Sex-role orientation and psychological adjustment: Implications for the masculinity model

The present study tested the theory that masculine persons are as favorably adjusted psychologically as androgynous persons. Grouped on the basis of Bem Sex Role Inventory scores, androgynous, masculine, feminine, and undifferentiated college males and females were compared on MMPI, self-efficacy, and assertiveness measures. Strong support was obtained for superior adjustment of masculine males and females. A factor analysis was performed to elucidate the nature of the Masculinity scale, and it suggested that masculinity is related to assertiveness and self-efficacy rather than to the absence of maladjustment.     

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.     

Sex-role orientation,identity formation,and self-esteem in college men and women

Contrasting hypotheses that psychological androgyny (Bem, 1974, 1975) would be associated with (1) identity confusion and a lack of personal integration or (2) identity achievement and high levels of integration were tested. Sex-role orientation, ego-identity status, and self-esteem were determined for 111 college men and women. The results support the second hypothesis, that high levels of masculinity and femininity (androgynous orientation) are conducive to identity achievement and high self-esteem. In contrast, low levels of masculine and feminine characteristics (undifferentiated sex-role orientation) were associated with uniformly low self-esteem and a lack of personal integration (identity diffusion). Sex-typing was most often associated with premature identity commitments and a lack of personality differentiation (identity foreclosure) and with high self-esteem in males but low self-esteem in females. Cross-sex-typing was associated with high levels of self-esteem and identity achievement in females, but with somewhat lower self-esteem in males and either unsuccessful (diffusion) or transitional (moratorium) levels of identity resolution.This research was supported by University of Missouri Summer Research Fellowship 3694-1100. The author would like to express his gratitude to Mona Asbed, Richard Baker, Sheila Ginsburg, Keith Shaw, and Marsha Whitson for conducting and rating the identity status interviews.     

Sex-role orientation,behavioral adaptability and personal adjustment

Bem's Sex-Role Inventory was used to classify 111 college men and women into masculine, feminine, androgynous, and undifferentiated sex-role categories. Subjects were tested for emotional expressivity (feminine task), assertiveness (masculine task), and personal integration. Sex typed and cross-sex typed subjects performed well only on those tasks which were congruent with their measured sex role. Androgynous subjects exhibited the greatest behavioral adaptability, performing well on both masculine and feminine tasks; undifferentiated subjects performed poorly on both tasks, but particularly so on sex-reversed tasks. Thus, behavioral flexibility was shown to derive from strong identifications with both masculine and feminine roles (androgyny) rather than from a simple lack of identification with either role. In addition, contrary to previous findings that masculine-typed women are better adjusted than feminine-typed women, androgynous and sex typed subjects both scored high in personal integration, with cross-sex typed subjects of both sexes scoring as low as undifferentiated subjects.     

Sex-role orientation of college students and their same-sex parents

The study examined similarities and differences between sex-role orientations of college students and their same-sex parents. College undergraduates filled out the Bem Sex-role Inventory twice: once to describe themselves and the second time to describe their same-sex parents. The inventory was also used to obtain parental self-reports. Compared to their perceptions of their same-sex parents, male students described themselves as more feminine and female students described themselves as more masculine. Also, male students described their fathers as less feminine and female students described their mothers as both less masculine and less feminine than the parents described themselves. Students' femininity scores correlated significantly with the parental femininity scores both actual and perceived, however, no consistent relationship was found for the masculinity scores. Androgynous students and students with the reversed sex-role orientation perceived their parents as androgynous and reversed, respectively.     

Sex-role orientation and intimacy status in men and women

Sex-role orientation based on combined t-ratio/median-split scoring of Personal Attributes Questionnaire data was investigated in relation to intimacy status in a sample of university alumini with an average age of 25 years. There was no significant sex difference in sex-role orientation or social status. As expected, androgyny was associated with the preintimate status in both men and women. Contrary to prediction, androgyny was also associated with the less intimate statuses of merger in men and pseudointimate in women; sex-typing was associated with the most intimate status in both sexes. All sex-typed individuals were involved in long-term, heterosexual partnership varying in level of intimacy.Part of this research was included in a presentation at the Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, Montreal, September 1980. The author thanks Susan Krauss Whitbourne for providing advice and intimacy status ratings for this research.     

Sex-role orientation,intimacy of topic,and target person differences in self-disclosure among women

Sex Roles - The focus of the present study was self-disclosure patterns of young women in three types of close relationships: same-sex friend, opposite-sex friend, and romantic partner. The...     

Sex-role and innovative major choice among college students

This study examined the relationship between sex-role and nontraditional major choice. The sample included 693 male and female students enrolled in traditional and nontraditional majors. In addition to exploring this relationship the study had a methodological intent: Could scales derived from previous factor analyses of the Bem Sex-Role Inventory delineate this relationship as readily as the traditional Bem scoring method. Results indicate significant distributional patterns in sex-role and choice of major, which vary by sex. Men tend to choose male-dominated majors, regardless of sex-role. Patterns for females are more complex. The factored scales used in cross-validated discriminate analysis procedures did demonstrate some power to discriminate students in the two majors, suggesting certain implications for sex-role transcendence in vocational settings.     

Socialization and career orientation among black and white college women

In a study of career orientation among black and white college women, support was found for hypotheses derived from postulates of Rotter's Social Learning Theory. Compared to whites, (1) blacks were less likely to expect the level of work involvement preferred; (2) blacks expected more employment; and (3) blacks were more likely to prefer less employment than they realistically expected. Antecedents of career expectation were categorized as internal, external, or neutral. As hypothesized, variables expressive of external control predicted level of career expectation among blacks, whereas variables expressive of internal control predicted high career expectations among whites.     

Sex-role orientation,achievement motivation,and causal attributions of college females

Female undergraduates were asked to state causal attributions for success or failure outcomes. Students worked in pairs so that one half of them cooperated with either a male or a female partner, while the other half competed with a male or female opponent. All female subjects were pretested on achievement motivation and sex-role orientation. Women who espoused the traditional feminine role were more self-derogating in causal attribution than nontraditional women. Achievement-oriented women, like their male counterparts, were more self-enhancing following failure. However, following competitive success against male opponents, women who scored high in achievement motivation were less self-enhancing than those who scored low.This article is part of a larger study originally prepared as the author's doctoral dissertation at Hofstra University, 1975. The author is indebted to Claire Ernhart, the dissertation chairperson, and to the committee members, Alfred Cohn and Dianne Krooth, for their guidance and support.     

Sex-role attitudes,curriculum choice,and career ambition: A comparison between women in typical and atypical college majors

This study of college women examines the relationship among sex-role attitudes, curriculum choice, and levels of educational and occupational aspirations and expectations. Data for analysis are from a 1977 survey of college students enrolled in home economics and agricultural curriculums in all southern land grant colleges and universities. Results show that sex-role ideology is only weakly associated with curriculum choice but is related to career ambitions for women in sex-typical and sex-atypical areas of study.     

MMPI profiles of women in codependency treatment.

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) profiles of 73 women presenting themselves for treatment of codependency in a 10-day residential setting were examined. Results suggest a significant amount of psychopathology to be present in this population. More than 50% of these individuals produced clinically significant elevations of five or more scales, and 38% produced elevations on six or more scales.     

Sex-role orientation as related to psychological and physiological responses during achievement and orthostatic stress

The Bem sex-role inventory was used to select, from an Irish student population, females and males who differed with regard to feminine and masculine personality characteristics. Four groups were established for each sex: (1) subjects with low scores in both femininity and masculinity, i.e., undifferentiated subjects; (2) subjects with high scores in both femininity and masculinity, i.e., androgynous subjects; (3) subjects with high scores in femininity and low scores in masculinity; (4) subjects with high scores in masculinity and low scores in femininity. The Cattell 16 PF scale showed that the undifferentiated groups were more reserved and detached and more cautious and taciturn than the androgynous groups. Each subject was exposed to mental stress in one session and orthostatic stress in another session. Mental stress was induced by five different intellectual performance tests. Males and females differed significantly only on a test of perceptual speed, with females performing better than males, as expected. The group of androgynous females was superior to all other groups on four of the five performance tasks. The group of androgynous males was not superior in terms of objective performance but reported feeling more confident andThis collaboration was made possible by a twinning grant to Dr. John Cullen and Professor Marianne Frankenhaeuser from the European Training Programme in Brain and Behaviour Research, European Science Foundation. Financial support was also obtained by grants from the Swedish Medical Research Council (Project No. 997) and the Swedish Council for Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences. satisfied with their performance than most other groups, particularly the undifferentiated males. Blood pressure and heart rate were significantly elevated in all groups during both stress conditions. Heart rate was significantly higher in the high-femininity and androgynous females than in the other female groups.     

Sex-role self-concept and attitudes related to occupational daydreams and future fantasies of college women

This study explored the relationship of sex-role self-concept and general attitudes toward women's roles to patterns of career preferences and to career salience among 50 undergraduate women. Sex-role self-concept was measured by the Bem Sex-Role Inventory, and attitudes by the Attitudes Toward Women Scale. Patterns in career preferences were determined by studying the degree of gender dominance in past occupational daydreams as well as in present college major and intended future occupation. Career salience was measured using a content analysis of written future fantasies. Sex-role self-concept was related to past occupational preferences, with masculine-typed women showing a pattern of nontraditional daydreams compared to those of feminine-typed women. Attitude variables were related to present career choices, with liberal women in more male-dominant fields than conservative women. Both self-concept and attitude variables were related to career salience, measured by the proportion of fantasies about the future devoted to work themes. Masculine women showed evidence of more career salience than androgynous or undifferentiated women, and liberal women more than conservative women.     

Spouse criticism and support: their association with coping and psychological adjustment among women with rheumatoid arthritis

Examined whether psychological adjustment of women with rheumatoid arthritis would be related to the support and criticism the patient received from the husband. Interviews were conducted with the husbands of 103 women with rheumatoid arthritis. Spouse interviews were content coded for critical remarks. Wives completed a revised version of the Ways of Coping Scale and a scale of the perceived supportiveness of the spouse. Husbands completed rating scales assessing their perceived vulnerability to illness and the degree of burden they experienced in providing assistance to their wives. Path analyses revealed that patient adjustment was significantly related to the attitude of the spouse. Patients with a highly critical spouse engaged in more maladaptive coping behaviors and reported a poorer psychological adjustment. Independent of spousal criticism, patients who perceived their spouse as being supportive engaged in more adaptive coping. A path model was fit to the data that suggested that the spouse may affect adjustment indirectly through influencing the patient's selection of adaptive or maladaptive coping responses.     

Acculturative stress, social support, and coping: relations to psychological adjustment among Mexican American college students

This study examined the relations between acculturative stress and psychological functioning, as well as the protective role of social support and coping style, in a sample of 148 Mexican American college students (67% female, 33% male; mean age = 23.05 years, SD = 3.33). In bivariate analyses, acculturative stress was associated with higher levels of anxiety and depressive symptoms. Moreover, active coping was associated with better adjustment (lower depression), whereas avoidant coping predicted poorer adjustment (higher levels of depression and anxiety). Tests of interaction effects indicated that parental support and active coping buffered the effects of high acculturative stress on anxiety symptoms and depressive symptoms. In addition, peer support moderated the relation between acculturative stress and anxiety symptoms. Implications for reducing the effects of acculturative stress among Mexican American college students are discussed.     

Sex-role self-concept and persistence in a traditional vs nontraditional college major for women

This article reports a 3-year follow-up study of a sample of women engineering and home economics majors who were previously studied as freshmen. It was hypothesized that persistence in the two curricula would be related to sex roles, with feminine-typed women more likely to leave engineering and masculine-typed women more likely to leave home economics. The findings did not generally support this hypothesis, however. Women in the two majors who persisted were not found to differ significantly from women who changed majors or dropped out on either sex roles or on ratings given as freshmen of their satisfaction with and certainty of college major. Persisters in engineering had higher college entrance SAT math scores than changers or dropouts. Those who changed majors from home economics tended to go into less traditional fields than home economics. Nearly all of the women who changed from engineering chose another nontraditional or male-dominated field as their second major.