪ ‘Popular’ boys, more so than ‘popular’ girls, are those who avoid __ behaviors.

↪ While boys and men often lose __ when behaving in “feminine” ways, girls and women sometimes gain status from adopting “?” traits.

common biases.

favoritism, norms, exaggeration, hostility.

TRUE.

boys. girls.

cross-gender.

status. masculine.

Gender Self-Socialization

 Although ? about gender may be useful in some ways for making sense of the world, they can also be misleading because they __ the complexity of real life.

 A schema that differentiates boys and men from girls and women involves two/three groups where each is comprised of almost ? billion persons.

schemas. oversimplify.

two. four.

Gender Socialization as a Source of Adolescent Problems

 For both boys and girls, the intensified __ socialization they experience in adolescence can be a source of problems.

 T/F: For girls, the intensified focus on physical appearance can produce many kinds of distress.

↪ The emphasis on thinness as a physical ideal leads the majority of American girls to ? in adolescence (at the extreme, some girls develop serious eating disorders that threaten their health).

 For boys, the problem at the core of their gender role in adolescence is __.

↪ Boys are more aggressive than girls from infancy onward, partly for biological reasons but also because of their __. Boys are expected by their peers to be verbally aggressive.

↪ Boys who demonstrate physical aggressiveness successfully in sports frequently have the highest __ among their peers.

↪ T/F: Adolescent boys who see aggressiveness as part of what it means to be a man are especially likely to engage in problem behavior.

gender.

TRUE.

diet.

aggressiveness.

gender socialization.

status.

TRUE.

Gender Stereotypes in Emerging Adulthood

 A stereotype occurs when people believe others possess certain characteristics simply as a result of being a member of a particular __.

 Gender stereotypes can be viewed as one aspect of __ schemas.

↪ Gender schemas include beliefs on ? & ?.

↪ Gender stereotypes are __ specifically about people.

 Why do so many people continue to think of the genders as radically different in many ways, even as “opposites”?

 One reason stems from the development of __, which tend to shape the way we notice, interpret, and remember information according to our expectations about the genders.

↪ T/F: Once we have formed ideas about how boys and girls are different, we tend to notice events and information that confirms our expectations and disregard of dismiss anything that does not.

group.

gender.

objects & activities.

beliefs.

gender schemas.

TRUE.

Gender Stereotypes in Emerging Adulthood

 A second reason for the persistence of our beliefs about gender differences in capabilities is that the __ of men and women seem to confirm those beliefs.

↪ According to the __ theory, social roles of men and women enhance or suppress different capabilities.

↪ __ socialization leads boys and girls to develop different skills and attitudes, which leads to different behaviors.

↪ The differences in __ seem to confirm the appropriateness of the different roles.

↪ For example, caring for children is part of the gender role for girls and women in most cultures; most girls are given dolls as children, and many are given some responsibility for younger siblings. In adolescence, many earn money by babysitting. In emerging adulthood, women are more likely to enter __ as a profession.

social rules.

social roles.

Differential gender.

behavior.

childcare.

Gender Stereotypes in Emerging Adulthood

 It is not only that men and women are judged to have different traits and abilities; men’s/women’s abilities also tend to be evaluated more positively than men’s/women’s.

 What are the implications of this kind of gender inequity on gender differences?

 Research has compared nations that differ on men’s and women’s access to social power.

↪ For example, the United Nations Development Program has created a __ that combines assessments of the extent to which women are equal to men in earned income, as well as representation in national legislatures and executive business positions.

↪ Analyses show a correlation between GEM and the extent of psychological differences between men and women; gender differences are larger in nations where women have less ?, including on mathematics achievement, agreeableness, and physical aggression. As gender equity rises, __ diminish.

men’s. women’s.

Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM).

power. gender differences.