Sex Roles, Vol. 13, Nos. 9/10, 1985

Gender and Sex-Role Attributes as

Predictors of Utilization of Natural Support

Systems During Personal Stress Events 1

Timothy Butler 2 Harvard University

Stephen Giordano and Steven Neren State University o f New York at Albany

This study was an empirical investigation of gender and sex-role attributes as they relate to the utilization of natural support systems during personal stress events. Compared to male subjects, female subjects reported significantly higher levels of requested assistance and perceived more help as being available from their natural support systems during the most stressful event encountered during the previous year. Subjects" scores on the femininity dimension of the Extended Personal Attributes Questionnaire were significantly correlated with amount o f support asked for during stress events. Along with the variable of perceived level of stress, gender and femininity score accounted for 3607o of the variance o f natural support system utilization during a personal crisis. The results of the study are discussed in the context o f current research on (a) the utilization o f natural support systems and (b) the relationship between person variables and psychophysiological disease.

In America today only a small minority of individuals in need of psychological assistance utilize the services of mental health professionals (Gottlieb, 1983; Howard & Orlinsky, 1972; Joint Commission on Mental

~This study was conducted while the first author was on the faculty of the Department of Counseling Psychology at the State University of New York at Albany. The authors acknowledge assistance and funding provided by both that department and the SUNYA School of Education.

2To whom all correspondence should be addressed at Harvard University School of Business Administrat ion, Soldier's Field, Boston, Massachuset ts 02163.

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0360-0025/85/1100-0515504.50/0 © 1985 Plenum Publishing Corporation

516 Butler, Giordano, and Neren

Illness and Health, 1961). For most individuals experiencing stress events the major source of help is that group of family, friends, and other acquaintances referred to as the individual's social or natural support system (Gurin, Veroff, & Feld, 1960; Roberts, Prince, Gold, & Shiner, 1966; Ryan, 1969). A growing body of literature has documented the essential nature of the assistance provided by the natural support system in helping an individual negotiate personal crises (Cassel, 1974; Cobb, 1976). Gottlieb (1983) has presented a well-articulated call for systematic research into the conditions, personal and environmental, that determine successful utilization of natural support systems. The current study presents an investigation of person variables that are predictive of individual's help- seeking behavior in regard to their existing natural sources of support. In particular, this study was concerned with sex and sex-role attributes as predictors of social support utilization.

The empirical literature regarding social support utilization is sparse and much of our current understanding is derived from investigations in analogous areas such as studies of willingness to seek professional help and studies of self-disclosure behavior. Weissman and Klerman (1977) in a review of sex differences in the rates of depression found that women have a tendency to admit to more symptomatology than do men. Hinkle, Redmont, and Plummer (1960) found that for depression women seek treatment more often than men and that men have a higher suicide rate. They concluded that in our society the public assumption of the sick role is interpreted by men as a sign of weakness.

Several studies have found that females are generally more expressive of their feelings than males (Allen & Haccoun, 1976; Levinger & Senn, 1967; Notarius & Johnson, 1982). The type of feeling expressed is an important consideration, however, since males seem to be more expressive of anger than females (Balkwell, Balswick, & Balkwell, 1978; Balswick & Averett, 1977; Slevin & Balswick, 1980). Allen and Haccoun (1976) found that females express more direct emotions of all types to males, whereas males express more joy and sadness to females but more anger and fear to other males. The authors speculate that perhaps the sex differences are greatest for the emotions of fear and sadness because these emotions reflect vulnerability and dependency/communion. The authors cite the research of Allen and Markiewicz (1974) as showing that sadness elicits nurturing responses. They speculate that females are more able to express fear and sadness in eliciting help from their environment. Males, however, appear less likely to use emotion interpersonally.

Females have been found to self-disclose more often than males (Jourard, 1961; Jourard & Lasakow, 1958; Jourard & Richman, 1963) and engage in higher levels of self-disclosure (Cozby, 1973, Hood & Bach, 1971;

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Jourard, 1971). Jourard.and Richman (1963) suggest that women are most typically socialized toward the expressive, nurturing roles within society. Jourard (1971) has suggested that females socialized in the feminine-expres- sive role have acquired the skills that complement the counseling experience, whereas males socialized in the masculine-instrumental role may lack the skills that facilitate therapeutic progress.

Derlega and Chaiken (1976) found sex-linked norms regarding the disclosure of problems to others. They suggest that men who identify with the masculine role may fear being ridiculated if they violate expectations of appropriate sex-typed behavior. Males may not be expected to depend on others for help. These authors found, as well, that attributions of mental illness were based on the extent to which self-disclosure deviates from appropriate sex-role behavior for men and women. A male stimulus-person was rated as better adjusted when he failed to disclose than when he did disclose information about a personal problem, whereas the reverse was observed for a female stimulus-person. Similar differences were reported by Chelune (1976) who found that a male speaker was most liked when he was a low discloser and a female speaker was least liked when she was a low discloser.

Research findings demonstrating females' greater ability to express nurturance-eliciting emotions as well as their ability to self-disclose more frequently and at higher levels provided the basis for the expectations that, during personal stress events, females would evidence greater utilization of their natural support systems. This relationship between gender and social support utilization had been noted in a pilot study utilizing the same method as the current study.

The capacity for emotional expressivity and the valuing of interpersonal relationships are two aspects of the construct of femininity, as this term is employed in contemporary research on sex-role attributes (Bakan, 1966; Bem, 1974; Spence, Helmreich, & Stapp, 1975).

Femininity, used in this context, indicates an abstract personality dimension that is present to greater or lesser degrees in both men and women (Spence & Helmreich, 1978). The construct is typically presented as varying independently of the companion construct of masculinity which is associated with an "agent ic" (Bakan, 1966) orientation and a concern for oneself as an individual. The personality dimensions of femininity and masculinity have been demonstrated to have considerable heuristic and predictive value (Bem, 1974; Spence & Helmreich, 1978) and have provided a framework for describing stereotypically gender-linked characteristics independently of gender itself.

The construct of femininity includes characteristics essential to a positive valuing of help seeking f rom an individual's immediate

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community or support system (i.e., the valuing of relationships and the valueing of emotional expression). This observation provided the basis for the hypothesis of the current study that degree of femininity would account for a significant proportion of the variance in predicting an individual's utilization of his or her natural support system during a personal stress event. It was hypothesized that this relationship would be most evident in males; no specific hypothesis was made for the female subjects in the sample.

M E T H O D

Subjects

Subjects were 100 graduate students (41 female and 59 male subjects) enrolled in an introductory psychology course at an Eastern university. Participation was voluntary and all subjects received course credit for taking part in the study.

Instruments

Extended Personal Attributes Questionnaire. The femininity scale of the Extended Personal Attributes Questionnaire (EPAQ) (Spence & Helmreich, 1974) was used to measure the personality construct of femininity. The EPAQ is a self-report inventory consisting of 40 bipolar items which was empirically derived to measure sex-role stereotypes and masculinity- femininity. The authors report internal consistency (Cronbach alpha) coefficients ranging from .78 to .85 for the three scales that constitute the instrument. Spence and Helmreich (1978) report considerable evidence of the inventory's concurrent and predictive validity. In the current study, three of the EPAQ scales were used (m +, F + and m-f) and the scoring procedure described by Sipps (1981) was utilized.

Natural Support Questionnaire. The Natural Support Questionnaire (NSQ) was derived from the work of Hirsch (1980) on categories of social support. Hirsch synthesized the work of earlier writers in the field (Caplan, 1974; Coelho, Hamburg, & Adams, 1974; Lewinsohn, 1974) to describe a five-category model of social support. His categories were Cognitive Guidance, Social Reinforcement (the provision of encouragement or criticism), Tangible Assistance (providing money, help with daily tasks, etc.), Socializing, and Emotional Support (defined in the current study as providing the opportunity to express or share feelings).

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The NSQ required the subject to indicate, for each category, how much help he or she had asked for f rom family and friends while dealing with the stress event that he or she had described (see Procedure section). The subject accomplished this by assigning a whole number score between 0 and 100 which indicated the amount of that type of help which was requested (0 = asked for no support; 25 --- asked for a small amount of support; 50 = asked for a moderate amount of support; 75 = asked for a considerable amount of support; 100 = asked for a great amount of support). The Tangible Assistance category was excluded f rom the study as a pilot study had indicated that the request for monetary assistance varied with the specific type of stress event that was reported (i.e., for many stress events there was no need for tangible assistance).

The subjects were required to respond to a second version of the NSQ that was identical to the first version in all respects except that it referred to the amount of support in each category that was offered by family and friends, whether or not such assistance had been requested. The purpose of this form was to determine the subject 's perception of the amount of support offered by his or her social environment. For each NSQ form, the scores on the four categories were summed to determine a total support score. Thus there were two total support scores generated: a total support "asked f o r " score and a total support "perce ived" score. Sample item (asked for): " C O G N I T I V E GUIDANCE: On a scale f rom 0 to 100, how much advice, information, or explanation did YOU seek out or ask for f rom your family and /o r f r iends?" The corresponding item for the support "perce ived" form of the NSQ read: " C O G N I T I V E G U I D A N C E : On a scale f rom 0 to 100, how much advice, information or explanation was offered or given to you by your family and /o r fr iends?" The two forms of the NSQ were administered in counterbalanced fashion to control for order effects.

Procedure

Subjects were asked to think back over the past year and recall the most difficult and stressful event they had experienced. The subjects were asked to recall their feelings and actions while dealing with the particular event they had recalled. They were then instructed to write a brief description of the event and to rate (a) the level of stress engendered by the event and (b) how well they believe they coped with the event. Administrat ion of this questionnaire, both in a pilot study and in the current study, elicited a wide range of stress experiences which varied f rom serious illness or death in the family to more mundane concerns such as test performance or relationships with members of the opposite sex. Subjects

520 Butler, Giordano, and Neren

then filled out both forms of the NSQ. All subjects completed the EPAQ which was counterbalanced with the stress event description such that half the subjects filled out the EPAQ before engaging in the event recollection and half responded to the form after completing the recollection exercise. Demographic information on the subjects was also obtained.

RESULTS

Two t tests were employed to test gender differences in the utilization of natural support systems during stress events. The mean score of males and females were compared for both the support asked for and support perceived. Two-tailed tests were employed and alpha was adjusted to .025 to correct for the use of multiple comparisons.

The mean of the scores for males on total support asked for was 183.78; the female mean was 245.63. The t test indicated that these means were significantly different, t(98) = -3 .79 , p < .001. The point biserial correlation between gender and support asked for during a personal stress event was .36, indicating that gender alone accounts for almost 13% of the variance in predicting initiation of assistance f rom the social environment during personal crises.

The mean of the male scores for amount of support perceived was 240.51; the mean for the male subjects was 277.7. The t test indicated that this difference was significant, t ( 9 8 ) - 2 . 5 0 , p = .014. The point biserial correlation between gender and amount of support perceived in the social environment was .25 indicating that gender accounts for about 6% of the variance in the prediction of the amount of support that an individual perceives as being offered by his or her social environment during a period of stress.

There was no significant difference between the means of male and female ratings of level of stress experienced nor was there a difference between male and female ratings of success in coping.

For the male sample, the Pearson correlation between femininity score and support asked for score was .33 (/7 < .01). The correlation for the male sample between femininity and support perceived was .13 (p > .05). The hypothesis that degree of femininity would be significantly related to social support utilization by males obtained only for initiation of help-seeking behavior; a significant relationship between femininity and level of support perceived in the social environment by males was not indicated.

A post hoc correlation analysis revealed an even stronger relationship between femininity and use of social support among females. The Pearson

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product-moment correlation between femininity and support asked for was .43 (p < .001) for the female sample. The correlation between femininity and perceived support for the females was .24 (p > .05). Thus, for females, almost 18% of the variance of help seeking from the social environment during crises was accounted for by the EPAQ femininity score.

In the total sample, the Pearson correlation between femininity and support asked for was .37 (p < .001), and the correlation between femininity and support perceived was .19 (p < .05).

The post hoc correlation analysis also identified another characteristic that was highly correlated with amount of support asked for from the natural support system. The rating of the stress level during the event was correlated .39 (p < .001) with amount of support requested. A multiple regression analysis indicated that three variables (gender, femininity score, and stress level) accounted for 36°70 of the variance when predicting amount of help requested during a personal crisis, F(3, 96) = 17.84, p < .001, R = .60, R = .36. The same three variables accounted for only 10% of the variance of amount of support perceived in the social environment, F(3, 96) = 3.58, p = .017, R = .32, R 2 = .10.

It may be added that the subjects' EPAQ masculinity score did not explain significant additional variance when added to the regression analyses. For the total sample, masculinity correlated insignificantly with help asked for (r = - .17, p > .05) and perceived support (r = - .04, p > .05).

DISCUSSION

During personal stress events the males in this study both perceived less help as being offered by their social environment and requested less help than did females in the study. The contrast between gender groups was particularly striking in the realm of asking for help or support. This finding obtained despite the fact that there was no difference between gender groups in regard either to the amount of stress experienced or self-evaluation of coping.

Cassel (1974) and Cobb (1976) have argued for the central role that social supports play in mitigating both psychological and physiological consequences of stressful life events. If the results of the current study are considered in the light of these authors ' work, then the role of reduced access to support systems becomes more central in considering the well-documented higher male risk for major stress-related disorders such as hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and suicide. In regard to the latter it is interesting to note that females have a higher rate of suicide attempt, but

522 Butler, Giordano, and Neren

males more frequently are successful in completion of suicide. The timely intervention of family and friends is often the difference between a suicide attempt and a suicide. The ability of females to communicate, directly or indirectly, their need for intervention may be an essential dynamic behind the gender-related suicide lethality statistics in this country.

It may be that males engage in patterns of self-disclosure or support seeking that are less than optimal for securing continuity of support. A natural support system has the characteristic of a more or less continuing relationship with the individual and his or her concerns, with the obvious advantages that such continuity has over the transient response of a stranger (or, for that matter, a mental health crisis worker). Some researchers have noted, however, that it may be more difficult for males to self-disclose to the very people who would be in the best position to provide ongoing support and concern. Stokes, Fuehrer, and Childs (1980) found that males are more willing than females to self-disclose to strangers and casual acquaintances, but females disclose more than males to people with whom they have a close relationship. Fasteau (1974) points out that in our society men learn not to share routine uncertainties or half-formulated plans with their friends. It may well be that learned sex-role expectations in regard to sharing personal problems place males at a disadvantage in securing the type (ongoing, familiar, intimate) of social assistance that has been described as a major mediator of stress-related disorders.

As much as gender itself, the personality dimension of femininity accounts for a significant degree of the variance of support-seeking behavior from one's social environment. The abstract constructs of expressivity and communion emerge as useful predictors of reported help-seeking behavior during personal stress events. A number of studies (Hirsch, 1980; Sokolovsky, Cohen, Berger, & Geiger, 1978; Walker, MacBride, & Vachon, 1977) have focused on the characteristics of social networks themselves in regard to effectiveness in mediating stress events. The results of this study indicate the importance of studying specific person variables of help seekers in regard to their capacity to utilize an existing social network. The relationship of another personality syndrome, type A behavior, and stress-related cardiovascular disease has been amply demonstrated (Friedman & Rosenman, 1974). The construct of femininity may partially explain not stress-inducing behavior but a devaluing of behaviors that have been shown to mitigate the consequences of such stress-inducing behavior.

The findings of this study must be tempered by two considerations. The first of these involves the fact that the study sample was composed of university students and the usual cautions associated with generalizing from such a sample should be recognized. The second limitation involves the

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self-report nature of the instrument used to measure the dependent variables. The Natural Support Questionnaire is a device for behavioral self-rating rather than a psychological instrument of established reliability and validity. The objective measure of social support utilization is a methodological concern for the relatively new study of natural support systems. The findings of this study need to be replicated, perhaps using case-study designs to appraise more accurately the actual help-seeking activities of the subjects.

The above considerations notwithstanding, this study provides evidence for significant gender differences in the utilization of natural support systems during personal crises. Such evidence is also provided for a significant relationship between the sex-role attribute of femininity and similar support system use. It remains for further research to delineate the relationship between gender, personality, and specific behaviors that affect natural support system utilization and may influence risk levels for stress-related disorders.

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