Untitled Flashcards Set

Gender 12/2

Considerations

• There are greater differences within genders than between men and women

• People who are super masculine or super feminine have greater psychological issues

• There are limits to the binary

• Biological theories

  • Gay rights activists felt that people were born this way and there's nothing they can do

• Socialization theories

  • Feminist scholars said that men and women were not that different biologically but it's how they were raised differently 

• Thinking between these two theories:

  • Nothing should justify unfair treatment

  • Ignoring either argument is very bad

Replicated early-appearing sex differences

• temperament 

  • Surgency is higher in men 

  • Girls tend to have more effortful control and know more about what is going on 

  • The negative affect is a toss-up 

    • Fear tends to be higher in girls

    • Boys tended to be more difficult

• Developmental disorders

  • Girls have higher anxiety and self-consciousness

  • Boys are more externalizing 

• Gender roles

  • Toy preferences

    • Balls, legos vs dolls

  • Activity preferences 

    • Playing house, playing sports

  • Play partner preferences 

    • Girls like to play with girls

    • Boys like to play with boys

• These are based on socialization but have biological origins as well

• Cognition

  • Boys have greater spatial ability

    • rotating things, spatial perception, how they’ll fit together

  • Girls have greater perceptual speed

    • Picking out what stimuli is important 

    • Women tend to be better at jigsaw puzzles

  • Mathematical abilities is not stable (some girls do better but also vice versa)

    • Lack of biological differences since not stable across cultures

Size of differences 

• Identity

  • Strong cohens so big differences

• Sexual orientation

  • Heterosexual is the most common 

  • Strong cohens but a little bit less than identity

• With toys

  • Males are more likely to want to play ball sports and girls want to play house

• Spatial, verbal, perception

  • Smallest differences so gender is a poor predictor for these

Evolutionary reasons

• Children are more “expensive” than females

  • There is little advantage to the competition for multiple mates, the greater importance of being choosy

    • The number of kids born by one woman is a lot less than the number of kids born by one male

  • The greater payoff for nurturance

    • Having a child takes a bigger toll on women

• Paternity uncertainty

  • They're born from a woman so it is very sure who the mother is, but you don’t always know who the dad is

• Vulnerability during gestation and lactation

  • It is hard to do everything for yourself when you’re pregnant and when caring for a child

Sex differences in infancy

• Female newborns are…

  • Healthier

  • More developmentally advanced

  • Less muscular 

  • More sensitive to pain 

  • Before 6 months, differences in visual perception

  • Before 1 year, visual toy preferences

Culture and gendered behavior

• Plenty of variability between cultures in the degree of behavioral differences but…

  • Few societies with reversals of sex-typical behaviors

• Surgency and regulation were “relatively” consistent across cultures but it was not that stable and not in all countries

  • Meaning that there is not a lot of strong evidence for biological differences in behaviors in infancy 

  • In older children, the differences become significant and incredibly consistent across almost all the cultures

    • Why?

      • This is likely because girls and boys have been encouraged to act a certain way and it starts when they’re older kids - socialization

      • Or this age is when these differences occur during maturation and growth- biological

      • So either biology or socialization is the same all around the worlds

    • Consistency grows stronger over childhood

    • Gender differences in cognitive abilities do differ substantially across culture

Behavior genetic studies

• BG is not useful for group comparisons but…

  • Heritability accounts for 20-50% of the variance in masculine and femininity scales

    • Aka controlling how much of a man or a woman you are

    • But not that much so there is room for socialization aspects

• In the U.S., genes may have more influence on masculinity, environment more influence on femininity 

  • Many families want their boys and girls to be assertive, strong 

    • They are much more variable in the way that they promote femininity 

Gender cont. 12/4

Behavior genetics cont.

• Cannot directly compare men and women or masculinity and femininity

• Genes play a role in how masculine or feminine we are

Sex differences in lateralization

• Hemispheres

  • Right hemisphere: spatial/quantitative

  • Left hemisphere: verbal

• Differential 

  • Females are more responsive (neural activity, reflexes) to right-side body stimulation (sent to the left hemisphere) and males to left-side stimulation (sent to the right hemisphere)

• Males more lateralized (smaller corpus callosum)

  • Males tend to show stronger differences between the left and right hemispheres

  • Brain injuries tend to be more catastrophic 

    • If a man’s right side of the brain is damaged, the left side will struggle more to pick up the slack

  • However, these are modest strengths of differences

    • Functional differences are found in fairly small samples, and anatomical differences are found less

Comparative studies

• In many mammals, males are more aggressive and females are more nurturing

  • This is because aggression can pay off for males in a social setting

    • Increasing biological fitness

  • Nurturance is also necessary in some way for females given breastfeeding and whatnot

    • This must have biological things

  • Recent toy studies in Rhesus and Vervet  monkeys

    • Males prefer mechanical toys 

    • Female monkeys prefer dolls

• Hormone studies

  • XX and XY assign sex but not masculinization or feminization

    • The process of sexualization relies on starting more feminine than masculinizing hormones happen

  • Animal Studies

    • Blocking masculinizing hormones in utero will prevent the masculinization of males

    • Exposing females to masculinizing hormones in tero will masculinize them

    • Temporary changes in behavior can be induced by hormone manipulation

  • Human Studies

    • Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (girls with CAH (masculinizing hormone))...

      • Prefer male activities and play style

      • Prefer male playmates

      • Desire male occupations

      • More likely to develop male identity and lesbian sexuality (recent study)

    • Androgen insensitivity 

      • Males with this condition tend to be more feminine 

        • Dont react to those masculinizing hormones

    • Chromosomal abnormalities 

      • XXY boys are more timid

      • XYY boys are more aggressive 

    • Older brothers, paternal aunts, and male homosexuality

      • Later-born boys have a much higher likelihood of being gay

        • Third-born male has 30% more likelihood than second born who has a 30% more likelihood than first-born

        • Argues that this is a biological effect

          • Tested in adoptive brothers, it's not about who you room with it is who you womb with

          • Each successive birth leaves behind remnants that can change the sexuality of the younger brother

          • There is a genetic component of being gay

• But the argument for socialization…

• Stretch but younger boys love their older brothers

• The more paternal aunts that a boy has, the greater the likelihood that they are to be gay

  • Not totally sure why

• Naturally occurring variations in hormone levels

  • Puberty changes gender differences

  • Menstrual cycles

    • When estrogen is highest, women’s verbal abilities peak, and other psychological effects

• But… there are only small or null effects in many studies regarding these mechanisms and most cognitive abilities, especially spatial stuff

• This is a high emphasis on biological stuff but socialization is  also important 

  • More gay people in California than in Iowa

    • If purely genetic there would be gay people everywhere

  • Generations have also been increasingly gay and transgender

    • Maybe this generation of parents is also more welcoming 

Evidence for processes involved in environmental factors for gender differences

• Lytton and Romney (1991) socialization dimensions (correlational)

  • Most of their findings on how parents treat girls vs boys was not super strong

    • Only came out in a more liberal form

      • Boys tend to get more achievement encouragement (striving for better jobs and awards) and stricter punishment 

      • Girls tend to get more responsiveness and encouraged dependency

  • EXCEPT for the encouragement of sex-typed activity 

    • Pushing girls to play with dolls and boys to play with trucks

  • This is a meta-analysis which isn't great because 

    • Same parent-gender specificity

    • Achievement encouragement and dependency encouragement 

      • Done indirectly (more direction, help, supportive statements to girls)

    • Restrictiveness

      • Girls are restricted in activities outside the home

    • Clarity of communication/reasoning

      • Specific gender-typed activities

      • Was no clear gender effect

    • Encouragement of sex-typed activities (fairly obvious)

      • More in younger than older kids

      • More for boys than girls

        • It is more okay to be a tomboy than to be a feminine boy

      • More by dads than by moms