The Psychology of Gender 4th Edition

500 Chapter 13

includes passivity, dependence, and needing

others’ protection, all of which undermine

feelings of personal control.

The learned helplessness theory of de-

pression is supported by the fact that other

demographic variables associated with a lack

of control are associated with depression, such

as education. The relation of low education to

higher depression is stronger among women

than men (Ross & Mirowsky, 2006), possibly

due to the fact that women with low educa-

tion suffer from two sources of low status and

lack of control—being female and lacking

education. As shown in Figure 13.6, the sex

difference in depression is much larger among

those with lower levels of education and dis-

appears among those with a college degree

and higher. Thus, one reason that increased

education decreases women’s rates of depres-

sion is that it enhances their sense of control.

Overall, the learned helplessness theory

of depression is appealing, but there are not

good studies that directly test whether this

theory accounts for sex differences in depres-

sion. The evidence is largely circumstantial.

Coping

Coping refers to the different strategies that

we use to manage stressful events and the ac-

companying distress associated with them. If

your girlfriend breaks up with you, you may

go talk to a friend about it, you may wallow

in self-pity, you may try to figure out what

happened, or you may decide to go swim-

ming to take your mind off things. All of

these represent different ways of coping.

One distinction that has been made

in the literature is between emotion-

focused coping and problem-focused coping

(Lazarus & Folkman, 1984).Problem-focused

copingrefers to attempts to alter the stressor

itself. Finding a solution to the problem, seek-

ing the advice of others as to how to solve the

environmental event occurs, you develop the

expectation that future responses will not in-

fluence the outcome. This leads to the behav-

ior of giving up. Recall your own experiences

of learned helplessness in Do Gender 13.3.

Is there any evidence that women are

more susceptible than men to learned help-

lessness? Some evidence suggests women re-

ceive more “helplessness training” than men.

Women are more likely to find themselves in

situations in which they do not have control,

partly due to their lower status. During child-

hood, girls learn they cannot influence boys,

which is one reason girls play with other girls

rather than with boys (Maccoby, 1998). As

discussed in Chapter 6, girls receive less atten-

tion from teachers, which may teach them that

they can do little to influence their environ-

ment. The power differential in heterosexual

relationships undermines females’ sense of

control (Chonody & Siebert, 2008). In a study

of 1,000 community residents, women scored

lower on feelings of control than men did, and

reduced feelings of control were associated

with depression (Nolen-Hoeksema, Larson, &

Grayson, 1999). The female stereotype

DO GENDER 13.3

Personal Experience of

Learned Helplessness

Review the model of learned helplessness

in Figure 13.5. Think about a time when

you exerted a response over and over again

and found it had no effect on the outcome.

Did you give up? After how long? Why?

What were the effects of this experience?

Specifically, did this lead you to give up

on subsequent tasks—related or unrelated

to the present one? What were the short-

term effects? The long-term effects?

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