Methods and History of Gender Research 59features for each target. In addition, many of
the identified personality traits were reflected
on conventional M/F inventories, suggesting
that lay conceptions of M/F fit the scientific
literature. Whether the target’s sex fit society’s
prescribed gender role influenced people’s be-
liefs. For example, features unique to the mas-
culine male were socially desirable (e.g., well
dressed), but features unique to the masculine
female were socially undesirable (e.g., uncar-
ing, ugly, hostile). Among the distinct features
of the feminine male, some were positive (e.g.,
talkative, emotional, creative) and some were
negative (e.g., insecure, weak).
One limitation of most of this research
is that conceptions of masculinity and femi-
ninity are limited to the people who have
been studied: typically, White, middle-class
American men and women. It would be in-
teresting to know more about conceptions of
masculinity and femininity across people of
different races, classes, religions, and more
diverse age groups, such as children and
the elderly. Try Do Gender 2.2 to see if you
can broaden your understanding of people’s
views of masculinity and femininity.The Social Context Surrounding
Gender. An emphasis during this period,
and today, is on how the social context influ-
ences the nature of gender. Social psycholo-
gists, in particular Kay Deaux and Brenda
Major (1987), examined gender as a social
category by emphasizing the situational
forces that influence whether sex differences
in behavior are observed. Their model of
sex differences is discussed in more detail in
Chapter 5. Another approach has been the
movement by thesocial constructionists,
who argue that gender does not reside inside
a person but resides in our interactions with
people—an approach that was described in
Chapter 1. Social constructionists emphasizewas a first step in this direction. The second
research direction has been to emphasize the
social context in which gender occurs. The
research on gender diagnosticity addresses
this issue. Emphasis on the social context
led to research on gender-role constraints,
the difficulties people face due to the limits
a society places on gender-role-appropriate
behavior. I examine each of these research
directions in the following sections.Gender Role as Multifaceted. In 1985,
Spence and Sawin called for the renaming of
the PAQ masculinity and femininity scales.
They stated that these scales reflect only
one aspect of masculinity and femininity—
instrumentality or agency and expressive-
ness or communion—and that the names of
the scales should reflect these aspects. They
argued that masculinity and femininity are
multidimensional constructs that cannot be
captured by a single trait instrument.
What else is involved in masculinity and
femininity besides the traits that appear on
the BSRI and the PAQ? Researchers began
to realize that lay conceptions of masculinity
and femininity included more diverse con-
tent, such as physical characteristics and role
behaviors, in addition to personality traits. In
1994, I adopted a different approach to iden-
tify the content of masculinity and femininity
(Helgeson, 1994b). I asked college students
and their parents to describe one of four tar-
gets: a masculine man, a masculine woman,
a feminine man, or a feminine woman (Hel-
geson, 1994b). Slightly less than half of the
sample was Caucasian; thus, the sample was
diverse in terms of age as well as ethnicity.
The features of masculinity and femininity fell
into one of three categories: personality traits,
interests, or physical appearance. The aver-
age person identified five personality traits,
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