The Social Costs and Benefits of Anger as a Function of Gender and Relationship Context

On the basis of Social Role Theory and a social functional view of emotions, we argue that gender differences in anger experiences and expression are related to men??s and women??s relationship context. We hypothesized that women in traditional relationship contexts would express their anger less directly, and would suppress their anger more, due to expected negative social appraisals. We compared anger reactions to a conflict situation in a traditional and egalitarian relationship context. Eighty-two Dutch adult participants (43 women and 39 men) were recruited partly by students in a psychology class, and partly by a snowball method. They were invited to participate only if they had a steady relationship of minimally one year. The results show that women report more intense subjective anger in both contexts, but that the expression of anger differed with relationship context. In traditional relationships women tend to suppress their anger more than men, while men report to express their anger directly more than women. This difference in anger expression was mediated by negative social appraisals. In egalitarian relationships, this difference was not found.     

Emotion regulation during social remembering: differences between emotions elicited during an event and emotions elicited when talking about it

This paper examines emotion regulation as a function of autobiographical remembering in social contexts. Two studies (n = 38 and 123, respectively) are presented that provide evidence that autobiographical remembering in social settings can result in changes in the emotions associated with an experience. However, the results also suggest that whether changes occur depends on features of the recall context, including the gender of participants, and the responses of their listeners. Across both studies, men showed greater emotional benefits from talking about events than women. Moreover, greater listener agreement was associated with greater benefits for emotion. The results are discussed in terms of functions of autobiographical remembering, gender, social support, and emotion regulation.     

Gender and Context Differences in Alcohol Expectancies

Abstract

In 2 studies, the authors investigated gender and context effects of alcohol expectancies among U.S. college students. In Study 1, they examined the responses of 771 women and 493 men to the Sexual Enhancement (SE) subscale and the Relaxation and Tension Reduction (TR) subscale of the Alcohol Expectancy Questionnaire (S. A. Brown, B. A. Christiansen, & M. S. Goldman, 1987). They found no gender differences when they controlled for drinking quantity. When they controlled for drinking frequency, the men scored significantly higher on the TR subscale than the women did. In Study 2, also among U.S. college students, 41 women and 21 men first imagined that they were on blind dates or in long-term relationships and then completed the SE and TR subscales. On the SE subscale, the women scored higher in the relationship context than in the blind-date context, whereas the men did not vary between contexts. All the participants also reported more tension-reduction expectancies in the relationship context than in the blind-date context.     

THE GENDER STEREOTYPING OF EMOTIONS

Three studies documented the gender stereotypes of emotions and the relationship between gender stereotypes and the interpretation of emotionally expressive behavior. Participants believed women experienced and expressed the majority of the 19 emotions studied (e.g., sadness, fear, sympathy) more often than men. Exceptions included anger and pride, which were thought to be experienced and expressed more often by men. In Study 2, participants interpreted photographs of adults'ambiguous anger/sadness facial expressions in a stereotype-consistent manner, such that women were rated as sadder and less angry than men. Even unambiguous anger poses by women were rated as a mixture of anger and sadness. Study 3 revealed that when expectant parents interpreted an infant's ambiguous anger/sadness expression presented on videotape only high-stereotyped men interpreted the expression in a stereotype-consistent manner. Discussion focuses on the role of gender stereotypes in adults'interpretations of emotional expressions and the implications for social relations and the socialization of emotion.     

Gender and context differences in alcohol expectancies

In 2 studies, the authors investigated gender and context effects of alcohol expectancies among U.S. college students. In Study 1, they examined the responses of 771 women and 493 men to the Sexual Enhancement (SE) subscale and the Relaxation and Tension Reduction (TR) subscale of the Alcohol Expectancy Questionnaire (S. A. Brown, B. A. Christiansen, & M. S. Goldman, 1987). They found no gender differences when they controlled for drinking quantity. When they controlled for drinking frequency, the men scored significantly higher on the TR subscale than the women did. In Study 2, also among U.S. college students, 41 women and 21 men first imagined that they were on blind dates or in long-term relationships and then completed the SE and TR subscales. On the SE subscale, the women scored higher in the relationship context than in the blind-date context, whereas the men did not vary between contexts. All the participants also reported more tension-reduction expectancies in the relationship context than in the blind-date context.     

Dynamic Stereotypes of Power: Perceived Change and Stability in Gender Hierarchies

Despite widespread change in gender roles, women continue to have less power than men. From the perspective of social role theory, this gender difference in power should be perceived as eroding as women gain access to male-dominated roles typically associated with power. Study 1's open-ended reports nearly unanimously projected an increase in women's power over the next 50 years, whereas responses were equally split between projecting stability or a decrease in men's power. Study 2's quantitative findings illustrated that participants perceived women as gaining in political, economic, occupational, individual, and relational power from the past into the future. In contrast, men were perceived as decreasing in relational power but maintaining levels of other forms of power over time. Despite the projections of increases in women's power, women were not projected to reach parity with men by 2050. We examine the implications of these beliefs for future social change.     

All else being equal: Are men always higher in social dominance orientation than women?

The belief in the gender invariance of many traits is a view that dominates much of psychology. In social psychology, this position is clearly represented by social dominance theory and the construct of social dominance orientation (SDO) where it is argued that, all else being equal, men will be higher in SDO than women. In other domains, though, these assumptions are being questioned, and researchers are arguing for a gender similarities hypothesis. The argument is that men and women are more similar than different, and where there are effects for gender, these are small. In this investigation, men and women are compared under similar cultural (Study 1), ideological, (Study 2) and status (Study 3) contexts to examine whether, all else being equal, men really are higher in SDO than women. In an additional study (Study 4), a meta‐analysis is conducted aggregating the effect sizes of the previous studies. Results demonstrated either no effect for gender or an interaction between gender and the relevant social context and only a small effect size of gender—findings that disconfirm the ceteris paribus assumption of social dominance theory. In conclusion, the implications of the findings for understanding gender effects in social psychology are discussed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Pink for Girls,Red for Boys,and Blue for Both Genders: Colour Preferences in Children and Adults

Colours carry social connotations like pink for girls and blue for boys. In a cross-sectional study, we investigated whether such early gender coding might be reflected in absolute colour preferences in children and adults of both genders. In two studies, participants selected their favourite (and least favourite, Study 2) colour from an unrestricted sample of colours. We tested 129 Swiss children (Study 1, 10–14 years-old, 68 boys) and 180 Swiss adults (Study 2, 17–48 years-old, 88 men). In children, we observed that girls chose pink/purple as their favourite hue more often than boys did, the most common favourite hue in girls and boys was blue, and boys chose red as their favourite more often than girls did. In adults, we observed that both genders almost never choose pink as their favourite, blue was a common favourite colour, and women were more likely to favour red than were men. In an additional study (n?=?183 Swiss participants, 47 men), we tested whether liking of pink, blue, and red was related to emotion associations with these colours. Pink was associated with positive emotions to the same extent as blue and red. Women further associated more positive emotions with pink than did men. We conclude that some commonalities (blue) and gender differences (pink and red) exist in absolute colour preferences. These differences, however, cannot be fully accounted by emotional associations. We speculate about these gendered colour preferences in relation to gender stereotypes and status differences between men and women.

     

Gender-related biases in evaluations of sex discrimination allegations: is perceived threat the key?

Hypotheses derived from defensive attribution theory and social identity theory were tested in 3 laboratory experiments examining the effects of plaintiff and observer gender on perceived threat, plaintiff identification, and sex discrimination. In Study 1, women differentiated plaintiffs on the basis of gender, whereas men did not. Study 2 showed that this bias occurred because employment discrimination was personally threatening to women but not to men. In Study 3, the bias was reversed in a child custody context. As predicted, men found this context to be significantly more threatening than did women and subsequently exhibited a similarity bias. Mediation analyses suggested that responsibility attributions explained most of the variance in discrimination judgments associated with the plaintiff gender by observer gender interactions.     

The Best Is Yet to Come? Attitudes Toward Gender Roles Among Adolescents in 36 Countries

In the present article, we look at attitudes toward gender roles among young women and men in 36 countries with different levels of societal gender inequality. By applying multilevel models to data from the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study 2009, the study contributes to our understanding of gender inequality by showing that (a) both young women and young men (in 8th grade; M_age = 14.39 years) display more gender-egalitarian attitudes in countries with higher levels of societal gender equality; (b) young women in all countries have more egalitarian attitudes toward gender roles than young men do, but (c) the gender gap in attitudes is more evident in more egalitarian contexts; and (d) a higher level of maternal education is associated with more gender-egalitarian attitudes among young women. In contrast, no statistically significant association emerges between maternal employment and young men’s attitudes. Overall, the findings suggest that adolescents in different contexts are influenced by the dominant societal discourse on gender inequality, which they interiorize and display through their own attitudes toward gender roles. However, the findings also indicate that young women are more responsive to external cues than young men are. This result, coupled with the fact that young men in egalitarian contexts have not adopted gender-egalitarian attitudes to the same extent as young women, is concerning because it suggests a slowdown in the achievement of societal gender equality that is still far from being reached.     

Gender bias in caregiving professions: The role of perceived warmth

One hypothesized reason for why a disproportionately low number of men enter caregiving fields is how such men are perceived. In two studies, drawing upon the Stereotype Content Model and the lack‐of‐fit model, we tested whether men would encounter more social (e.g., likeability bias) and economic (e.g., hiring or job opportunity bias) penalties than women in caregiving professions due to perceptions that men are less warm than women. In all three studies, we created job or employment materials in which the gender of the candidate or employee was manipulated. In Study 1, a female preschool teacher received higher warmth ratings than a male preschool teacher, which in turn predicted preference for the female teacher over the male teacher. In Study 2, a female social worker was rated more highly in warmth and job hireability than a male social worker; warmth also mediated the relationships between gender and both likeability and job hireability. In Study 3, a male preschool teacher was rated lower in warmth, likeability, job hireability, and job suitability than both a female preschool teacher and a preschool teacher with an unspecified gender. There were no differences between perceived competence of men and women in caregiving positions when competence was assessed. Implications for the factors that predict adverse reactions to and penalties against men in caregiving occupations, as well as interventions to combat the potential negative effects of such penalties on men's interest in caregiving careers, are discussed.     

Crying as social behavior

Twenty mother-infant pairs were observed once a week for 7-hour periods when the infants were 2, 3, 4, and 5 weeks old. The occurrence of crying and its relationship to patterning of maternal behaviors was studied in two social contexts: while the mother was holding the infant and while she was not holding the infant. There were significant individual differences in the amount of crying in each of these contexts. The amount of crying in the two contexts was not correlated. Six variables describing forms of maternal attention throughout the 7-hour day were selected, and profiles were formed from measures of these variables. These profiles were found to vary systematically as a function of the amount of crying while the mother was holding the infant. In this context, only physical stimulation increased linearly with increased crying, whereas other forms of attention showed a U-shaped function in relation to increased crying. No relationship was found between crying while the mother was not holding the baby and patterns of interaction. We conclude that the structuring of a mother-infant relationship is reflected in the amount of crying that occurs while mother and infant are in close physical contact. The results also provide evidence that the social context for an infant's crying must be taken into account if the full adaptive value of crying is to be understood.     

Sex Differences in the Presentation of Chronic Low Back Pain

Sex differences in 351 patients with chronic low back pain were examined. Biological, psychological, and psychosocial factors were considered. Sex differences in adaptive functioning were consistent with traditional gender roles. Significant interactions were found for sex and employment status, and sex and marital status. Retired women reported more pain and less activity than retired men. Retired men reported the least pain of any group. Outdoor work and social activities show opposite within–group patterns for men and women when stratified by employment status. Marriage was associated with more household work for women and less for men. The financial and social contexts of employment status and marriage are different for men and women. Results suggest the treatment of women with chronic low back pain requires attention to work in the home and the financial and social context of work outside the home.     

Young children's understanding of pretend crying: The effect of context

Reasoning about another's pretend and real crying is related to ma'ny important social cognitive abilities (e.g., emotional understanding, appearance–reality, and theory of mind). This study investigated whether children aged 6 years and younger could distinguish between instances of pretend crying and real crying as presented in stories. Sixty‐five Japanese children aged 4–6 years were given stories within two contexts (Play and Non‐play). In the Play context, the protagonist of the story was pretending to cry or really crying during a pretend play activity. In the Non‐play context, the protagonist was also pretending to cry or really crying after his/her toy had been hidden by another child. The children answered questions about these crying events. The results showed that the 4‐ and 5‐year‐olds showed significantly better understanding of pretend crying in the Play context compared to the Non‐play context. In the Non‐play context, they were significantly less likely to understand the cause of pretend crying compared to the 6‐year‐olds. The results suggest that the context of pretend play facilitates the children's understanding of pretend crying.     

Creativity in Men and Women: Threat,Other-Interest,and Self-Assessment

Previous research into gender and creativity has provided little evidence for consistent differences between men and women in creative performance. This research revisits this topic by proposing a person × situation approach, arguing that gender differences in creative performance only occur in certain contexts, but not others. Based on the assumption that men and women tend to differ in self versus other orientation, experimental instructions varied whether our participants’ (n = 169) creative efforts benefit the self or others, and whether creativity occurred under conditions of threat or not. In the absence of threat, women outperformed men in the originality of their creative efforts when the task was beneficial to others. This effect was eliminated in the presence of competitive threat. In contrast to some previous work, threat also increased creative performance under some circumstances. Results also revealed gender differences in self-assessment of creativity such that women seemed to be somewhat more attuned to the objective level of the originality of their creative performance than men. The discussion focuses on implications for research on gender differences in creativity, arguing that researchers must appreciate that gender differences in creativity, so far as they exist, are likely embedded in specific situational contexts.     

A Status Account of Gender Stereotypes: Beyond Communality and Agency

Women's lower status relative to men can account for people's differential attribution to women and men, of the constructs of the Extended Personal Attributes Questionnaire (EPAQ; Spence, Helmreich, & Holahan, 1979). Ratings in all three studies were made on the EPAQ scales. In Study 1a, participants rated their perceptions of the stereotypes of women and of men. In Study 1b, participants reported their own perceptions of women and men. In Study 2, participants were presented a minimal status manipulation (Conway, Pizzamiglio, & Mount, 1996) for which status is unconfounded with gender; participants then reported their perceptions of low- and high-status individuals. The men in Studies 1a and 1b were perceived as were high-status individuals in Study 2. Except for (i.e., verbal passive-aggression nagging, whining), women in Studies 1a and 1b were perceived as were low-status individuals in Study 2. Results are discussed in terms of status accounts of gender stereotypes and gender differences in social behavior.     

Personality,gender, and crying

This study examined gender differences in crying as well as associations between basic personality traits and self‐reported indices of crying. Forty‐eight men and 56 women completed the Five‐Factor Personality Inventory and the Adult Crying Inventory. Substantial gender differences were demonstrated in crying frequency and crying proneness, but not with respect to mood changes after crying. As predicted, women reported a higher frequency of crying and more proneness to cry both for negative and positive reasons. For women, all these crying indices were negatively associated with Emotional Stability. For men, only a significant negative relationship between Emotional Stability and crying for negative reasons emerged. No clear links were found between personality and mood changes after crying. Multiple regression analysis revealed a significant predictive role of gender for crying proneness, even when controlling for personality differences, but not for crying frequency. Adding personality by gender interaction terms resulted in a disappearance of the main effect of sex, while significant interactions with personality factors showed up for crying frequency and general crying proneness. It is suggested that future research on the relationship between personality and crying should focus more on the underlying mechanisms of observed relationships. Furthermore, it is recommended that future research should examine the role of different emotion regulation strategies. In addition, biological factors, temperament, upbringing measures, and socio‐demographic variables should be taken into account. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Employee voice at work: the role of employees’ gender,self-efficacy beliefs,and leadership

ABSTRACT

Building on social role theory, we investigated the association between gender and employee voice (employees’ speaking up in a challenging but constructive way about work-related issues) in a typically male-dominated sector. In two field studies in the logistics context, we tested how and when gender is related to employee voice. In Study 1 (N = 132), we examined whether the gender-voice association is mediated by general self-efficacy beliefs. In Study 2 (N = 99), we replicated the indirect effect of gender on employee voice via general self-efficacy beliefs and investigated whether this indirect effect is contingent on supportive leadership. Using path analytical procedures, we found a significant indirect effect moderated by supportive leadership: At low and medium levels of supportive leadership, women reported less self-efficacy than men, which in turn resulted in less voice. At high levels of supportive leadership, the indirect effect was nonsignificant. Our studies contribute to research on the mechanisms and boundary conditions of gender’s influence in the employee voice process and have practical implications for leaders in male-dominated working contexts who want to encourage their female employees to speak up about work-related issues.     

Gender differences in perceptions of emotionality: The case of close heterosexual relationships

Previous research suggests some support for the stereotype that women are the more emotional gender, but very little research has examined whether women are more emotional than men in the context of close relationships. We examined gender differences in reports of emotions experienced and expressed in close heterosexual relationships. A sample of 197 couples (at different stages of relationship involvement), most of whom were white and from middle-class backgrounds, responded to a list of 25 positive and negative emotions three times. Participants indicated how often they experienced the emotions, how often they expressed the emotions, and how often they believed their partner experienced the emotions (all in the past month). Women reported experiencing several emotions to a greater frequency than men, regardless of degree of relationship involvement. Further, women reported being more emotionally expressive than men in dating and more advanced (e.g., engaged) relationships, but not in marital relationships. Finally, women believed that they were generally more emotional than men, whereas men believed that women were more emotional in the experience of negative but not positive emotions. The results were generally consistent with the stereotype that females are the more emotional gender.