The Psychology of Gender 4th Edition

Sex Differences in Health: Evidence and Explanations 353

perceive the task as more of a challenge—in a

sense, a higher difficulty level. These people

feel less capable and expend more effort. In a

test of this hypothesis, college students partic-

ipated in a memory task in which good per-

formance would allow them to avoid a noise

stressor. The experimenter told half of the

participants that men have greater ability on

the task and typically outperform women and

the other half that women have greater ability

and typically outperform men. The difficulty

of the task was also manipulated. The inves-

tigators’ predictions were confirmed. When

the task was low in difficulty, women showed

greater reactivity than men to the masculine

task, and men showed greater reactivity than

women to the feminine task. When the task

was high in difficulty, women showed greater

reactivity than men to the feminine task, and

men showed greater reactivity than women

to the masculine task. Thus sex differences in

reactivity not only depend on the relevance of

the task to gender roles but also on the dif-

ficulty of the task. The difficulty of a gender-

role congruent task may determine whether

the person feels comfortable and competent

or threatened by the possibility of failure.

Matthews, 1996). Participants who scored

high on masculinity or femininity were ran-

domly assigned to either persuade or empa-

thize with their partners. Masculine people

were more reactive when they had to empa-

thize with rather than persuade their part-

ners, whereas feminine people were more

reactive when they had to persuade rather

than empathize with their partners.

How do we make sense of these contra-

dictory findings? Are women and men more

reactive to gender-congruent or gender-

incongruent tasks? One resolution to this

issue involves determining whether the task

is perceived as a challenge or a threat, which

may influence whether the tasks are low or

high in difficulty. Wright and colleagues

(1997) predicted that people would evidence

greater reactivity to a gender-congruent task

only when difficulty was high. In that case,

the thought of not performing well on a task

consistent with one’s gender role might be

perceived as a threat. When the task is easy,

people whose gender role is congruent with

the task expect to perform well and are not

threatened by the task. People whose gender

role is incongruent with the task are likely to

FIGURE 10.1 (a) Men show elevated cortisol reactivity to an achievement stressor compared to

women; (b) Women show elevated cortisol reactivity to an interpersonal stressor compared to men.

Source: Adapted from Stroud et al. (2002).

Cortisol

Achievement Stressor

Baseline

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

Stressor Recovery

Interpersonal Stressor

(a)

Males

Females Cortisol

Baseline

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

Stressor Recovery

(b)

Males

Females

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