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Psychology 320: Gender Psychology

Lecture 7

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1. What theories and research characterize the history of gender psychology?

History of Research on Gender Psychology

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What theories and research characterize the history of gender psychology?

A. 1879 – 1894: The Inception and Rise of Psychology

• Wundt proposed a natural science of the mind: psychology.

• Psychology adopted a structuralist perspective.

• Little interest in sex and/or gender differences.

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B. 1894 – 1920: Sex Difference in Intelligence

• Psychology shifted to a functionalist perspective.

• Ellis (1894) published Man and Woman.

• Primary sex difference of interest: intelligence.

• Researchers largely studied sex differences in brain size and mass.

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• Early research demonstrated that the brains of females were smaller than the brains of males.

• Later research demonstrated that the frontal lobes of females were smaller than the frontal lobes of

males.

• These findings were taken as support for the wide-held belief that females are less intelligent than males:

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“We might ask if the small size of the female brain depends exclusively upon the small size of her body. Tiedemann has proposed this explanation. But we must not forget that women are, on the average, a little less intelligent than men, a difference which we should not exaggerate but which is, nonetheless, real. We are therefore permitted to suppose that the relatively small size of the female brain depends in part upon her physical inferiority and in part upon her intellectual inferiority” (Broca, 1861, p. 153).

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“The man who fights for two or more in the struggle for existence, who has all the responsibility and the cares of tomorrow, who is constantly active in combating the environment and human rivals, needs more brain than the woman whom he must protect and nourish, than the sedentary woman, lacking any interior occupations, whose role is to raise children, love and be passive” (Topinard, 1888, p. 22).

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“In the most intelligent races, as among the Parisians, there are a large number of women whose brains are closer in size to those of gorillas than to the most developed male brains. This inferiority is so obvious that no one can contest it for a moment; only its degree is worth discussion. All psychologists who have studied the intelligence of women, as well as poets and novelists, recognize today that they represent the most inferior forms of human evolution and that they are closer to children and savages than to an adult, civilized man. They excel in fickleness, inconstancy, absence of thought and logic, and incapacity to reason. Without doubt there exist some distinguished women, very superior to the average man, but they are as exceptional as the birth of any monstrosity, as, for example, of a gorilla with two heads; consequently, we may neglect them entirely” (Le Bon, 1879, p. 60-61).

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• Ultimately, Terman and Cox (1936) publish Sex and Personality, in which they conclude that there are no sex differences in intelligence:

“Intelligence tests, for example, have demonstrated for all time the falsity of the once widely prevalent belief that women as a class are appreciably or at all inferior to men in the major aspects of intellect” (p. 1).

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C. 1920 – 1936: The Objective vs. the Subjective

• Psychology adopted two new perspectives:

1. The behaviorist perspective.

> Largely studied learning and memory among nonhuman species.

> Little interest in sex and/or gender differences.

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2. The psychoanalytic perspective.

> Proposed by Sigmund Freud.

> Maintained that gender differences in personality and morality result from sex differences in

“psychosexual development.”

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D. 1936 – 1954: M/F as a Global Personality Trait

• Psychologists shifted their interest from sex differences to gender roles.

• The construct of masculinity/femininity (M/F) was introduced by Terman.

• The Attitude Interest Analysis Survey (Terman & Miles, 1936) was developed as a self-report measure of M/F.

• Concerns regarding the use of self-report measures of M/F led to the subsequent development of

projective measures of M/F.

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Franck and Rosen’s (1949) Projective Test of M/F

Sample Stimulus Feminine ScoredMasculine Scored

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HighMasculinity

HighFemininity

• Measures developed during this period viewed M/F as a single, bipolar dimension.

One-Dimensional Model of M/F

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Scoring Questionnaire 1: BSRI

• Compute the following averages:

Score 1: Add your scores on items 1, 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 19, 22, 25, 28, 31, 34, 37, 40, 43, 46, 49, 52, 55, 58. Divide total by 20.

Score 2: Add your scores on items 2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20, 23, 26, 29, 32, 35, 38, 41, 44, 47, 50, 53, 56, 59. Divide your total by 20.

• Compute the following difference:

Score 3: Score 2 – Score 1

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Scoring Questionnaire 2: PAQ

• Compute the following sums:

Score 1: Add items 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15.

Score 2: Add items 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16.

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1. What theories and research characterize the history of gender psychology?

History of Research on Gender Psychology