Most adults are open to the idea of exposing young girls and boys to toys and activities that are typically associated with the opposite gender. Women are more likely than men to say parents should encourage their children to engage in activities that are typically associated with the opposite gender, but the difference is more pronounced when it comes to views about raising boys.
Americans offer different assessments of how boys and girls are being raised these days when it comes to specific traits and behaviors. There is a party split on this issue as well. All references to party affiliation include those who lean toward that party: Republicans include those who identify as Republicans and independents who say they lean toward the Republican Party, and Democrats include those who identify as Democrats and independents who say they lean toward the Democratic Party.
References to Millennials include adults who are ages 18 to 36 in Generation Xers include those who are ages 37 to 52, Baby Boomers include those who are 53 to 71 and members of the Silent Generation include those ages 72 to References to whites and blacks include only those who are non-Hispanic and identify as only one race. Hispanics are of any race. In times of uncertainty, good decisions demand good data. Please support our research with a financial contribution. It organizes the public into nine distinct groups, based on an analysis of their attitudes and values.
Even in a polarized era, the survey reveals deep divisions in both partisan coalitions. Although ratings of independence were in line with the overall agency result, female raters rated themselves higher in instrumental competence than female raters rated women in general.
Most striking, however, were the differences in ratings on the leadership competence and assertiveness dimensions. Figure 5. Ratings of agency dimensions instrumental competence, leadership competence, assertiveness, independence by female raters rating self and women in general.
LSD comparisons see Table 8 , means and standard deviations are displayed in Tables 4 , 6 of overall communality indicated that male raters rated themselves as more communal than male raters rated men in general. LSD comparisons of the three communality dimension scales were consistent with the finding for overall communality. Male raters rated themselves significantly higher than male raters rated men in general in concern for others, sociability and emotional sensitivity see Figure 6.
Figure 6. Ratings of communality dimensions concern for others, emotional sensitivity, sociability by male raters rating self and men in general. LSD comparisons see Table 8 , means and standard deviations are displayed in Tables 4 , 6 of the overall communality ratings indicated that there was no difference in how female raters rated themselves and how female raters rated women in general.
LSD comparisons for sociability and emotional sensitivity were consistent with this finding. However, female raters rated themselves higher in concern for others than they rated women in general see Figure 7. Figure 7. Ratings of communality dimensions concern for others, emotional sensitivity, sociability by female raters rating self and women in general.
It was the objective of this research to investigate gender stereotyping of others and self. To do so, we aimed to take into account multiple dimensions of the agency and communality constructs. It was our contention that perceptions on some of these dimensions of agency and communality would differ from one another, and that there would be a benefit in viewing them separately.
Our results support this idea. While there were overall findings for agency and communality, analyses of individual aspects of them were not always consistent with these findings.
What often appeared to be a general effect when using the overall measures of agency and communality in fact proved to be more textured and differentiated when the multidimensional framework was used.
These results support the idea that distinguishing between different agency and communality facets can offer a deeper, more nuanced understanding of gender stereotypes today. Indeed, some important information appears to get lost by only focusing on the overall constructs.
Our results clearly indicate that gender stereotypes persist. They also indicate that stereotypes about agency were more prevalent for male than for female raters. Specifically, male raters described women in general as lower in most aspects of agency than men in general, and also rated women in general lower on each of the agency dimensions than female raters did. Nonetheless, female raters were not stereotype-free with respect to agency: they described women in general as less assertive than men in general and rated men in general as more leadership competent than male raters did.
These findings were masked by the overall measure of agency, which indicated no differences in agency ratings. Stereotypes about communality also were strongly indicated by our data, but their strength did not tend to differ greatly between male and female raters.
All participants rated women higher than men on the three communality dimensions. Despite the overall agency measure indicating no difference in self-ratings of agency, the analyses incorporating dimensions of agency painted a different picture.
Whereas there was no difference in the self-characterizations of men and women in instrumental competence or independence, women rated themselves lower than men in leadership competence and assertiveness. There also were differences in communality self-ratings.
Male raters rated themselves as higher in independence and instrumental competence, but no different in assertiveness or leadership competence than they rated men in general. Female raters rated themselves higher in instrumental competence but lower in assertiveness and leadership competence than they rated women in general. These findings are at odds with the results of the overall agency ratings, which imply that male raters consistently rated themselves higher in agency, and that female raters consistently rated themselves no differently than they rated their gender group.
While female raters only rated themselves higher than they rated women in general in concern for others, male raters rated themselves as higher than they rated men in general on all three dimensions of communality. What does our analysis of current stereotypes tell us? On the one hand, our results indicate that despite dramatic societal changes many aspects of traditional gender stereotypes endure. Both male and female respondents viewed men in general as being more assertive than women in general, and also viewed women in general as more concerned about others, sociable and emotionally sensitive than men in general.
On the other hand, our results indicate important departures from traditional views. This can be seen in the findings that unlike male respondents, female respondents indicated no gender deficit in how independent or how competent in leadership they perceived other women to be. Self-descriptions also tended to conform to traditional gender stereotypes, with men describing themselves as more assertive and more competent in leadership than women did, and women describing themselves as more concerned about others and more emotional than men did.
However, there were aspects of agency and communality for which self-characterizations of men and women did not differ. Together with the findings about characterizations of men and women in general, these results attest not only to the possible changing face of stereotypes, but also highlight the importance of considering specific dimensions of both agency and communality in stereotype assessment.
It should be noted that our results suggest a greater differentiation between the multidimensional results for agency characterizations than for communality characterizations. That is, the multidmenstional results more often aligned with the results of the overall measure when the focus of measurement was communality than when it was agency. It is not clear at this point whether this is because of the particular items included in our scales or because communality is a more coherent construct.
But, based on our results, it would appear that the use of a multidimensional framework is of particular value when the measurement of agency is the focus — something that should be noted by those involved in studying stereotype assessment and change. The lack of similarity in the pattern of results for the two competence dimensions instrumental competence and leadership competence is interesting.
It thus appears that there is an aspect of competence on which women are rated as highly as men — the wherewithal to get the work done. However, caution is urged in interpreting this finding.
The attributes comprising the instrumental competence scale can be seen as indicative of conscientiousness and willingness to work hard, attributes often associated with women as well as men.
Thus there is a question about whether instrumental competence is really a component of the agency construct, a question also prompted by its pattern of correlations with the other dependent measure scales see also Carrier et al. The leadership competence ratings paint a different picture.
Whatever the interpretation, however, the different pattern of results found for these two scales indicates that we as researchers have to be very precise in designating what we are measuring and how we are measuring it. It also indicates that we have to keep close to the construct we actually have measured when drawing conclusions from our data. Our results show that women do not entirely embrace the stereotypic view of women as less agentic than men.
They did not make distinctions between men and women in general when rating their independence and instrumental competence, nor were their self-ratings on the independence and instrumental competence scales lower than the self-ratings made by men.
These findings are noteworthy: one of the key aspects of agency is independence, and it appears that women do not see themselves or other women to be lacking it more than men. Women also did not make distinctions between men and women in general when rating their leadership competence, another key component of agency.
These findings suggest that, for modern day women, some important aspects of the agency stereotype no longer apply. However, our results suggest that women have not moved as far along as one would hope in separating themselves from gender stereotypic constraints. In particular, their self-perceptions of assertiveness and leadership competence — dimensions of agency associated with social power — do not seem to deviate from traditional gender conceptions.
Our findings indicate that women not only characterized themselves as less assertive and less competent in leadership than men characterized themselves, but they also described themselves significantly more negatively on these two scales than they described women in general. This means that women rated themselves as more deficient in several central aspects of agency than they rated women as a group, adhering more strongly to traditional gender stereotypes when describing themselves than when describing others.
These results seem inconsistent with attribution theory Jones and Nisbett, and construal level theory Trope and Liberman, , and challenge the idea that because people differentiate more when viewing themselves as compared to others they are less apt to use stereotypes in self-description.
They also raise questions about differences in aspects of agency that do and do not involve power relations. These findings are in need of further exploration. Our results indicate that men continue to accept the stereotyped conception of men lacking communal qualities.
They, along with women, rated men in general lower than women in general on all three communality dimensions. It therefore is particularly interesting that in their self-ratings on one dimension of communality — sociability — they did not differ from women. This finding suggests that men conceive of sociability differently when they characterize themselves than when they charcterize others. Other research suggests that whereas women are more social than men in close relationships, men are more social than women in group contexts Baumeister and Sommer, ; Gabriel and Gardner, Thus, men might have rated themselves as equally sociable as women rated themselves, but for a different reason: because they conceptualized sociability with regard to their groups rather than close relationships.
If so, then clarification is needed about why this potentially different conception of sociability takes hold for men only when they characterize themselves. This finding suggests that although they strongly adhere to traditional stereotypes in their characterizations of men as a group, there is a tendency for men to be less stereotype-bound when they characterize themselves. This result contrasts with that found for women, for whom traditional gender stereotypes often appeared to exert more influence in self-characterizations than in characterizations of others, even when the result was self-deprecating rather than self-enhancing.
Why there are differences in discrepancies in self-ratings versus other-ratings of women and men raises interesting questions for future research — questions about whether these differential effects are due to the gender of the rater or to the nature of the particular descriptors involved. Our results indicate that breaking down agency and communality into dimensions was often of benefit when assessing stereotyped perceptions.
Though many of our scales were highly correlated, the confirmatory factor analyses provided support that they were distinct facets.
Our choice to analyze the scales separately despite high correlations is in line with other researchers, who argue that doing so can enhance results interpretation Luthar, ; Tabachnik and Fidell, However, we do not claim that the dimensions we derived are the only way to differentiate among the elements of communality and agency, nor do we claim that our scales are the best way to measure them. Indeed, we chose a top—down procedure, using expert judges to derive our scales.
This had the advantage that the judges knew about gender research and could effectively represent the literature on gender stereotypes. Nevertheless, if non-experts had done the initial sorting, they may have come to different conclusions about the number or content of items in the different scales or may have generated different scales altogether, ones that perhaps would have been more representative of everyday categories that are consensual in our culture.
Furthermore, our scale construction may have been constrained because our initial pool of items relied exclusively on existing items from past scales, which, although broadly selected, may have been limited by particular ways of thinking about stereotypes.
Recent findings by Abele et al. We, however, did not include many items that measured morality in our original list of attributes. Whereas we scoured the gender stereotyping literature focused on social perception to compile the most frequently used items for our initial item pool, Abele and colleagues went through a similar process, but with literature focused primarily on self-perception.
Items focusing on the morality component of communality should no doubt be incorporated in future research. In addition, there might also be additional items relating to other facets of agency, such as a cognitive agency facet e.
Moreover, and more generally, a process by which the attributes comprising the scales are generated in a free-form manner and the categorization tasks are performed by a broad-ranging set of judges would serve as a check on our measures and provide guidance about how to modify and improve them.
There are other methodological limitations that are suggestive of follow-up research. Moreover, although we were able to tap into a wide-ranging population, it is important to replicate our study with a more representative U.
In addition, our study was restricted to a sample of U. Such cross-cultural replications would help not only to assess generalizability to other cultures, but also to assess the extent to which the nature and degree of change in social roles influences the way people currently conceive of men and women, and men and women conceive of themselves.
Finally, it would be useful to conduct research using our measure to describe more differentiated targets to determine whether our results would be similar or different when intersectionality is taken into account and when particular subtypes of women and men are the focus.
Our findings stimulate several questions for future research. Not only would it be useful to further investigate the competence component of agency, clarifying what it does and does not entail, but also to consider another aspect of competence that has recently been identified as being strongly male gender-typed — intellectual brilliance Leslie et al. Finally, it is important that in future research attempts are made to demonstrate the usefulness of distinguishing among the dimensions of agency and communality we have identified, and to do so for both self and other characterizations.
While for some research questions an overall agency and overall communality measure will likely be sufficient, there no doubt are instances in which finer distinctions will be beneficial. It is possible, for example, that different dimensions of gender stereotypes are more strongly associated with selection decisions, performance evaluations, or reward distributions.
Indeed, other researchers have already begun to demonstrate the value of considering distinct facets of agency in assessing gender differences in leader evaluations, but with a less differentiated set of dimensions including only self-reliance and dominance Schaumberg and Flynn, It also is possible that different dimensions of self-stereotypes are more strongly associated with career aspirations and choices, or support for gender-related organizational policies.
Demonstrating that different dimensions of agency and communality predict different outcomes would add support to our multidimensional framework. In addition to increasing our understanding, such discoveries could provide valuable information about leverage points for intervention to ease the negative consequences of gender stereotyping and the bias they promote.
In this study we have demonstrated the value of subdividing the agency and communality construct in the study of gender stereotypes, and shown that making global statements about agency and communality runs the risk of distorting rather than clarifying our understanding.
Our goal with this paper was to further the conversation in the field about different aspects of both agency and communality and their potentially different effects on self and other characterizations.
An underlying theme is that we may be losing information by generalizing to two super constructs and not attending to their components. Our findings demonstrate the complexity of the agency and communality constructs and the potential benefits of thinking about them with greater specificity. This can have consequences not only for understanding stereotypes and gender bias, but also for intervention and change efforts.
What are the implications of our findings for understanding the persistence of gender inequality? Although the results signal easing in some dimensions of traditional gender stereotypes, they make clear that in many ways they persist.
But women are not exempt from the influence of gender stereotypes; even though they view women as equal to men in several key agentic qualities, they see themselves as more deficient than men do in both leadership competence and assertiveness, and more deficient in these agency dimensions than women in general.
Evidently we still have a way to go before all the components of traditional gender stereotypes fully dissipate and recede, allowing men and women to be judged, and to judge themselves, on the basis of their merits, not their gender. All authors listed have made a substantial, direct and intellectual contribution to the work, and approved it for publication.
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. AAUW The simple truth about the gender pay gap Spring Abele, A. The dynamics of masculine-agentic and feminine-communal traits: findings from a prospective study. Communal and agentic content in social cognition: a dual perspective model. Fundamental dimensions of social judgment.
Facets of the fundamental content dimensions: agency with competence and assertiveness—communion with warmth and morality. Allen, B. Gender stereotypes are not accurate: a replication of Martin using diagnostic vs. Sex Roles 32, — Bakan, D.
Google Scholar. Baumeister, R. What do men want? Gender differences and two spheres of belongingness: comment on Cross and Madson CrossRef Full Text. Bem, S. When children do not conform to the appropriate gender role for their culture, they may face negative sanctions such as being criticized, bullied, marginalized or rejected by their peers. Boys, especially, are subject to intense ridicule for gender nonconformity Coltrane and Adams, ; Kimmel, By the time we are adults, our gender roles are a stable part of our personalities, and we usually hold many gender stereotypes.
Men tend to outnumber women in professions such as law enforcement, the military, and politics. Women tend to outnumber men in care-related occupations such as child care, health care, and social work. Adherence to these occupational gender roles demonstrates fulfillment of social expectations but may not necessarily reflect personal preference Diamond, Gender stereotypes are not unique to American culture. For example, do men tolerate more pain because they believe that is what they should do as a man?
Krizan says some behavioral differences may be learned through social roles. Although men may be said to come from Mars and women from Venus, these findings remind us that we all come from Earth after all, he added. Zlatan Krizan, Psychology, , zkrizan iastate. Angie Hunt, News Service, , amhunt iastate.
Gender is a large part of our identity that is often defined by our psychological differences as men and women. This was true regardless of whether we looked at cognitive domains, such as intelligence; social personality domains, such as personality traits; or at well-being, such as satisfaction with life. Gender roles: Men and women are not so different after all Posted Jan 29, am An Iowa State professor says we tend to focus on the extremes when looking at differences between genders, but men and women are really quite similar.
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