The Psychology of Gender 4th Edition

196 Chapter 6

components of self-esteem (see Helgeson,

1994c, for a review). Communion is often re-

lated to the social aspects of self-esteem, such

as feeling comfortable and competent in social

situations. Communion is correlated with self-

esteem in domains reflecting honesty, religion,

and parental relationships, whereas agency is

correlated with self-esteem in domains reflect-

ing physical abilities and problem solving, as

well as general self-esteem.

TAKE HOME POINTS

■ There is a small sex difference in self-esteem, in the

direction of males having a more favorable view of

themselves than females.

■ Age is an important moderator of sex differences in

self-esteem; the difference appears largest among

adolescents.

■ One dimension of self-esteem particularly relevant to

adolescent females is body image. Adolescent girls are

more unhappy with their body than adolescent boys,

which may partly account for adolescent girls’ lower

levels of overall self-esteem.

■ Gender-related traits, such as agency and communion,

seem to show stronger relations to self-esteem than

sex per se.

Stereotype Threat

Regardless of women’s self-esteem or self-

confidence, they are well aware of the ste-

reotype that women have less aptitude in

traditionally masculine domains, such as

math and science, compared to men. The

theory ofstereotype threatsuggests that

the salience of these kinds of stereotypes

may have a negative impact on women’s

performance. Activating the stereotype

increases the pressure on women during

with the quality of their other-sex relation-

ships but not the quality of their same-sex

relationships (Thomas & Daubman, 2001).

Boys’ self-esteem was unrelated to other-sex

or same-sex relationship quality.

There are multiple dimensions of self-

esteem. A meta-analytic review of the dif-

ferent domains of self-esteem showed that

females score higher than males on behav-

ioral conduct (i.e., how acceptable your

behavior is;d=-.17) and moral-ethical self-

esteem (i.e., satisfaction with morality, ethics;

d=-.38), and males score higher than females

on appearance (d= .35) and athletic self-

esteem (d= .41; Gentile et al., 2009). Despite

the fact that girls do better than boys in school

and are more socially skilled, there are no sex

differences in academic or social self-esteem.

Interestingly, the sex difference in

body satisfaction persists in adulthood, and

is apparent among Whites, Asians, and

Hispanics (Algars et al., 2009; Frederick et al.,

2007). Even among adults over the age of 60,

women are less satisfied with their bodies

compared to men (Homan & Boyatzis, 2009)

and age-related declines in body satisfaction

are stronger among women than men (Algars

et al., 2009). Women are more anxious than

men about the effects of age on their appear-

ance. Women’s greater investment in their

appearance has been supported by brain im-

aging. A neural imaging study showed that

women show greater brain activation than

men when asked to compare their bodies to

pictures shown of same-sex bodies in bathing

suits (Owens, Allen, & Spangler, 2010).

The relation of gender role to self-esteem

is stronger than the relation of sex to self-

esteem. Masculinity or agency, as measured

with the PAQ or BSRI, is strongly positively

related to self-esteem. Femininity or com-

munion, by contrast, is not related to one’s

overall self-regard but may be related to

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