Methods and History of Gender Research 57Drawing on this work, Spence and colleagues
(1979) developed a negative masculinity scale
that reflected unmitigated agency; the scale
included in the Extended Personal Attributes
Questionnaire (EPAQ) is shown in the bot-
tom of Table 2.5.
The unmitigated agency scale is agen-
tic like the earlier positive masculinity scale,
more common in men than women, and so-
cially undesirable in both men and women.
Most important, it conceptually reflects the
construct of unmitigated agency: a focus
on the self to the exclusion of others. It in-
cludes a hostile attitude toward others and
self-absorption. The scale is positively corre-
lated with the M+ scale, reflecting the focus
on the self, and negatively correlated with the
F+ scale, reflecting the absence of a focus on
others (Helgeson & Fritz, 1999).
Spence and colleagues (1979) also wanted
to capture socially undesirable aspects of
the female gender role. Turning to Bakan
(1966) again, they noted that communion also
ought to be mitigated by agency. Although
Bakan never used the termunmitigated
communion, he noted it would be unhealthy
to focus on others to the exclusion of the
self. Spence and colleagues had more dif-
ficulty coming up with traits that conceptu-
ally reflected unmitigated communion. They
developed two negative femininity scales, but
neither conceptually captured the construct of
unmitigated communion (Spence et al., 1979).
Later, I developed an unmitigated communion
scale (Helgeson, 1993; Helgeson & Fritz, 1998),
shown in Table 2.6.
The unmitigated communion scale
has two components: overinvolvement with
others and neglect of the self. It is positively
correlated with F+, reflecting the focus on
others, and negatively correlated with M+,
reflecting the absence of a focus on the self
(Helgeson & Fritz, 1999).psychological adjustment as well as, and
sometimes better than, the androgyny score
(e.g., Woo & Oei, 2006). In hindsight, this
finding is not so surprising because the traits
included on the BSRI and PAQ masculinity
scales are those valued by American society.
Bem actually conceptualized androgyny to
be much more than the sum of masculine
and feminine traits. Androgyny had implica-
tions for how one thought about the world.
This is elaborated on in Chapter 5 in the dis-
cussion of gender-schema theory.Undesirable Aspects of Masculinity and
Femininity. One criticism of the PAQ and
the BSRI is that a majority of attributes are
socially desirable. In 1979, Spence, Helmreich,
and Holahan set out to develop scales that
paralleled the original M/F scales in content
but differed in social desirability. Conceptu-
ally, the masculinity scale, which they referred
to as M+, was thought to reflect a positive in-
strumental or agentic orientation, whereas the
femininity scale, which they referred to as F+,
was thought to reflect a positive expressive or
communal orientation. Spence and colleagues
were looking to develop scales that measured
socially undesirable aspects of agentic and
communal orientations.
Spence and colleagues turned to the
work of David Bakan (1966), who richly de-
veloped the ideas of agency and communion.
Bakan argued there are two principles of hu-
man existence: an agentic one that focuses
on the self and separation, and a communal
one that focuses on others and connection.
Bakan also suggested that agency is the male
principle and communion the female. Bakan
argued that it is important for agency to be
mitigated by communion and thatunmiti-
gated agencywould be destructive to the self
and society. Unmitigated agency reflected
a focus on the self to the neglect of others.M02_HELG0185_04_SE_C02.indd 57 6/21/11 12:19 PM