Personality and gender differences in global perspective

Men's and women's personalities appear to differ in several respects. Social role theories of development assume gender differences result primarily from perceived gender roles, gender socialization and sociostructural power differentials. As a consequence, social role theorists expect gender differences in personality to be smaller in cultures with more gender egalitarianism. Several large cross‐cultural studies have generated sufficient data for evaluating these global personality predictions. Empirically, evidence suggests gender differences in most aspects of personality—Big Five traits, Dark Triad traits, self‐esteem, subjective well‐being, depression and values—are conspicuously larger in cultures with more egalitarian gender roles, gender socialization and sociopolitical gender equity. Similar patterns are evident when examining objectively measured attributes such as tested cognitive abilities and physical traits such as height and blood pressure. Social role theory appears inadequate for explaining some of the observed cultural variations in men's and women's personalities. Evolutionary theories regarding ecologically‐evoked gender differences are described that may prove more useful in explaining global variation in human personality.     

The model of children's social adjustment under the gender‐roles absence in single‐parent families

This study aimed to evaluate the effects of the gender‐role types and child‐rearing gender‐role attitude of the single‐parents, as well as their children's gender role traits and family socio‐economic status, on social adjustment. We recruited 458 pairs of single parents and their children aged 8–18 by purposive sampling. The research tools included the Family Socio‐economic Status Questionnaire, Sex Role Scales, Parental Child‐rearing Gender‐role Attitude Scale and Social Adjustment Scale. The results indicated: (a) single mothers' and their daughters' feminine traits were both higher than their masculine traits, and sons' masculine traits were higher than their feminine traits; the majority gender‐role type of single parents and their children was androgyny; significant differences were found between children's gender‐role types depending on different raiser, the proportion of girls' masculine traits raised by single fathers was significantly higher than those who were raised by single mothers; (b) family socio‐economic status and single parents' gender‐role types positively influenced parental child‐rearing gender‐role attitude, which in turn, influenced the children's gender traits, and further affected children's social adjustment.     

On the interpersonal regulation of emotions: Emotional reliance across gender,relationships, and cultures

Three studies examine people's willingness to rely on others for emotional support. We propose that emotional reliance (ER) is typically beneficial to well‐being. However, due to differing socialization and norms, ER is also expected to differ across gender and cultures. Further, following a self‐determination theory perspective, we hypothesize that ER is facilitated by social partners who support one's psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Results from the studies supported the view that ER is generally associated with greater well‐being and that it varies significantly across different relationships, cultural groups, and gender. Within‐person variations in ER were systematically related to levels of need satisfaction within specific relationships, over and above between‐person differences. The discussion focuses on the adaptive value and dynamics of ER.     

The influence of gender and ethnicity on children's peer collaborations

Gender and ethnicity are important aspects of children's everyday social relationships, yet little is known about how these social categories influence children's collaborative interactions. In the present study, 322 White (Caucasian) and South Asian boys and girls (mean age, 7.5 years) collaborated in pairs on easy and difficult versions of a model completion task. As expected, girls were less assertive than boys in conversation, yet this relation held only for all‐Asian pairs (i.e., an Asian boy and girl in conversation). Also consistent with expectations, levels of conversational affiliation were lowest in cross‐ethnic interaction. The influence of gender and ethnicity on conversations did not vary in light of contrasting cognitive demands of the tasks. Results are discussed in relation to work on effective peer collaboration and the potential role of contact in promoting positive ethnic and gender group attitudes.     

Ibsen's Nora and the Confucian Critique of the “Unencumbered Self”

Criticisms of the liberal‐individualist idea of the “unencumbered self” are not just a staple of communitarian thought. Some modern Confucian thinkers are now seeking to develop an ethically particular understanding of social roles in the family that is sensitive to gender‐justice issues, and that provides an alternative to liberal‐individualist conceptions of the “unencumbered self” in relation to family roles. The character of Nora in Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House seemingly exemplifies such conceptions of the unencumbered self in her rejection of her housewife role for a more authentic selfhood. Drawing upon the capabilities approach to justice, and positive early Japanese bluestockings’ responses to Ibsen's play, I argue that Nora's character is better understood as exemplifying an ethically compelling disencumbered self in potentially cross‐cultural circumstances: a self criticizing and rejecting social roles that are found to be unjust according to universal, as opposed to particularist, “Confucian” ethical standards.     

Children's Explanations as a Window Into Their Intuitive Theories of the Social World

Social categorization is an early emerging and robust component of social cognition, yet the role that social categories play in children's understanding of the social world has remained unclear. The present studies examined children's (N = 52 four‐ and five‐year olds) explanations of social behavior to provide a window into their intuitive theories of how social categories constrain human action. Children systematically referenced category memberships and social relationships as causal‐explanatory factors for specific types of social interactions: harm among members of different categories more than harm among members of the same category. In contrast, they systematically referred to agents' mental states to explain the reverse patterns of behaviors: harm among members of the same category more than harm among members of different categories. These data suggest that children view social category memberships as playing a causal‐explanatory role in constraining social interactions.     

A Seven‐Year Follow‐Up Study on Parents' Expectations of Their Children's Further Education

This study examined the role of parents' perceptions of their children's competencies and their educational optimism in forming expectations of their children's further education. A group of parents (N = 352) were asked to estimate the probability of their children's entering gymnasium or vocational school and to assess the child's competencies in the course of primary school years. Parents had crystallized anticipations of their children's further education as early as preschool, and the differences bound to parents' education and child's gender were well established in their expectations. By the end of the 7^th school year, the relationships between the expectations and the competence assessments strengthened and became more uniform among parents, although there were also group‐specific profiles.     

The Mystery Revealed—Intersectionality in the Black Box: An Analysis of Female Migrants' Employment Opportunities in Urban China

Female migrant workers are doubly disadvantaged in China's urban labor market because of their doubly marginalized identities as both women and rural residents. This article takes a process‐centered approach to explore how female migrants' two identity categories generate intersectional effects on their job‐search experiences in cities. Data from in‐depth interviews conducted in Xi'an city, China, in 2010 and 2011 reveal that three patterns of relationship explain the processes where the gender–hukou (residence status) intersection affects female migrants. In the first pattern, a splintering relationship, hukou and gender work singly to form employment discrimination against female migrants. The second, a contesting relationship, indicates that hukou and gender alternate as the primary identities that affect their employment opportunities. In the third, a collaborating relationship, hukou and gender work together to either positively or negatively shape female migrants' employment prospects. No matter which of the relationships plays out, female migrants' disadvantages as cheap urban laborers have become deeply entrenched in the urban labor market. This can be explained by two powerful social institutions in contemporary China, the hukou system and patriarchy.     

Contextualizing the Psychosocial Well‐being of Military Members and Their Partners: The Importance of Community and Relationship Provisions

Evidence of the impact of communities has been documented for a variety of individual and relational outcomes, including mental and physical health as well as the quality of romantic and parent–child relationships. The military represents a rather unique work context; in that, it is generally considered a lifestyle with a distinct culture and community. Yet, military families are also members of their broader, comprehensive community. Drawing from the social organizational theory of action and change (SOC) (Mancini & Bowen, 2013), and relationship provisions theory (Weiss, 1969) and utilizing a sample of 266 active duty military families, this study examined connectedness with the military community and the broader, comprehensive community. A dyadic model was evaluated whereby each partner's perspective of their comprehensive and military community was hypothesized to influence their own psychosocial well‐being as well as their partner's psychosocial well‐being. The role of relationship provisions (that is, having relationship needs met) as a mechanism linking community connections to psychosocial well‐being was also examined. Overall, the findings supported the hypothesized model, particularly for intra‐individual effects and military members. Findings emphasize the importance of considering what is gained from connections within a community rather than a focus solely on the connections themselves.     

A teacher‐centered exploration of the relevance of social factors to theory of mind development

Many accounts of children's Theory of Mind (ToM) development favor a cognitive explanation, for example, in terms of mental representational improvements at or before 4 years. Here, we investigated whether social factors as rated by a child's teacher, are related to ToM development. We tested 82 children of 3–6 years on each of four ToM tasks, and their class teacher completed a social questionnaire about each child's playing behavior, sharing, talkativeness, confidence, aggressiveness and outgoingness. A measure of task memory and the child's gender were also recorded. Here, children generally passed ToM tasks after 5 years‐old, but no one gender performed reliably better than the other. Teacher‐rated confidence and playing behavior were correlated to ToM. But in a regression analysis, these were replaced by teacher‐rated talkativeness; with age and memory given primacy in both sets of analyses. It is concluded that maturation and cognitive factors may well have primacy but social factors, facilitated during early primary education, must also be given a role in ToM development.     

Doing gender differently—The interplay of strength of gender identification and content of gender identity in predicting women's endorsement of sexist beliefs

To explain differences in women's endorsement of sexist beliefs, we introduce the gender identity model (GIM). Based on social identity theory (SIT) and social role theory (SRT), we combine strength of gender identification and identity content and propose that different types of gender identity can be distinguished, which are predicted to relate to different levels of women's endorsement of sexist beliefs and engagement in collective action. Results of a correlational study and two experiments support the assumptions of the model: women reject Benevolent (BS), Hostile (HS), and Modern Sexisms (MS) and participate in collective action in particular when they are highly identified with the category women and have, at the same time, internalized progressive identity contents. In contrast, gender role preference has weaker or no effects on sexist beliefs and collective action when women are low identified with their gender in‐group. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Daughters of the Enlightenment: Reconstructing Adorno on Gender and Feminist Praxis

This article offers a reconstruction of Theodor Adorno's work as it concerns sex/gender and feminist praxis. Although the prevailing interpretation of Adorno's work conceptualizes its relationship to women as one of either exclusion or essentialism, I argue that both the reading of Sade's Juliette in Dialectic of Enlightenment, as well as a number of Adorno's aphorisms in Minima Moralia, present complex feminist claims and commitments. Max Horkheimer and Adorno position Juliette as a subject of the Enlightenment, forestalling the possibility that women qua women are potentially utopian figures. I utilize Adorno's work in Minima Moralia to show that he—far from excluding or essentializing women—was interested in metaphorically capturing the subjective conditions developed by a system of binary sex/gender within a heteropatriarchal society. Indeed, one can find an iteration of queer theoretical commitments in Minima Moralia. As a result, I argue that he displays a number of straightforwardly feminist commitments: that a liberated society requires the disambiguation of sex from gender, affirming the nonnaturalness of our social sex/gender regime, and claiming that all subjects as gendered subjects are damaged by living within a heteropatriarchal society. Lastly, I provide preliminary evidence of Adorno's critique of (neo)liberal feminist praxis.     

Social support and cardiovascular responding to laboratory stress: Moderating effects of gender role identification,sex, and type of support

The objective of the present study was to examine moderating effects of gender role identification, sex, and type of support on the buffering role of social support on cardiovascular responses. We hypothesized that (a) gender role identification, more than sex, would moderate the effect of social support and (b) to obtain optimal attenuating effects of social support, type of support provided should match type of support preferred in terms of one's gender role identification. That is, feminine participants would benefit more from relatively direct support, whereas masculine participants would benefit more from indirect support. Healthy participants (N = 100) performed a psychological stressor in the presence of a friend, after mental activation of a friend, or alone. Results revealed no moderating effects of gender role identification whether or not in combination with type of support. Nevertheless, results demonstrated an attenuating effect of mental support on heart rate and cardiac output in men. It is concluded that pathways linking social relationships and health may differ between women and men.     

Intersecting Identities as a Source of Religious Incongruence

Chaves (2010) argues that much of the work in the sociology of religion is susceptible to the religious congruence fallacy—the tendency to assume consistency between religious beliefs and one's attitudes and behaviors across situations when they are in fact highly variable. We build on and extend this argument by focusing on intersecting group identities as a mechanism for identifying such incongruence, not only within religious contexts, but also at the intersection of categories such as gender and race. To illustrate this argument, the analysis draws on data from the 2006 Panel Study of American Religion and Ethnicity (PS‐ARE) to assess how race, gender, and religion interact to produce different levels of attitude and behavior incongruencies on key issues of the day, specifically conservative social values and voting behaviors. The results find marked differences and inconsistent relationships between attitudes and behaviors across racial‐gender groups. We use the analysis to highlight the conditions that result in incongruence at the intersections of identity categories and pinpoint where social scientists are most vulnerable to committing the congruence fallacy.     

Theory‐of‐Mind development and early sibling relationships after the birth of a sibling: Parental discipline matters

This study investigated relations among children's Theory‐of‐Mind (ToM) development, early sibling interactions, and parental discipline strategies during the transition to siblinghood. Using a sample of firstborn children and their parents (N = 208), we assessed children's ToM before the birth of a sibling and 12 months after the birth, and sibling interactions (i.e., positive engagement and antagonism) and parental discipline strategies (i.e., child‐centred and parent‐centred discipline) at 4 and 8 months in the first year of siblinghood. Structural equation modelling analyses revealed that children's ToM before the birth of the sibling predicted children's positive engagement with the infant sibling, whereas children's antagonistic behaviours towards the infant sibling negatively predicted children's ToM at 12 months, but only when mothers used low levels of child‐centred discipline. These findings emphasize the role of parents in the development of young children's social‐cognitive understanding in the context of early sibling interactions.

Highlights

• This study investigated relations among firstborns' Theory‐of‐Mind (ToM), early sibling relationships, and parental discipline during the first year of siblinghood.
• Multigroup analyses showed that ToM predicted higher sibling positive engagement, and early sibling antagonism predicted poorer ToM when mothers used low child‐centred discipline.
• Parental discipline plays an important role in the development of young children's social understanding and sibling relationships as early as the first year of siblinghood.

     

Love at the cultural crossroads: Intimacy and commitment in Chinese Canadian relationships

The role of culture in romantic relationships has largely been investigated by examining variation between groups, rather than within groups. This study took a within‐group approach to examine the influence of Canadian and Chinese cultural identification on gender role egalitarianism, intimacy, and commitment in 60 Chinese Canadian dating couples. Results revealed that men's identification with mainstream Canadian culture was associated with their own and with their partner's greater intimacy, at least in part because of their greater egalitarianism. Conversely, women's identification with mainstream Canadian culture was associated with their partners' lower intimacy. Finally, women's identification with Chinese heritage culture was associated with their greater commitment, and some evidence suggested that this was because of their greater gender role traditionalism.     

Gender Self‐Definition and Gender Self‐Acceptance in Women: Intersections With Feminist,Womanist, and Ethnic Identities

The author explored the relationships among women's gender identity constructs as well as the relationships of those constructs to ethnic identity. Nine of the 12 hypothesized relationships between gender self‐definition and female identity development statuses and between gender self‐acceptance and female identity development statuses were supported. Gender self‐definition and gender self‐acceptance were also both positively correlated with ethnic identity. Analyses of the Hoffman Gender Scale (R. M. Hoffman, 1996; R. M. Hoffman, L. D. Borders, & J. A. Hattie, 2000) provided additional support for its use as a measure of gender self‐definition and gender self‐acceptance.     

Children's Use of Social Categories in Thinking About People and Social Relationships

A series of studies investigated White U.S. 3- and 4-year-old children's use of gender and race information to reason about their own and others’ relationships and attributes. Three-year-old children used gender- but not race-based similarity between themselves and others to decide with whom they wanted to be friends, as well as to determine which children shared their own preferences for various social activities. Four-year-old (but not younger) children attended to gender and racial category membership to guide inferences about others’ relationships but did not use these categories to reason about others’ shared activity preferences. Taken together, the findings provide evidence for three suggestions about these children's social category-based reasoning. First, gender is a more potent category than race. Second, social categories are initially recruited for first-person reasoning but later become broad enough to support third-person inferences. Finally, at least for third-person reasoning, thinking about social categories is more attuned to social relationships than to shared attributes.     

Perfectionistic Concerns,Social Negativity,and Subjective Well‐Being: A Test of the Social Disconnection Model

Partner‐specific perfectionistic concerns (PC) include concern over mistakes, self‐criticism, and socially prescribed perfectionism as it pertains to one's partner. The social disconnection model proposes that PC influences well‐being indirectly through interpersonal problems. Thus, we hypothesized that social negativity (expressed anger, hostility, and rejection) would mediate the relationship between dyadic PC and subjective well‐being. Data from 203 romantic dyads (92.1% heterosexual) were collected using self‐report surveys and a four‐wave, 4‐week longitudinal design. Participants were predominantly female (53.1%), young (M = 22.69 years), and Caucasian (82.3%). Data were analyzed using an actor‐partner interdependence model with multilevel structural equation modeling. There were significant actor effects at the between‐subjects and within‐subjects levels, and significant partner effects for the relationship between PC and social negativity at the within‐subject level. Social negativity mediated the relationships between PC and both negative affect and life satisfaction. However, positive affect was more weakly related to PC and social negativity. The social disconnection model was supported. PC was positively associated with one's own social negativity and evoked hostile behaviors from one's partner. Hostile, rejecting behaviors reduced the well‐being of the actor, but not the partner. Results suggest perfectionism may be best understood within an interpersonal context.     

Letter to the Editor: Re: The Origins of Psychodrame

Sparked by the 100th Anniversary of Kurt Lewin's birth, this paper re-examines a classic 1939 study by Lewin, Lippitt, and White, of three leadership styles and the resulting different social climates, that is, autocratic, democratic, and laissez faire. A gradual extension of Lewinian field theory to include unconscious motivations in individual and in group behavior has served to broaden the already significant influence of this research on the behavioral sciences. Two recent developments moved me to write this communication: (1) The 100th Anniversary in 1990 of Kurt Lewin's birth (Maccoby, 1992); and (b) a broadening of Lewinian field theory to encompass unconscious motivations (White, 1992).