The Psychology of Gender 4th Edition

Methods and History of Gender Research 31

in the noncaretaker condition, our hypoth-

esis that social role rather than sex leads to

differences in nurturance would be sup-

ported, and our theory would be supported.

If women are observed to show greater lev-

els of nurturance than men in both condi-

tions, regardless of the instructions received

on how to interact with the puppy, we would

have to revise our theory. This observation

would suggest there is something about be-

ing female, aside from the social role, that

leads to nurturance.

The two studies just described are quite

different in design. The first is a correlational

study and the second an experimental study.

Most of the studies in this text are either cor-

relational or experimental. Let’s examine the

differences.

Correlational Study

Acorrelational studyis one in which you

observe the relation between two variables,

usually at a single point in time. For exam-

ple, we could correlate job characteristics

with nurturant behavior. We would probably

observe that people who held more people-

oriented jobs displayed more nurturance.

The problem would be that we would not

know if the job caused nurturance or if nur-

turant people were attracted to those jobs.

Does being a social worker lead to nurtur-

ance, or do more nurturant people choose

social work? We also could correlate sex with

job characteristics. We would probably find

that women are more likely than men to hold

people-oriented jobs. The problem here isn’t

exactly the same as the one just identified.

Here, we know that job characteristics do not

cause someone’s sex. However, we do not

know if someone’s sex caused him or her to

have a certain kind of job. And, there may be

a third variable responsible for the relation

between sex and people-oriented jobs. That

and women are due to the different social

roles they hold in society. We can apply this

theory to the behavior of nurturance. One

hypothesis would be that women are more

nurturant than men because their social roles

of mother and caretaker require more nur-

turant behavior than the social roles men pos-

sess. This hypothesis suggests that men and

women who are in the same social roles will

show similar levels of nurturance. We could

test this hypothesis in two ways. We could

compare the levels of nurturance among

women and men who have similar roles

in society—stay-at-home moms and stay-

at-home dads. We could measure their level

of nurturance by how they interact with babies

in a nursery. These observations would be

the data. Let’s say we find that stay-at-home

moms and dads spend the same amount of

time holding the babies, talking to the babies,

and playing with the babies. These are facts,

and they would support our hypothesis that

men and women who possess the same social

roles behave in similar ways.

Another way we could test our hypoth-

esis would be to assign females and males to

one of two social roles in the laboratory, a

caretaker or a noncaretaker role, and observe

their nurturant behavior. In the caretaker

condition, we would ask participants to play

with and take care of a puppy; in the noncare-

taker condition, we would ask participants

to teach the puppy some tricks. If both men

and women show the same high level of nur-

turant behavior in the caretaker condition

and the same low level of nurturant behavior

Theories Hypothesis

Generation

Hypothesis

Testing

Data Facts

FIGURE 2.1 Steps in the research process.

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