The Psychology of Gender 4th Edition

252 Chapter 7

Explanations for Sex Differences in Communication

A variety of explanations are available for the

differences I have discussed in this chapter

on male and female communication. Here I

discuss two of them. The first theory, status

theory, suggests that any differences in com-

munication between men and women are due

to their unequal status. Once one controls

for the status or power differential between

women and men, sex differences in commu-

nication disappear. Second is social role the-

ory, which argues that the roles women and

men hold in society are responsible for sex

differences in communication. In particular,

the female role emphasizes connections to

others, whereas the male role emphasizes sep-

aration from others. These are not the only

theories of sex differences in communication,

as biological and evolutionary explanations

also have been advanced for sex differences

in nonverbal behavior (Andersen, 2006; Ellis,

2006), but they are the two that have received

the most attention in the literature.

Status Theory

Sex is inherently confounded with status.

Men have a higher status and more power

than women. Status theory has been used to

explain sex differences in interaction styles,

language, and nonverbal behavior.

Interaction Styles. One theory of how

status influences behavior isexpectations

states theory. According to this theory,

group members form expectations about

their own and others’ abilities, which are

based on the value they assign to people in

the group. We expect the high-status per-

son to contribute more and the low-status

person to facilitate the contributions of the

high-status person (Smith-Lovin & Robinson,

1992). Because men have a higher status

than women, we have higher expectations of

men’s abilities compared to women’s abili-

ties. This theory suggests that sex differences

in interaction styles stem from our more

positive evaluation of men’s abilities com-

pared to women’s. In other words, in the ab-

sence of any other information about men’s

and women’s abilities, sex will be interpreted

as status during a group interaction.

Status theory was tested in a field study of

adults in the community (Moskowitz, Suh, &

Desaulniers, 1994). Participants monitored

their interactions with their bosses, cowork-

ers, and subordinates over 20 days. For each

interaction, respondents rated whether domi-

nant versus submissive behavior and agreeable

versus quarrelsome behavior occurred. The

former category of behavior was referred to as

agencyand the latter ascommunion. The status

of the work role (whether the person was a su-

pervisor or subordinate or coworker) but not

sex predicted agentic behaviors. People were

more dominant when they were supervisors

and more submissive when they were super-

visees, regardless of sex. However, sex, but not

the status of the work role, predicted commu-

nal behavior: Women behaved more commu-

nally than men regardless of the status of their

interaction partners. Thus this study partly

supported status theory and partly supported

social role theory, discussed in the next section.

Expectations states theory says we have

higher expectations for the contributions of

the high-status person. However, the rel-

evance of the task to women and men may

alter people’s expectations about capabilities.

We expect men to be more competent than

women on masculine tasks, and we expect

women to be more competent than men on

feminine tasks. Yet the sex difference in in-

teraction styles does not necessarily disap-

pear or reverse itself when feminine tasks are

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