The Psychology of Gender 4th Edition

154 Chapter 5

Now we turn to the question of who or

what in the environment is the socializing

agent for gender roles.

The Influence of Parents

Differential Treatment of Boys and

Girls. Parents are prime candidates for

contributing to gender-role socialization.

Lytton and Romney (1991) conducted a meta-

analytic review of 172 studies that evaluated

parents’ socialization practices with children,

and concluded that parents’ overall treatment

of girls and boys was similar. In only one way

were parents found to treat girls and boys dif-

ferently: Parents encouraged sex-typed toys

(d=+.34). There were trends that showed

parents encouraged achievement, were more

restrictive, and were more strict with boys;

and that parents encouraged dependence and

were warmer with girls. But, these effects were

small and did not reach statistical significance.

They also found that fathers were more likely

than mothers to treat sons and daughters

vulnerability. Sadness and fear arelow-power

emotions, whereas anger and pride arehigh-

poweremotions.

There is evidence that cultural fac-

tors can override gender roles in terms of

emotional expression. In a study of college

students from 37 countries spanning five

continents, sex differences in emotional ex-

pression were larger in countries with less

traditional gender roles (Fischer & Manstead,

2000). Fischer and Manstead argue that less

traditional countries, such as the United

States, have an individualistic orientation;

the emphasis is on individual expression of

feelings. In an individualistic country, indi-

vidual differences in terms of gender roles

may appear. In collectivist countries such as

China or India, which are often more tradi-

tional, behavior, including the expression of

emotion, is determined more by the envi-

ronment: the norms of the culture and the

other people in the situation. Thus women

and men behave more similarly in terms of

emotional expression in collectivist cultures.

FIGURE 5.6 Score on the embedded figures test. Feminine women performed better than masculine

women when the test was presented as a measure of empathy, whereas masculine women performed

better than feminine women when the test was presented as a measure of spatial ability. Gender role and

test instructions did not affect men’s scores.

Source: Adapted from Massa, Mayer, and Bohon (2005).

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Empathy Spatial

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FeminineMasculine FeminineMasculine

Empathy Spatial

FeminineMasculine FeminineMasculine

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