Gender differences in awareness of courtship initiation tactics

In this study, two phases of the initiation of courtship behavior are distinguished, namely the first move of making the contact, and the self-presentation after the contact has been established. Gender differences with respect to cognitions and expectations of courtship behavior were analyzed through self-report in a Dutch Caucasian student population. Our goal was to assess male and female roles in these two phases, and to relate the findings to hypothesized gender role changes. It appeared that both men and women were apparently unaware of which gender usually initiates courtship. Furthermore, both genders reported eye contact as the most frequently used initiation tactic. However, the genders differed in other tactics, women reporting the use of indirect nonverbal tactics more often than men, and men reporting their engagement in direct verbal ones more often than women. In presenting themselves, men stressed personal characteristics that are traditionally interpreted as female-valued (such as tenderness) more than women did, whereas women stressed characteristics that are traditionally interpreted as male-valued (such as being prestigiously occupied) more than men did. This apparent change in gender role pattern is discussed against the background of the assumed function of courtship behavior and societal developments.     

Gender differences in the experience of body awareness: An experiential sampling study

Employing experiential sampling methodology, the body awareness of 40 males and 40 females were monitored during a two-day period. When females were attentive to their bodies the feelings they experienced were more negative than were those of males, and this awareness was more likely to be directed toward specific body parts or functions rather than to the body as a whole. Males and females did not differ in their degree of body awareness or in the importance of this awareness, but males' degree of body awareness was positively related to body esteem, while females' body experience was positively related to beliefs about the importance of physical criteria in judging their attractiveness. In contrast to females, the more positively males evaluated their body dimensions, the more important they believed those dimensions were in determining their attractiveness. Results are discussed in terms of the greater social pressures exerted on women to meet attractiveness standards.The authors would like to thank Mary Anne Siderits for her comments on an earlier draft of this article.     

Success in higher education: differences between first- and continuous-generation students

Social Psychology of Education - The aim of the study was to investigate the differences between the academic success and the factors contributing to the success of first- and continuous-generation...     

Gender differences in reasons for entering and leaving education administration: discriminant function analyses

Using discriminant function analyses on survey data collected from 457 students in 29 education administration programs across the United States, the authors inquired into whether men and women decide to enter and possibly leave education administration for different reasons. There were statistically significant functions separating men and women in their reasons for entering and leaving education administration. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

Gender differences in the development of depression

The present study attempted to examine possible gender differences in the vulnerability to depression, specifically with regard to eliciting factors, marital status, age of onset, season of hospitalization, and type of treatment. The records of all patients (67 women and 34 men), treated during 1991 for major depression, dysthymia, or depression NOS at a psychiatric hospital in Southeastern Sweden were examined, and placed in empirically derived categories regarding eliciting factors.
The results indicated significant gender differences with regard to eliciting factors, marital status, and age. The eliciting factor in female depression was most commonly "threat to social bonds" whereas in male depression it was "threat to self esteem" or "threat to self respect". Married women were more prone to depression than were married men, as were men living alone compared to women living alone. Women above 60 years of age were significantly more prone to depression than were men of this age group. The results were discussed from two theoretical perspectives: gender role theory and gender-specific developmental theory.     

Gender and conjugal differences in happiness

The author examined conjugal congruence on 4 role experiences--spousal, parental, filial, worker--and on subjective well-being (SWB). According to purposive sampling strategy, 222 community adults (111 married couples) in Taiwan completed a research questionnaire. Conjugal congruence on role experiences was linked to conjugal congruence on SWB as well as personal well-being. Analyses showed that conjugal congruence on role experiences (except the worker role) and SWB was generally high. However, some conjugal discrepancies persisted: The husbands were more committed to the worker role, whereas the wives were more committed to the parental role. Furthermore, conjugal discrepancies in role experiences were related to conjugal discrepancies in SWB as well as to husbands' happiness.     

Gender and culture differences in emotion

In this article, the authors report a secondary analysis on a cross-cultural dataset on gender differences in 6 emotions, collected in 37 countries all over the world. The aim was to test the universality of the gender-specific pattern found in studies with Western respondents, namely that men report more powerful emotions (e.g., anger), whereas women report more powerless emotions (e.g., sadness, fear). The authors expected the strength of these gender differences to depend on women's status and roles in their respective countries, as operationalized by the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM; United Nations Development Programme Human Development Report 2002). Overall, the gender-specific pattern of women reporting to experience and express more powerless emotions and men more powerful emotions was replicated, and only some interactions with the GEM were found.     

Gender differences in moral reasoning

This research tests Gilligan's hypothesis that men are more likely to consider moral dilemmas chiefly in terms of justice and individual rights, whereas women are more likely to be chiefly concerned with questions of care and relationships with others. In addition, we have investigated the effects of dilemma content upon orientation of moral judgment. Protocols from interviews with 50 college students, half women and half men, to three moral dilemmas were coded according to moral orientation. Results indicated that both moral orientations were widely used by both men and women, but that women were more likely to employ prodominantly care considerations. In a test of mean differences in proportion of justice responses, content of the specific moral dilemma showed a strong influence upon moral reasoning. Results suggest that both gender and situational factors need to be considered in our understanding of moral reasoning.     

Gender differences in cognitive development

The potential effect of gender on intellectual abilities remains controversial. The purpose of this research was to analyze gender differences in cognitive test performance among children from continuous age groups. For this purpose, the normative data from 7 domains of the newly developed neuropsychological test battery, the Evaluación Neuropsicológica Infantil [Child Neuropsychological Assessment] (Matute, Rosselli, Ardila, & Ostrosky-Solis, 2007), were analyzed. The sample included 788 monolingual children (350 boys, 438 girls) ages 5 to 16 years from Mexico and Colombia. Gender differences were observed in oral language (language expression and language comprehension), spatial abilities (recognition of pictures seen from different angles), and visual (Object Integration Test) and tactile perceptual tasks, with boys outperforming girls in most cases, except for the tactile tasks. Gender accounted for only a very small percentage of the variance (1%-3%). Gender x Age interactions were observed for the tactile tasks only. It was concluded that gender differences during cognitive development are minimal, appear in only a small number of tests, and account for only a low percentage of the score variance.     

Gender differences in phonetic processing

In research on dyslexia, inadequate or inappropriate comparisons have often been made with control subjects, frequently overlooking important gender differences. More information is needed regarding the performance of control subjects, and adults, on measures purportedly assessing phonological and orthographic processing. Using tests similar to those used in dyslexic research, 20 female and 20 male college-age students were tested to examine gender differences in phonetic processing skills. The findings suggest that in equally competent readers, gender and other factors do play a significant role in determining the time it takes for phoneme manipulation and word identification. Females, especially those with poorer academic records, are significantly slower than males on measures typically used in dyslexic research. These findings show a need for a reexamination of control group equivalence (especially regarding gender), and further exploration of variables that might influence performance on these tasks.     

Gender differences in moral development

Sixty-nine Midwestern middle-class children and adolescents were tested on justice and care orientations when reasoning abstract and interpersonal moral dilemmas. Nona Lyons' (“Two Perspectives on Self, Relationships and Morality,” Harvard Educational Review, 1983, 53, 125–145) scoring method was used to score subjects' responses. A 2(sex)×2(age) analysis of variance run on the total justice and care scores, as well as each individual dilemma, supported Carol Gilligan's (In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982) theory that two distinct ways of thinking about moral problems exist — justice and care — and are differentially related to gender. Girls emphasized the morality of care significantly more than justice. Contrary to Gilligan (1982) and Lyons (1983), however, boys in both age groups emphasized the morality of justice and care equally. Data from the interpersonal dilemmas using Lyons's (1983) coding scheme are consistent with J. Piaget (The Moral Judgement of the Child, New York: Free Press, 1966) and Lawrence Kohlberg [“The Cognitive-Developmental Approach,” in D. A. Goslin (Ed.), Handbook of Socialization Theory and Research, Chicago: Rand McNally, 1969]: older subjects became more justice oriented and younger subjects emphasized the morality of care. Sex differences on Kohlberg's stage theory were not significant and the protagonist's gender in the Heinz dilemma had no effect on moral reasoning.     

Gender differences in geographical knowledge

In five experiments involving more than 1800 undergraduate students, males more accurately located places on maps of the United States or its various regions than did females. These gender differences could not be attributed to education, travel history, desire to travel, or in the amount of incidental exposure to several potential sources of geographic information in everyday life. Males performed more accurately than females on measures of egocentric and allocentric spatial orientation, but performance on these tasks was only weakly predictive of accuracy on tests of geographical knowledge. Since males and females learned the locations of places on an unfamiliar map at similar rates, regardless of whether such learning occurred under intentional or incidental instructions, gender differences in geographical knowledge cannot be attributed to differences in capacity to learn place locations on maps. An attentional hypothesis is proposed to account for the more accurate performance of males on tests of geographical knowledge.     

Gender differences in tobacco use

Gender differences in overall tobacco use clearly exist. In general, men are more likely to use tobacco products than are women. However, this simple generalization, ignoring type of tobacco products, time, and culture, masks many more interesting gender differences in tobacco use. There are pronounced gender differences in tobacco use of specific tobacco products within some cultures but not others. Yet these differences have changed across time, including narrowing and widening of this gender gap, depending on culture and tobacco product. This article addresses these issues and presents possible psychosocial, biological, and psychobiological explanations for these phenomena. In addition, the implications of these differences and ways to learn more about these important differences are discussed.     

Gender differences in friendship patterns

The same-sex and opposite-sex friendship patterns of men and women students from two first-year psychology classes at the University of Waikato in New Zealand were examined. A friendship questionnaire previously used in the United States of America was administered to compare results of the two cultures. Findings from this study support American research suggesting that women are more intimate and emotional in their same-sex friendships than men, and tend to place a higher value on these friendships than men do. In accordance with findings of the American sample, New Zealand women emphasized talking, emotional sharing, and discussing personal problems with their same-sex friends, and men showed an emphasis on sharing activities and doing things with their men friends. Differences between the American and New Zealand samples were shown for men in the number of friends and the intimacy levels of these friendships. New Zealand men preferred numerous but less intimate same-sex friends, while women (as in the United States) showed a preference for a few, close, intimate same-sex friends. Men, in contrast to women, derived emotional support and therapeutic value more from their opposite-sex relationships than their same-sex friendships. Finally, more men than women stated they would not cancel an engagement with an opposite-sex friend in order to go out with a same-sex friend. Results are interpreted as suggesting a need for changes in the current socialization process of males who are taught to repress their emotions and form rather less intimate and possibly less beneficial same-sex friendships than women.     

Gender differences in cross-generation networks

In later life, cross-generational networks are primarily among kin; friends are considered to be of the same cohort. Kin networks are likely to have an integrity of their own, independent of any of their members. Members are likely to share basic values or to avoid issues that might cause conflict or estrangement. Sex differences are profound. Mother-daughter bonds are both strongest throughout life and most complex, serving to link household units into modified extended family networks. Major life events like marriage of a daughter, birth of a child, or illness of a parent alternatively loosen or strengthen these bonds. Critical conceptual/methodological problems abound, such as definitions of the basic constructs like “closeness,” and “affect.”     

Gender differences in episodic memory

The relationship between gender and memory has been largely neglected by research, despite occasional studies reporting gender differences in episodic memory performance. The present study examined potential gender differences in episodic memory, semantic memory, primary memory, and priming. Five hundred thirty women and 470 men, randomly sampled from the city of Umeå, Sweden, 35–80 years of age, participated in the study. There were no differences between men and women with regard to age or education, or on a measure of global intellectual functioning. As has been demonstrated previously, men outperformed women on a visuospatial task and women outperformed men on tests of verbal fluency. In addition, the results demonstrated that women consistently performed at a higher level than did men on the episodic memory tasks, although there were no differences between men and women on the tasks assessing semantic memory, primary memory, or priming. The women’s higher level of performance on the episodic memory tasks could not be fully explained by their higher verbal ability.     

Gender differences in implicit prejudice

In three experiments (n=131), we examined gender differences in implicit (and explicit) racial prejudice employing priming of immigrant and Swedish facial photographs without attention or without awareness. Implicit prejudice was defined as the degree of negativity expressed toward a person described in a subsequent ambiguous story in an impression formation task. We found, contrary to our hypothesis, that women displayed systematically higher implicit prejudice than men in all three experiments, although men scored higher on explicit prejudice than women. The results are discussed against the background of related prejudice research, the dissociation of implicit and explicit prejudice, and gender differences in cognitive functioning, especially in the processing of pictorial stimuli.     

Gender differences in phonetic processing

In research on dyslexia, inadequate or inappropriate comparisons have often been made with control subjects, frequently overlooking important gender differences. More information is needed regarding the performance of control subjects, and adults, on measures purportedly assessing phonological and orthographic processing. Using tests similar to those used in dyslexic research, 20 female and 20 male college-age students were tested to examine gender differences in phonetic processing skills. The findings suggest that in equally competent readers, gender and other factors do play a significant role in determining the time it takes for phoneme manipulation and word identification. Females, especially those with poorer academic records, are significantly slower than males on measures typically used in dyslexic research. These findings show a need for a reexamination of control group equivalence (especially regarding gender), and further exploration of variables that might influence performance on these tasks.     

Gender differences in the family-relatedness of relocation decisions

Using a dyadic study design, the present study draws on research into the family-relatedness of work decisions to examine the impact of the spouse's characteristics on an employee's willingness to engage in job-related relocation. With a sample of 1234 employees, the results show that spousal willingness to relocate mediates (a) the negative effect of the spouse's community ties and (b) the positive effect of the spouse's job alternatives on an employee's willingness to relocate. The indirect effect of the spouse's job alternatives was stronger among female than among male employees. To validate employees' perceptions, this study uses matched data from a subsample of 207 employees and their spouses to test a multi-source model, which revealed several notable inconsistencies. Our exploration of discrepancies between employee and spousal ratings helps explain these differences between single-source and multi-source models. Overall, findings suggest that employees consider various spousal factors in their career decision-making, and the family-relatedness of relocation decisions is particularly strong among female employees.