Methods and History of Gender Research 49was introduced during this period. Because
men and women did not differ in intelli-
gence, Terman concluded that the real men-
tal differences between men and women
could be captured by measuring masculinity
and femininity.
Researchers developed a 456-item in-
strument to measure M/F. It was called the
Attitude Interest Analysis Survey (AIAS;
Terman & Miles, 1936) to disguise the true
purpose of the test. The AIAS was the first
published M/F scale. The items chosen were
based on statistical sex differences observed
in elementary, junior high, and high school
children. This meant that items on which the
average female scored higher than the aver-
age male were labeled feminine, and items
on which the average male scored higher
than the average female were labeled mascu-
line, regardless of the content of those items.
The M/F scale was also bipolar, which meant
that masculinity and femininity were viewed
as opposite ends of a single continuum. The
sum of the feminine items was subtracted
from the sum of the masculine items to yield
a total M/F score.
The instrument was composed of seven
subject areas: (1) word association, (2) inkblot
interpretation, (3) information, (4) emotional
and ethical response, (5) interests (likes and
dislikes), (6) admired persons and opinions,
and (7) introversion–extroversion, which
really measured superiority–subordination.
Sample items from each subject area are
shown in Table 2.4.
Several of these subscales are quite in-
teresting. The information scale was based
on the assumption that men have greater
knowledge than women about some areas of
life, such as sports and politics, and women
have greater knowledge about other areas of
life, such as gardening and sewing. Thus, giv-
ing a correct response to an item about whichThe frontal cortex was first thought to con-
trol higher levels of mental functioning, and
men were observed to have larger frontal
lobes than women. Then it appeared men
did not have larger frontal lobes; instead,
men had larger parietal lobes. Thus, think-
ing shifted to the parietal lobe as the seat of
intellectual functioning. All this research
came under sharp methodological criticism
because the scientists observing the anatomy
of the brain were not blind to the sex asso-
ciated with the particular brain; that is, the
people evaluating the brain knew whether it
belonged to a male or a female! This situa-
tion was ripe for the kinds of experimenter
biases described earlier in the chapter.
The period ended with the seminal work
ofSex and Personalitypublished by Lewis
Terman and Catherine Cox Miles in 1936.
They concluded there are no sex differences in
intellect: “Intelligence tests, for example, have
demonstrated for all time the falsity of the
once widely prevalent belief that women as a
class are appreciably or at all inferior to men
in the major aspects of intellect” (p. 1).TAKE HOME POINTS
■ Initial research in the area of gender focused on try-
ing to establish that men were smarter than women by
examining the size of the brain.
■ The research was unsuccessful. It was not clear that
one could link brain size to intellect.1936–1954: Masculinity–Femininity as a Global Personality Trait
During this next period, researchers shifted
their focus from sex differences alone to con-
sider the notion of gender roles. The con-
struct of masculinity–femininity, or M/F,M02_HELG0185_04_SE_C02.indd 49 6/21/11 12:19 PM