Chapter 5: Social Roles
Egalitarian roles
(equal roles) Roles based on equality between genders.
Marital selection effect
Statistical effect in which healthier people are more apt to marry and stay married, producing the appearance that marriage benefits health
Caregiver burden
Symptoms of decline in mental and physical health common among caregivers.
What makes emerging adulthood different from adolescence or adulthood?
The age of identity explorations, the age of instability, the self-focused age, the age of feeling in-between, and the age of possibilities.
Transition to adulthood
The process by which young people move into their adult roles.
Cohabitation
living together without marriage
Alternative to marriage
couples who live together with no intention of marrying
Becoming a parent:
41% of all births were to unmarried parents.
How many births are to cohabiting couples?
58%
What is the average age of people when they leave home?
20
Stat for couples cohabiting today?
11% of all young, couples are currently cohabiting Most couples who marry today have been living together before the wedding.
Expansion of gender roles
Change in gender roles at midlife causing men and women to broaden their gender roles to include more attributes of the opposite gender.
Biosocial Perspective
Considers that a bias for masculine roles and feminine roles evolved over the course of human evolution, based on biological differences and gender roles that reflect the individual's biology, developmental experiences, and social position.
Prelude to marriage
Couples living together for a period of time and then marrying.
Economic exchange theory
Explanation of gender roles stating that men and women form intimate partnerships based on an exchange of goods and services.
Marital resources effect
Explanation that married people have more financial and social resources, so have better mental and physical health.
Marital crisis effect
Explanation that married people have not been through the crises involved in divorce or widowhood and, as a result, have better mental and physical health.
Proximal causes
Factors that are present in the immediate environment.
Distal causes
Factors that were present in the past.
Social role theory
Gender roles are the result of young children observing the division of labor within their culture, thus learning what society expects of them as men and women, and then following these expectations.
Parental imperative
Genetically programmed tendency for new parents to become more traditional in their gender roles.
Crossover of gender roles
Hypothesized change in gender roles at midlife causing women to become masculine and men to become feminine.
Parental investment theory
In evolutionary psychology, the explanation that men and women evolved different behaviors and interests because the women have more invested in each child than the men.
Learning-schema theory
States that children are taught to view the world and themselves through gender-polarized lenses that make artificial or exaggerated distinctions between what's masculine and what's feminine.
Emerging adulthood
Period of transition from adolescence to young adulthood
Instrumental qualities
Personal characteristics that have an active impact, like being competitive, adventurous, and physically strong (stereotypical male qualities)
Communal qualities
Personal characteristics that nurture or bring people together, such as being expressive, affectionate (stereotypical female qualities)
John Williams and Deborah Best
Psychologists who investigated gender stereotypes in 25 different countries. Students were given 300 adjectives to describe gender and they had to assign them as either male or female associations.
Role transitions
Roles are neither gained or lost; they change as the life circumstances of the individual change.
Gender stereotypes
Sets of shared beliefs or generalizations about what men and women in a society have in common, often extending to what members of each gender ought to do and how they should behave.
Alternative to being single
These relationships tend to not last long, nor end in marriage.
Evolutionary psychology
Traces the origins of gender roles to solutions our ancestors evolved in response to problems they faced millions of years ago.
Cohabitation numbers around the world indicate:
the differences in the economy, religion, partnership laws and benefits, and availability to affordable housing in each country - among other factors.
Social roles
the expected behaviors and attitudes that come with one's position in society.
