The Psychology of Gender 4th Edition

32 Chapter 2

research. Most correlations reported in psy-

chology will fall in the +.3 to +.4 range.

Apositive correlationis one in which

the levels of both variables increase or de-

crease at the same time. For example, you

might find that women who hold more tra-

ditional gender-role attitudes are more likely

to perform the majority of household chores;

that is, as women’s gender-role attitudes be-

come more traditional, the amount of house-

hold chores performed increases. The left

half of Figure 2.2 depicts a hypothetical plot

of these two variables. The regression line

drawn through the scatterplot shows that the

relation is positive.

Anegative correlationoccurs when

the level of one variable increases as the

level of the other decreases. An example of a

negative correlation would be the amount of

household chores performed by a man with

traditional gender-role attitudes: The more

traditional his attitude, the fewer household

chores he performs. A hypothetical scatt-

terplot of those data is depicted in the right

half of Figure 2.2. Here you can see the nega-

tive slope of the regression line, indicating a

third variable could be salary. Perhaps the

pay of people-oriented jobs is lower than that

of other jobs and women are more likely to

be hired into low-salary positions. Thus the

primary weakness of correlational research

is that a number of explanations can account

for the relation between two variables.

The value of a correlation can range

from −1 to +1. Both −1 and +1 are referred

to as perfect correlations, which means you

can perfectly predict one variable from the

other variable. In the examples just cited,

there will not be perfect correlations. It will

not be the case that all nurturant people are

in people-oriented jobs or all women are in

people-oriented jobs. An example of a perfect

correlation can be found in physics. There

is a perfect correlation between how fast

you are driving and how far your car takes

you. If you drive 60 mph, you will travel 60

miles in one hour or 120 miles in two hours.

For every 1 mph increase in speed, you will

travel 1 mile farther in an hour. That is, you

can perfectly predict distance from speed. As

you might guess, we cannot perfectly predict

one variable from another in psychological

Positive Correlation Negative Correlation

Housework

Traditional Gender-Role

Attitudes: Women

Traditional Gender-Role

Attitudes: Men

High High

Low

Low High

Low

Low High

Housework

FIGURE 2.2 Examples of a positive and negative correlation.

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