Freud (Psychoanalytic theory)
Sexual stages
Oedipus/Electra Complex
- castration anxiety and penis envy
Clitoral vs vaginal orgasm
Horney’s challenge of Freud
Womb envy - unconscious fear and envy of the mother and the necessity for boys but not girls to switch their identity from the mother to the father making identifying with the same-sex parent hard for boys
Identifying with the same-sex parent is hard for girls because women are valued less in society
Devaluation and sexualization by parents can cause clinging to one parent and jealousy of the other (the Oedipus complex)
Chodorow’s Feminist Psychoanalytical Perspective
Child identifies with the mother because she is the primary caretaker. Boys must later switch their identification to the father, and they devalue femininity in their flight from it. Because of the power wielded by the mother in the early mother-child relationship, both males and females grow up to feel uneasy about female power
Pleck on Male Gender Role and Identity
Gender-role strain
Masculine gender roles are contradictory and inconsistent, making it difficult for boys to settle into a comfortable gender role
Social dominance theory
males are more social-dominance oriented due to contextual social differences
gender differences in social dominance orientation then are more likely to be found in societies that emphasize group dominance and that are organized hierarchially
Social role theory
Men and women are expected to have the qualities that fit them for the tasks they normally carry out causing the qualities to become stereotypic to men or women
The gender stereotypes make it easier for women and men to prepare for, be selected for, and perform roles that are gender stereotypic
Functionalism evolutionary theory
Men and women have different and complementary functions for the survival of the human race and probably evolved somewhat differently to fulfill these functions
Ex. maternal instinct
Sociobiology and Evolutionary Psychology
Sociobiology - emphasizes the comparison of animal and human behaviours and seeks evidence about how animals and humans have developed similar social behaviours in response to similar selection pressures
Evolutionary Psychology - adds to sociobiology an emphasis on the evolution of the mind and mental abilities
Both - assume that women and men have evolved different strategies of sexaual selection and reproduction in the interests of the survival of their own particular genes
Biosocial theory
- Focuses on the interactive relations between the physical attributes of men and women and the social contexts in which they live.
- Human societies self-organize to max the efficiency with which the tasks involved in surviving and thriving are carried out. Individuals are motivated to fit in with the social expectations promoted by their societies
- Cultures build on the physical differences between the sexes by socializing them towards a division of labor that is efficient under the particular environmental conditions
- Individuals respond to social expectations and to their own biological processes and constraints by adopting gender roles
Social learning theory
Suggests that the child develops both gender identity and gender role through a learning process that involves modeling, imitation, and reinforcement
boys learn to be masculine and girls to be feminine because gender role appropriate behaviours are rewarded and gender role inappropriate behaviours are punished
Social cognitive theory
Although children may initially learn gender roles through external rewards and punishments, as they mature they begin to regulate their own actions through internal rewards and punishments
Cognitive developmental theory
- gender cannot be learned until a child reaches a particular stage of intellectual development
- children are motivated to learn the correct ways to categorizer and fit into their social world
- once cognitively mature enough children will place themselves in ways they see as a good fit to that category
gender constancy
- acquired between the ages of 3 and 5
- an understanding that a person’s gender is fixed and cannot be changed
- has 3 stages:
- an awareness that 2 sexes exist and of belonging to one of them
- an understanding that gender does not change over time (stability)
- an understanding that gender remains unchanged across situation and behaviours (constancy)
Gender schematic vs gender aschematic
Gender schematic people are more likely to remember a person based on their masculinity or femininity because they tend to sort things into one of these two categories
Gender aschematic people have a weak gender schema and would not categorize things in this way
Cumulative continuity
the process through which an individual, beginning at childhood, selects and creates environments that fit her or his preferred forms of behaviour and these selected environments reinforce and sustain that behaviour
ex. shy guy - environment with little social contact - not pushed to be more gregarious but sustain the shyness
Interactional continuity
- The two-way transactions between the person and the social environment. A person’s behaviour elicits a reaction from others that promotes continuity of the behaviour through reinforcement, confirmation of expectations, and confirmation of the person’s self-concept
- Ex. aggressive child expects others to be hostile and so behaves in ways that trigger hostile reactions in others confirming his expectations and making the behaviour likely in the future
The interactive model of gender-related behaviour
an individual’s gender-related behaviours in a social interaction are influenced by what others expect, what the individual believes about her/himself and the situational cues
people adjust to the expectations of others which are often related to the gender belief system
gender belief system
key concept in the interactive model of gender-related behaviour
a multifaceted, all-encompassing set of ideas that people have about gender including stereotypes that people have about the characteristics of women and men; the attitudes that they hold about the social roles occupied by women and men; and the view men and women themselves have about their own gender identity
Gender schemas
guide the way people interpret events and actions
guide behavioural choices
Continuity theory
- People may direct different expectations towards girls and boys
- Small differences in treatment or temperament are magnified over time through cumulative continuity
Alpha and Beta bias
Alpha - tendency toward exaggerating differences
Beta - inclination to ignore or min differences
