Psych 306 Exam 1
Recall at what stage in development the gonads of female and male embryos begin to differ by sex.
"Gonads are sex organs that produce sex cells (egg and sperm) and sex hormones (estrogen and testosterone). Until about the sixth week of development, the gonads of female and male human embryos do not differ by sex."
Understand what it means to be "gender aschematic."
"Lacking the tendency to use gender as a salient schema for understanding the world."
Describe the role of hormones in sex differentiation.
"People often view testosterone as a male hormone and estrogen and progesterone as female hormones. In fact, almost everyone produces all of these hormones, but the amounts produced differ by sex." -androgens such as testosterone initiate the biological masculinization process in the male genitalia. female internal genitalia forms from the absence of androgens. -"estrogen and progesterone are involved in reproductive system development, menstruation, and pregnancy " -testosterone predicts aggression and men have higher levels of it -"men, on average, outperform women on visual-spatial tasks, such as navigating through a three-dimensional space. This sex difference is likely due to estrogen's effects on the hippocampus, an area of the brain related to learning and memory "
Be able to differentiate between "precarious manhood" and "hegemonic masculinity."
Hegemonic masculinity refers to a culturally idealized and exaggerated version of manhood that consists of competition, aggression, success, toughness, and the avoidance of femininity. -" A culturally idealized version of manhood that reinforces men's control over women." • A core element of hegemonic masculinity across cultures is the expectation that men will work and earn enough to provide for family. -Precarious manhood hypothesis: A cross-cultural tendency to define manhood as a precarious social status (hard to earn, easy to lose) that requires continual validation by public action and risk-taking. • When men fail to achieve ideal manhood standards, they risk losing their gender status in other people's eyes, thus men often feel motivated to prove their masculinity by engaging in active and risky behavior and by avoiding anything that might be construed as feminine. • Men's pressure to prove manhood can illuminate sex differences in a wide range of domains: physical health, aggression, risk-taking, occupational preferences, and relationship tendencies.
Review the ethical implications of optimal sex policies.
"Professionals today increasingly reject the optimal sex policy on ethical grounds and instead recommend to parents of intersex infants that they postpone surgeries and hormone treatments until children are old enough to understand their situation, contribute to decisions about their sex assignment and gender identity, and consent to treatment "
Recall what the case study of David Reimer indicates about gender identity and socialization.
"Reimer's story does indicate that gender identity cannot necessarily be shaped entirely by rearing and socialization in a person who undergoes typical sex differentiation in utero." -he was socialized as a girl but later he identified with his sex at birth
Understand the basic elements of social learning theory (i.e., reinforcement, punishment, imitation, observation, etc.).
"Reinforcement: Any response following a behavior that increases the likelihood of the behavior occurring again. Punishment: Any response following a behavior that decreases the likelihood of the behavior occurring again. Model: In social learning theories, a person who performs a behavior that is observed and later imitated by a learner."
Understand what is meant by "neuralplasticity."
"The ability of the brain to reorganize and adapt physically throughout life in response to environmental changes." -"brain undergoes several major developmental changes that are regulated internally by pubertal increases in sex hormones (including testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, and estradiol) and that are also shaped by life experiences such as individuals' patterns of eating, sleeping, and caffeine and tobacco use"
Know what is meant when psychologists report discovering "sex differences" on some variable (in relation to occurrence by chance).
"When researchers find that people of different sexes differ significantly on some variable (e.g., optimism), it means that the average difference found in the optimism levels of women and men is unlikely to have occurred due to chance. It does not convey anything about the size or importance of the sex difference in optimism levels. "
Identify what type of person would be most likely to develop gendered self-views according to the gender self-socialization model.
"children who identify more strongly with their sex (e.g., "I am a girl") and endorse gender stereotypes more strongly (e.g., "Girls are friendly") will be especially likely to develop gendered self-views (e.g., "I am friendly"). " -"The model proposes that children form three sets of cognitive associations about gender: those that connect the self to a sex group (gender identity), those that connect sex groups to traits (gender stereotypes), and those that connect the self to traits (gendered self-views). These associations vary in strength from one person to another, depending on how strongly they are learned and reinforced."
Know what "heritability estimates" suggest about the heritability of gender identity in relation to the heritability of major personality traits.
Another way to assess the relative roles of biology versus socialization in gender identity is to estimate its genetic heritability. • An heritability estimate is a statistic that specifies the proportion of total population variance in a given trait, such as gender identity, that is due to genetic differences among the people in the population. -What little data we have on the heritability of gender identity indicates that it is roughly as heritable as other aspects of personality.
Identify the key to understanding sex differences and similarities between men and women, according to biosocial constructionist theory.
Biosocial constructionist theory integrates the roles of distant biological factors and proximal (close) social and cultural influences to explain sex differences and similarities in behavior and traits. • Biosocial constructionist theory assumes that while some biological sex differences are coded in genes, sex differences in psychological factors, such as personality traits, mating preferences, and jealousy, are not genetically heritable. • This theory predicts that changes in social roles can create fairly rapid changes to the psychology of men and women, and these can lead to changes in cultural gender stereotypes. -Biosocial constructionists primarily emphasize the environment and acknowledges the essential role of biology • Societies can function with greater efficiency when men do certain types of jobs, and women do others. -Men are, on average, larger and physically stronger than women, which tends to make them better suited for some types of physically demanding and dangerous occupations. -"Women's reproductive activities (pregnancy and nursing) make it less efficient for them to do jobs that require them to be away from home for long periods of time and more efficient for them to perform domestic activities " • Two important implications follow: • Men and women must acquire different skills, which children begin to learn early in life. • People form expectations about the qualities and abilities of men and women as a result of their socialized skills and gendered social roles.
Know the characteristics of genetic females with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH).
CAH: the body over manufactures androgens -genetic females with CAH have internal female reproductive anatomy but tend to have more masculine external appearing genitalia.
Be able to distinguish between the principles of "equity" and "equality."
Equity: treating everyone fairly by taking background and difference into accounts -Equality: treating everyone the same, regardless of background or differences
Review how sex differences emerge according to evolutionary psychology.
Evolutionary psychologists assert that humans' physical, behavioral, and psychological attributes are products of what our ancestors did to survive and reproduce. • Sometimes, these variations give people advantages in terms of survival and reproduction; when this happens, advantageous variations more frequently get passed down genetically to future generations. -"Natural selection is a process whereby heritable features increase or decrease an organism's survival -Women have faced unique challenges regarding pregnancy, birthing, and nursing offspring. • Men have faced the unique challenge of paternity uncertainty (the problem of not knowing with certainty whether a given child is one's biological offspring). • According to evolutionary psychology, women and men should have evolved different psychological and behavioral tendencies in adaptation to these different challenges. -Evolutionary psychology primarily emphasizes biology and acknowledges the essential role of environments
Recall the definition of "group-based privilege."
Privilege is professed to be "an advantage that only one person or group of people has". These groups can be advantaged based on age, education level, disability, ethnic or racial category, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, and social class.
Know what researchers using "preferential looking" techniques have discovered regarding toy preferences in young infants.
Studies of infants often use a technique called preferential looking that consists of showing infants two different things and examining how much time they spend looking at each one; researchers find that infants as young as 3-8 months of age prefer looking at sex-typical toys over sex-atypical ones.
Recall how a transgender individual might describe the alignment of their biological sex in relation to their psychological gender.
They feel that there is a mismatch between their assigned sex at birth and their psychological sense of their gender. A transgender women may say that she feels like a woman trapped in a man's body. Their biological organs are male but psychologically she feels female.
Recall what Walter Mischel (1966) meant by the term "sex-typing."
Walter Mischel (1966), the first theorist to apply social learning theory to gender development, defined sex typing as the processes by which individuals acquire gendered behavior patterns. -"For example, a boy might observe his father roughhousing with his brother, imitate this aggressive behavior, and receive praise from his parents. In contrast, a girl might be ignored or even reprimanded for the same aggressive behavior. Children learn which behaviors are associated with their sex through these processes of observation, imitation, reinforcement, and punishment."
Recall the general definition of a "gene-by-environment" interaction.
When a genetic effect on a trait or behavior emerges only under certain environmental circumstances or when the environmental effect on a trait or behavior depends on a person's genetic makeup.
Understand, from a historical perspective, when the study of gender psychology first gained traction.
While the field of psychology got its official start in the late 1800s, researchers in mainstream psychology did not consider gender a legitimate topic of study for much of the field's history. This began to change in the 1970s, largely due to an upsurge in the scholarship of feminist psychologists at the time
Review what characterizes an "androgynous" individual.
androgynous individuals have both masculine and feminine traits. depending on the situation they could be sensitive or assertive, forceful or gentle, aggressive or yielding. -possessing high levels of both stereotypically masculine and feminine traits
Know what percentage of infants are born with some form of intersexuality.
approximately 1.7% of babies are born intersex -intersexuality: condition in which the biological components of sex (chromosomes, hormones, genitals, and internal and external sex organs) do not consistently fit the typical male pattern or the typical female pattern
Recall what the d statistic represents in meta-analytic research.
d statistic: An effect size statistic that expresses the magnitude and direction of a difference between group means, or of the strength of association between variables, in standardized units. "d value Description of size 0.00-0.10 Close to zero 0.11-0.35 Small 0.36-0.65 Medium 0.66-1.00 Large > 1.00 Very large"
Review what it means to be "gender fluid."
describes people whose gender identities shift over time and depend on the situation. Examples of gender-fluid identities include bigender (shifting between woman and man) and trigender (shifting among female, male, and third gender identities).
Review the limitations of correlational research.
do not allow conclusions regarding cause and effect relations to be made nor do they allow researchers to make predictions -third variable problem: some unmeasured third variable could be responsible for the association between two correlated variables
Be able to differentiate between various research designs (i.e., ex post facto, qualitative, person-by-treatment, etc.)
experimental: A researcher manipulates an independent variable, randomly assigns participants to different conditions, and measures their standing on a dependent variable. If the study has good experimental control, cause-and-effect relationships can be determined. Examples include experimental, ex post facto, quasi-experimental, and correlational designs. Ex post facto: A researcher compares groups of people who differ on some participant variable (e.g., women versus men). Cause-and-effect relationships cannot be determined because of reverse causation and the third variable problem. look similar to experiments but have neither the manipulation of an independent variable nor the random assignment. they do not have cause and effect but can lay the foundation for future research to clarify or explain the results -quasi experiments/ person by treatment designs: researcher selects groups of people who differ on some participant variable (e.g., women versus men) and randomly assigns them to different levels of an independent variable. Interaction effects may occur when the effect of the independent variable on the dependent variable differs as a function of the participant variable -correlational designs: researchers test hypothesis about strength and direction of relations between pairs of variables. the stronger the correlation the more accurate the prediction -case study: researcher conducts an in depth investigation of a single entity, usually a person, or group. usually tend to lack generalizability to a larger population. interpretation is widely based on the perspective of the researchers focus groups: interviews conducted in a group format often guided by a moderator. they convene people with similar backgrounds to describe their experiences in their own voices
Determine how the "female deficit model" might influence research questions.
the tendency to view sex differences as arising from something that women lack. it is rooted in androcentrism which is the tendency to view men as the universal or default for the species and women as the exceptions in need of explanation
Understand intersectionality and be able to identify an example of an intersectional perspective in research.
the ways in which different forms of discrimination and oppression (e.g., sexism, racism, classism, heterosexism, and transphobia) interact to shape people's experiences. For instance, rather than just focusing on how "women" as a group are affected by sexism, an intersectional perspective might focus on how sexism interacts with racism and classism to shape the experiences of poor Latinas.
Identify advantages that adults, generally, report during gender development later in life.
• Researchers reported 40% and 50% of older adults (ages 60-69) identified "freedom" as a unique advantage associated with their life stage. • Women tended to appreciate freedom from caregiving and family responsibilities; men appreciated freedom from breadwinning responsibilities. • Gender roles give people a sense of identity and meaning throughout life and may relieve gendered expectations and responsibilities that decrease in salience in the later years.
Review the influence of siblings on gender development.
• Siblings represent a daily source of gender messages. • Girls with older sisters and boys with older brothers have displayed the most traditionally sex-typical behaviors; boys and girls with cross-sex older siblings have shown the least traditionally sex-typical behaviors; children without siblings were somewhere in the middle
Know how researchers coming from a cognitive vs. social learning perspective might frame a study on gender development.
• They both address the acquisition of gender identity (the sense of belonging to a sex category), gender stereotypes, gendered self-views, gender roles, gendered preferences, and gender-based prejudices. But, the theories differ in their assumptions about how gender development unfolds and which factors drive it. -Social learning theories emphasize how external factors (e.g., socialization agents) may shape children's gender development. social learning comes from parents, siblings, teachers, media, and peers. Children learn which behaviors are associated with their sex through these processes of observation, imitation, reinforcement, and punishment. Cognitive theories emphasize how children's growing cognitive abilities lead them to develop gender. The idea that children's cognitions about sex and gender precede and guide their gender stereotypes, preferences, and behaviors remains a hallmark of cognitive gender theories.
Review advantages that socialization processes afford women as they age.
• Women tend to have richer social networks than men do, which may result from socialization processes that cultivate and encourage women's relational tendencies more strongly than men's. • Gender socialization practices around the world train women more consistently than men in practical homemaking skills--cooking, cleaning, and laundry. • While the stresses of poverty and isolation negatively impact both women and men, there may be some ways in which women's gender role socialization better prepares them to live independently in old age. • Men who lose a spouse due to divorce or widowhood have a higher likelihood than women of depression and even death.
Be able to identify an example of a "parent-child interaction."
"Parent-child interaction: Phenomenon in which a parent and child mutually influence one another and therefore jointly contribute to the child's development." • children's temperaments can influence how parents treat them. • even when parents treat male and female children similarly, children may respond differently to such treatment. " For example, girls tend to respond better than boys do to gentle discipline, which can help to explain why parents use harsher discipline with boys than girls. Second, even when parents treat male and female children similarly, children may respond differently to such treatment. For example, boys tend to be more reluctant than girls to accept socialization attempts from their parents. Although most research focuses on parents as socialization agents, gender socialization is a two-way street. Children may not have as much power as their parents do, but they can be active players in their own socialization."
Review what meta-analyses examining the size of sex differences, generally, have found.
"Summarizing the data from 12 million participants in over 20,000 studies of sex differences, this table shows that the vast majority of sex differences on psychological variables falls into the close-to-zero and small ranges." "Gender researchers and consumers of their research have a tendency to emphasize the average differences between women and men (between-sex variability) while ignoring the larger variability that exists within women as a group and within men as a group (within-sex variability)." -"many consider gender to be something that people perform within particular social contexts, not simply a stable quality that resides within individuals (Deaux & Major, 1987). This means that the size of sex differences may increase or decrease depending on the context."
Review, generally, examples of gender bias as manifest in representation of girls and women in children's media.
What children don't see is just as important as what they do see, and girls and women are relatively less visible in much of children's media; children's books and television shows underrepresent female characters. "children's entertainment reinforces gender stereotypes. Television programs and advertisements portray male characters in more active and leadership roles than female characters. In contrast, they more often portray female characters in a sexualized manner and as having a thin body " "Another gender stereotype that is regularly modeled in the media regards toy preferences. As one of the strongest, most consistent sex differences in childhood, sex-typed toy preferences emerge across cultures. "
Understand the effects children's peer and friendship circles can have on gender typical behaviors when sex segregated.
• In school settings, even when teachers encourage mixed-sex play, children choose to spend most of their time with same-sex playmates. • Some experts believe that increasing exposure to same-sex peers as models, combined with reinforcement from such peers, ultimately leads children to adopt more sex-typical behavior and reduce their cross-sex behavior "Over time, peer socialization can produce sex differences in behavior, relationship styles, and even emotional expressions. "
Identify an example of how some social understandings of sex and gender show cultural variability.
in different native american societies they acknowledge individuals that they call two spirit people. these individuals adopt the elements of male and female gender roles . -"In India, hijras are a separate caste of people who live as neither men nor women. Considered sacred within Hinduism, hijras often play important roles in religious rites such as births and weddings, but they also tend to occupy a low social status and face negative stereotypes." -"In the western Balkans, sworn virgins, though biologically female, either are raised as boys from childhood or become men later in life. These individuals dress and live as men but must pledge to remain virgins and never marry."
Review the conclusions drawn from Caspi and colleagues' (2003) longitudinal study on the environmental and genetic roots of depression.
it was individuals who displayed the risky 5-HTT gene variant and also experienced a lot of stress who had a higher prevalence of depression. These findings support the diathesis-stress model in which a genetic predisposition for a disorder emerges only under certain stressful environmental circumstances.
Identify the differences between minimalist and maximalist approaches to gender studies.
minimalist: emphasized similarities. minimalists ignore potentially important sex differences differences and conclude that different sexes are mostly alike. they fail to acknowledge the differences that do exist. -maximalist: emphasizes the differences between sex groups. by focusing on differences and ignoring similarities, researchers may perpetuate overgeneralizing and exaggerated beliefs about sexes -both of these approaches can introduce bias and how they interpret findings
Understand Dr. John Money's "optimal sex policy" at John Hopkins University.
optimal sex refers to the binary sex that doctors and parents perceive as the best option for a newborn whose genitalia appear atypical at birth -money said that intersex infants should be socialized as either boys or girls beginning in the first 18 months of life -money believed that gender identity was largely a product of socialization and that social factors could override any role that biology played in gender identity -money advocated for early corrective surgery if the genitals were not clearly female or male, followed by hormone treatments to ensure typical hormone levels for the assigned sex -policy prioritizes the goal of creating a physical appearance consistent with assigned
Be able to identify examples of specific types of gene-by-environment interactions (e.g., passive, evocative, or active).
passive: parents create certain rearing environments that cannot be separated from their own (and thus their child's) genetic makeup. For instance, consider parents who are genetically skilled at reading and who both pass along reading skills to their children genetically and create reading-rich environments for them. active: "an individual's genetic tendency guides her to choose certain environments, such as a genetically shy person who deliberately chooses quieter environments than her more extroverted sibling chooses." evocative: "an individual's genetic tendency evokes specific treatment from others, such as a boy with an active temperament who elicits rough-and-tumble play from his parents and peers."
Understand the differences between quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-method studies.
quantitative: allow researchers to turn variables into numbers for statistical analyses. numbers -qualitative: allow in depth interpretations of situations. they emphasize the individuals being studied and make sense of their own experiences in context. observed but not measured mixed methods: Mixed methods research is a methodology for conducting research that involves collecting, analyzing and integrating quantitative (e.g., experiments, surveys) and qualitative (e.g., focus groups, interviews) research
Understand the categorical differences between sexual orientation and gender identity.
sexual orientation: refers to people's tendency to develop romantic and sexual attractions to others based on their sex. these labels include gay, lesbian, bisexual, heterosexual, polysexual, pansexual, and asexual gender identity: Individuals' psychological experience of their gender and how they identify internally as a man, woman, or something else. often involves feeling a basic sense of belonging to a sex category. ex: cisgender (people that feel a match between assigned gender and their gender identity), transgender, agender (feel internally ungendered)
Review what social dominance theory suggests about the emergence of group-based social hierarchies.
social dominance theory: group based social hierarchies and dominant group advantages result form a system of discrimination that operates on individual, interpersonal, and institutional levels -within hierarchies there is a dominant group (more access to education, leadership positions, and resources) and subordinate groups (less access to these opportunities and resources) -access to power and resources allows dominant group members to shape the norms and laws that govern society and thus shape the outcomes of subordinate
Review the distinction recommended by Rhoda Unger (1979) regarding differential use of the terms "sex" and "gender."
suggested using the term gender to refer to the nonbiological, culturally constructed aspects of being female or male and the term sex when discussing the biological aspects. -sex refers to male, female, and intersex categories -gender refers to identities, traits, interests, roles, tendencies, attitudes, stereotypes, and socialized practices -for any given difference between women and men we don't have precise knowledge about how much of the difference stems from either biology, socialization, cultural norms, and/or life experiences. it is a combo of biological and social factors
Understand to what degree the various waves of feminism have included (or NOT included) a focus on intersectionality.
the first wave: endorsed the goal of attaining equal treatment of women and men under the law (emphasizing economic and voting rights for women). this wave focused the women as a whole rather than individual oppression and experiences, not focused on intersectionality. -second wave: focused on equal rights and opportunities for women but expanded the focus to domestic violence, sexual harassment, pay equality, and reproduction rights. -third wave: rejects the idea that all women experience a common oppression, and they are critical of the primarily white, middle class, second wave feminist for failing to include diverse women and identities. this wave views race, class, sexual orientation, and gender identity as central issues, and they take more global perspectives on sex and gender. this wave did focus on intersectionality and individual experiences
Understand what is meant by "androcentric thinking."
the tendency to view men as the universal or default for the species and women as the exceptions in need of explanation