Gender-Role Attitudes 81mental health professionals were asked to iden-
tify which items fit a healthy female, a healthy
male, and a healthy adult, their ratings of the
healthy adult and the healthy male did not sig-
nificantly differ, but their ratings of the healthy
adult and healthy female did. That is, the stereo-
type of the healthy adult more closely approxi-
mated the stereotype of an adult male than an
adult female. These findings suggest that char-
acteristics of the male gender role are more
highly valued than characteristics of the female
gender role. Is this still true today? Answer this
question by conducting the experiment in Do
Gender 3.3.masculine issues. However, when information
was provided, target-based expectancies took
over; female and male candidates were judged
as equally competent on all issues regardless of
whether they were feminine or masculine.Components of Gender-Role Stereotypes
What are the features of the male and female
gender-role stereotypes? In 1972, Broverman
and colleagues developed a questionnaire to
assess people’s perceptions of masculine and
feminine behavior. They administered this
questionnaire to over 1,000 people, and con-
cluded there was a strong consensus as to the
characteristics of women and men across age,
sex, religion, marital status, and education.
Broverman and colleagues defined a
stereotypical feature as one in which 75% of
both females and males agreed the trait de-
scribed one sex more than the other. This
definition rule led to the 41 items shown in
Table 3.4. The male characteristics (listed in
the right column) focused on competence,
rationality, and assertion. The female charac-
teristics (listed in the left column) focused on
warmth and expressiveness. These traits are
similar to the ones found on conventional
M/F (masculinity–femininity) inventories.
Broverman and colleagues (1972) also
found that the male characteristics were more
highly valued than the female characteristics.
You can see in Table 3.4 that more masculine
characteristics are socially desirable (right col-
umn in the top half) than feminine character-
istics (left column in the bottom half). When
the investigators asked women and men to in-
dicate which of these traits are most desirable
in an adult, without specifying the adult’s sex,
more masculine than feminine items were en-
dorsed. Mental health professionals also rated
the masculine items as healthier than the femi-
nine items for an adult to possess. In fact, whenDO GENDER 3.3
Comparisons of Ideal
Adult with Ideal Male and Ideal FemaleList the stereotypical sex-role items in
Table 3.4. Place each feature on a five-
point scale, such as:
Notat 12345 Very
all caring caring
Ask a sample of your friends to rate
the ideal person on each of these features.
On the next page, ask the same friends to
rate the ideal male on each of these fea-
tures. On the third page, ask the same
friends to rate the ideal female on each
of these features. Always make sure the
“ideal person” is the first page so as to dis-
guise the nature of the research. Counter-
balance the order of the second and third
pages. That is, ask half of your participants
to rate the ideal male second and the other
half to rate the ideal female second.
For each item, examine the mean re-
sponse for the ideal person, the ideal male,
and the ideal female. Does the ideal person
more closely resemble the ideal male, the
ideal female, or both equally?M03_HELG0185_04_SE_C03.indd 81 6/21/11 12:22 PM