A Confirmatory Factor Analytic Investigation of the TAS–20: Corroboration of a Five-Factor Model and Suggestions for Improvement

Two studies conducted around 1950 provided aggregate data on college students' attribution of characteristics to men or women (sex-role stereotype). Seeman (1950) provided data for three attributes clearly sex-role identified. Fernberger (1948) used a “story” with 16 blank spaces for response of “men” or “women” to assess sex-role stereotypes. Replications of these studies were conducted in undergraduate psychology classes during the 1970–71 school year to assess changes in sex-role stereotypes and in personal preferences. Results for stereotypes indicated either no change for the Seeman data or even more polarized stereotypes for the Fernberger data. No evidence for role convergence was found for stereotypes. Ss personal preferences were markedly discrepant from their stereotypic responses, as the literature would predict.     

Priming Sex-Role Stereotypic Event Schemas With Rock Music Videos: Effects on Impression Favorability,Trait Inferences,and Recall of a Subsequent Male-Female Interaction

Two experiments examined the effects of priming on appraisal and recall of a subsequent social interaction. Popular rock music videos depicting sex-role stereotypic themes were used to prime sex-role stereotypic schemas. Two commonly available sex-role stereotypic event schemas ("boy-meets-girl" and "boy-dumps-girl") were identified in rock music videos. Subjects were exposed to one of these two types of videos (or neutral videos) before watching an interaction between a man and a woman that had been constructed to be schematically consistent or inconsistent with either the boy-meets-girl or the boy-dumps-girl schema. In Experiment 1, consistent with predictions from contemporary schematic processing theories, greater and more accurate recall of the actors' behaviors was found when the interaction was schema-inconsistent with the priming videos than when it was schema-consistent. In addition, after either stereotypic priming videos, both actors were liked more when their behavior was schema-consistent than when it was schema-inconsistent. Trait judgments in Experiment 2 showed that more positive traits were also ascribed to both actors when behaviors occurring during the interaction had been made schema-consistent rather than schema-inconsistent by the priming videos. The findings argue that, by serving as priming stimuli, rock music videos can produce strong, predictable, and nonconscious cognitive effects on viewers.     

Sex-related effects on clinicians' attributions of parental responsibility for child psychopathology

An attempt was made to reproduce and extend previously reported data suggesting the operation of sex-related bias in clinicians' attributions of parental involvement in children's psychopathologies. More and less sex-role traditional male and female family-oriented practitioners were shown contrived profiles in which a boy or girl was described as masculine or feminine role-deficient, and apportioned maternal versus paternal blame, treatment focus, adjunctive therapy need, and likelihood of sabotage. As in the previous study, mothers were implicated slightly more than fathers and also were viewed as requiring relatively greater therapeutic attention by female than by male clinicians. However, several earlier findings were not replicated. Overall, the results offer only marginal support for the notion of sex-related practitioner bias.     

Sex differences in proxemic behavior and personal space schemata in young children

Spatial preferences with feltboard figures, observed interpersonal distance, and sex-role identification were examined in 80 preschool children. On the feltboard measure, 4- to 5-year-olds chose generally greater interpersonal distance than younger children. Sex of stimulus figure also influenced older children's distance choices. When same-sex pair play was videotaped, older boys spent significantly more time at far distances and less time at close distances than younger boys. A positive correlation between sex-role identification, measured by the Rabban toy choice task, and feltboard figure distance was obtained for older boys only. Findings supported the notion that sex-related interpersonal spatial norms may be learned during the preschool years, particularly by boys.This study is based on a doctoral dissertation written by the author and submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Ph.D. degree at Michigan State University, 1974.     

Sex-role orientation and psychological well-being: Two meta-analyses

Research on the relationship between sex-role orientation and psychological well-being has been guided by one of three models. The traditional congruence model holds that psychological well-being will be fostered only when one's sex-role orientation is congruent with one's gender; the androgyny model proposes that well-being will be maximized when one's sex-role orientation incorporates a high degree of both masculinity and femininity regardless of one's gender; the masculinity model posits that well-being is a function of the extent to which one has a masculine sex-role orientation. The adequacy of these three models was tested by means of a meta-analysis of 32 studies of the relationship between sex-role orientation and depression and general adjustment. The results of the meta-analysis provided the best support for the masculinity model, with masculinity having a moderately strong relationship to both high adjustment and lack of depression and with femininity having only a small relationship to adjustment and no relationship to depression. No support was found for the congruence model.The author would like to express his appreciation to Sanford Golin and Paul Sweeney for their helpful comments on early drafts of this article.     

Television viewing and the learning of sex-role stereotypes

This study was designed to determine the relationship between the amount of time children spend watching television and their knowledge of adult sex-role stereotypes. Males and females in grades 1, 3, 5, and 7 who were classified as heavy television viewers (25 or more hours per week) or light viewers (10 or less hours per week) both at the time of the study and 15 months previously were administered the Sex Stereotype Measure, an instrument designed to determine children's awareness of stereotyped sex-role perceptions held by adults. Heavy viewers were found to have more stereotyped perceptions than light viewers. A significant interaction effect indicated that among low viewers the perception of male stereotypes steadily declines with increasing age; among heavy viewers, stereotypic responses to male items are maintained with increasing age. No comparable interaction effect was obtained for perception of female stereotypes. The role of interaction with live models in breaking down stereotypic perceptions of males is discussed.A modified version of this paper was presented at the meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Denver, April 1975.     

Beliefs about male and female competence held by kindergartners and second graders

The study investigated the beliefs of kindergarten and second-grade children of both sexes about the competence of boys versus girls. The children appeared to have clearly defined beliefs about who would use certain objects, and their beliefs coincide with stereotypic sex-role behaviors in society at large. There was no support for the development of a more generalized expectation of competence in males. There was no significant sex difference in response; there was, however, a grade difference. Second graders' views of competence were more closely aligned with sex-appropriateness ratings than were the kindergartners.This article is based upon the author's doctoral dissertation, presented to the School of Education of Syracuse University. The author would like to express her thanks to the chairperson of her committee, Margaret Lay, and to the committee members, Berj Harootunian and Patricia Crook.     

Prevalence and situational causes of stereotyped behaviors in blind infants and preschoolers

Parents of 85 blind children aged from 10 months to the 6th year of life were asked regarding the frequency, duration and typical situations of the occurrence of various stereotypic behavors in their children. The Bielefeld Parents' Questionnaire for Blind and Sighted Infants and Preschoolers was used as the instrument of measurement. All of the children displayed at least one stereotypic behavior; most displayed several stereotypic behaviors according to the parents' reports. Eye poking and body rocking dominated within the prevalence hierarchy. Four typical situations could be identified in which stereotypic behaviors were shown: monotony, arousal, demand, and during feeding or eating. The results suggested that repetitive hand and finger movements, stereotypic manipulation of objects, and making a face(s) mainly occur within arousal situations whereas eye poking, whimpering, and sucking thumbs or fingers especially are linked to monotony.This research was carried out within a research program on early intervention and family care for blind infants and preschoolers. This program is part of the Special Research Unit on Prevention and Intervention in Childhood and Adolescence (Sonderforschungsbereich No. 227) at the University of Bielefeld funded by the German Research Association (DFG). The authors would like to thank Gail Weingart and Jonathan Harrow (University of Bielefeld) for translating this paper from German.     

Sex-role stereotypes: Self-reports of behavior

The present study represents a self-reported behavioral approach to the study of sex differences and sex-role stereotypes. One hundred forty-eight undergraduate women and men responded anonymously in group testing sessions to two questionnaires. The first questionnaire asked them to report their own involvement in 45 masculine and feminine sex-typed behaviors; the second questionnaire asked for their perceptions of the involvement of men and women in the same behaviors. Major findings included (a) sex differences in reported ability, enjoyment, performance, and opportunity which mirrored traditional sex-role stereotypes and indicated greater competence at stereotypic behaviors (the majority of differences significant at p<.001); (b) perceptions of men and women's behavior also consistent with sex-role stereotypes; and (c) sex differences in the perceived appropriateness of behaviors (p<.05) which indicate greater sex-typing in men's (as compared with women's) perceptions of both sexes. The study focuses on the self-reported behavioral bases of gender-specific stereotypes and how these behaviors are influenced by aspects of the social environment (such as reinforcement contingencies) and by aspects of the the person (such as simple learning and performance deficits), and suggests ways in which sex differences might be changed to provide increased behavioral options for women and men.Portions of this research were supported by National Institute of Mental Health Grant #5 RO1 MH06613-4. The authors wish to express their gratitude to Drs. David Sanuders, Socrates Rapagna, William Hodges, and Gene Glass for their design, data analytic, and editorial assistance.     

Assortative matching for sex-role and marriage adjustment

Eighty-two middle-class married couples were administered the Bem Sex-role Inventory, a newly derived Behavioral Inventory measuring sex-role by task performance and the Spanier Dyadic Adjustment Scale. It was hypothesized that individuals are assortatively matched by sex-role in marriage, that all-androgynous couples have greater marriage adjustment (MA) than stereotypic couples who are, in turn, higher than ‘other’ couples (undifferentiated or cross-type), and that there is an interaction effect with certain combinations more deleterious to MA than others. All hypotheses were supported and evidence presented that matching occured by selection rather than as a result of living together. In addition, subsequent analysis indicated that men's sex-roles are more associated with MA than women's sex-roles.     

SELF-ESTEEM AND SEX-ROLE ATTITUDES

Two groups of 15-year-old girls, one Italian-Australian (IA, n = 60), and one Anglo-Australian (AA, n = 48), were compared on self-esteem and a wide range of measures associated with sex roles, including sex-role satisfaction, sex-role orientation, and assessment of and attitudes toward sex-role differentiation in the family and the culture. Self-esteem and sex-role satisfaction did not differ in the two groups. Nor were there differences in attitudes toward sex-role differentiation, even though cultural and familial differentiation were greater in the IA group and males were accorded relatively more value. However, the groups did differ in the pattern of variables associated with self-esteem and with these sex-role measures. In the more traditional IA subculture, girls' sex-role attitudes correlated with situational constraints. Unlike the AA girls, self-esteem was, in part, associated with stereotypic feminine attributes and preoccupations, and conformed to the androgyny model of well-being. In the AA group, sex-role attitudes and self-esteem were associated with perceptions of personal qualities valued in the broader, more egalitarian culture, such as intellectual ability and masculinity, thus confirming the masculinity model.     

Sex-role identity and “being-inrelation”: The implications for women counsellors

In order to assess whether women are predisposed to make better counsellors than men, a group of 53 women and men were tested for differences in sex-role identity, and relational/autonomous qualities as defined in the the theory of the Stone Center, Massachusetts. There was no significant difference between men and women in terms of sex-role identity. Individuals lacking any clear sex-role identity showed significantly lower levels of relational/autonomous qualities. While the research did not demonstrate that women are predisposed to make better counsellors than men it indicated the following possible trends: changing sex-role identity in both men and women; the prevalence of sex-role identity biological sex as a determinant of psychological characteristics; the importance of sex-role acquisition for psychological well-being.     

On the self-fulfilling nature of apparent sex differences in behavior

A study was conducted to test the notion that a person's behavior conforms explicitly to the sex-role stereotype that attractive others have regarding the person's gender. In a 2 × 2 design, female subjects were induced to characterize themselves to a male partner who was either desirable or undesirable and whose stereotype of the ideal woman conformed very closely to the traditional female stereotype or its opposite. The results, which held for both an attitudinal and a behavioral measure of self-presentation, indicated that, when the partner was desirable, the subjects portrayed themselves as more or less conventional in terms of sex-role, depending upon whether the partner's stereotypic view of women was traditional or not. The implications of these findings for an analysis which stresses the self-fulfilling nature of apparent sex differences were discussed.     

Multifactor measurement of bodily feelings: Conceptual development,scale construction,and empirical validation

A series of studies is described demonstrating a coherent exploratory and confirmatory factor-analytic approach to the scaling of self-reported bodily feelings. This approach attempts to optimize the orthogonality, parsimony, and meaningfulness of a multifactor inventory. Psychometric properties of the resulting 35-item Bodily Feeling Scale (BFS) are presented and its comparability with other inventories is discussed. A validity study using item-content-based scales of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory showed both concurrent and discriminative validity of the BFS. Implications for clinical and research utility are discussed.Portions of this research were conducted while the first author was supported by a University Graduate Fellowship awarded by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Vanderbilt University.Professor Nunnally passed away in August 1982. His major contributions to the several stages of this research program are recognized through coauthorship.     

Sex-role stereotypes: Issues of attitudinal changes

Systematic study of current sex-role beliefs has been aided by the development of the Sex Role Stereotype Questionnaire. This inquiry explored the assumption that the sex-role stereotypes of school counselors, tested seven years after the development of the questionnaire, would differ substantially from the norming samples. The data analysis revealed that the majority (three-quarters) of the behavioral characteristics viewed as stereotypic by the original samples were not seen by male and female school counselors or by either the male or female counselor independently as differentiating men and women.     

Voluntarily childless women: Traditional or nontraditional?

The sex-role patterns of voluntarily childless women are reported from the results of an in-depth interview study that compared 30 childless, 29 delay (subjects who are currently childless, but plan to have children in the future), and 24 parent (subjects with their first child under the age of 2) wives and husbands, chosen on a purposive basis. Sex role is conceptualized as a complex variable composed of behavior, attitudes, and self-image, and as the interface between psychological and situational phenomena. The hypothesis tested is that the childless women are less traditional in sex-role orientation than either the delays or parents, indicating that psychological factors are more important than situational factors in distinguishing the groups. The data confirm the hypothesis. Exceptions to the findings are viewed in terms of sex-role changes.The research reported in this study was supported by a grant from the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations Program in Social Science, Law, and Population Policy, 1972–1973. The author wishes to thank Mary Brown Parlee and Florence Denmark for their comments on an earlier draft.     

Sex-role identity and separation-individuation pathology

The Mahlerian theory of childhood psychological development suggests that the same sex parenting of girls in the mother-child dyad predisposes women to experience specific difficulties in the separation-individuation (S-I) process (Mahler, Pine & Bergman, 1975). Pathological states in adulthood have been attributed to these S-I disturbances (Pine 1979; Kernberg 1980). However, this theory has never been empirically tested. In this study 53 subjects were assessed for adult manifestation of disturbance in the separation-individuation process using a self-report questionnaire (Separation-Individuation Inventory: Christenson & Wilson, 1985), In contrast to previous theoretical work, women showed significantly lower levels of disturbance in the separation-individuation process than did men. Assessment of sex-role identity (Bem Sex Role Inventory: Bem, 1981) showed no significant difference between overall sex-role identity of the male and female subjects. Individuals lacking any clear sex-role identity showed significantly higher levels of disturbance in the separation-individuation process than those with feminine, masculine or androgynous identity. These findings demonstrate the importance of considering sex-role identity as well as biological sex when describing some psychological characteristics and also demonstrate the importance of any sex-role acquisition, whether male or female, for psychological well-being.     

Cultural sex-role expectations and children's sex-role concepts

Middle-class children between the ages of 4 and 8 were interviewed about their sex-role attitudes, in order to determine the extent to which recently changing cultural mores have influenced children's sex-role concepts. The children were asked about their career goals; the careers they would choose if they were the opposite sex; the reasons why they like being a boy or girl; and their opinions regarding the appropriateness of men and women participating in 14 sex-stereotypic occupations and activities. The children's parents provided demographic information. The children expressed very nonstereotypic attitudes towards the 14 occupations and activities, compared to children in recent studies; but they chose very traditional careers for their own choices and opposite-sex career choices, and often gave stereotypic reasons for preferring their own sex. Parents' education, mothers' employment status, fathers' nontraditional careers, and the children's gender predict responses to several of the sex-role-related questions. Implications for research are discussed.     

THE INFLUENCE OF SEX-ROLE IDENTITY AND OCCUPATIONAL ATTAINMENT ON THE PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-BEING OF ASIAN AMERICAN WOMEN

This study examined the extent to which sex-role identity as defined by Bem's typology is related to occupational attainment, self–esteem, and work satisfaction for 161 employed Asian American women. Three major hypotheses were tested: (a) Masculine and androgynous Asian American women have a higher level of occupational attainment than those with feminine and undifferentiated sex-role identity; (b) androgynous Asian American women have a higher level of self-esteem and a greater degree of work satisfaction than those with other types of sex-role identity; and (c) the higher the level of occupational attainment secured by Asian American women, the greater their work satisfaction and the higher their self-esteem. As predicted, sex-role identity was significantly related to occupational attainment. Androgynous Asian American women and those with a high level of occupational attainment had a higher level of self-esteem and a greater degree of work satisfaction than those with other types of sex-role identity. The implications of these findings for Bem's formulation of androgyny, its relation to occupational achievement, and its consequences for psychological health and work outcomes are discussed.