The Psychology of Gender 4th Edition

46 Chapter 2

to be due to status. When men and women

are randomly assigned to a high-status or

low-status position in the laboratory, high-

status persons of both sexes typically display

so-called male behavior and low-status per-

sons of both sexes typically display so-called

female behavior.

Another variable besides status that is

confounded with sex is gender role. When

we observe a sex difference in a behavior, is

it due to the biological category of male or

female, or is it due to the psychological cat-

egory of gender? Too often, we fail to exam-

ine whether the difference is due to sex or

to gender role. One area of research where

there is substantial agreement as to whether

a sex difference exists is aggression. Even

aggression, however, may be partly due to

biological sex and partly due to gender role,

that is, our encouragement of aggression

among males and discouragement of aggres-

sion among females. Features of the male

gender role have been linked to aggression.

Throughout this book, I have been very at-

tentive to the impact that gender roles have

in areas of sex differences.

Situational Influences

Even if we examine personality traits in addi-

tion to participants’ sex, we often find that in

some situations we observe a difference and

in some situations we do not observe a differ-

ence. Some situations are high in behavioral

constraints, meaning the behavior required

in the situation is clear and not very flexible;

in this case, sex may have little to do with be-

havior. A graduation ceremony is such a sit-

uation. Men and women are usually dressed

alike in robes, march into the ceremony to-

gether, and sit throughout the ceremony

quietly until their name is called to receive

their diplomas. The behavior in this situation

is determined more by the situation than by

in the real world, men are more often pro-

voked than women. Thus men may display

more anger than women in the real world

because men are more likely to be provoked

and women are more likely to be punished

for displays of anger.

Another difficulty with laboratory re-

search is that it is often conducted on col-

lege students. College students differ from

the general population in a number of ways.

They are more likely to be White, upper to

middle class, higher in education, and ho-

mogeneous on a number of dimensions. The

college experience is one in which the roles

of men and women and the statuses of men

and women are more similar compared to

their situations after college. Thus it is ques-

tionable whether we can generalize the simi-

larities observed among college students to

the general population.

Variables Confounded with Sex

A fundamental problem for the study of

gender is that we cannot randomly assign a

person to be male or female. As mentioned

earlier, sex is usually a subject variable rather

than a true independent variable that can be

manipulated. You can manipulate sex when

you are leading respondents to believe a tar-

get person is female or male. Here, sex is a

target variable. However, when comparing

men’s and women’s feelings, thoughts, and

behavior, we cannot be certain any differ-

ences found are due to sex alone; men and

women come into the laboratory with their

own values, histories, and experiences. Most

important, sex is confounded with status.

We cannot separate the effects of sex

from status. Do women smile more than

men, or do low-status people smile more than

high-status people? We will see in Chapter 7

that many of the sex differences observed in

verbal and nonverbal communication seem

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