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

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