Exploring Expectations Involving Gender Identity

One of the most important aspects of human development is the acquisition of a gender identity. All theorists who attempt to explain development must include a discussion of how little boys learn their culture's "masculine" behaviors and attitudes and how little girls learn the things their culture considers "feminine." Freud, for instance, believed that gender identity develops out of the Oedipus complex in the process of identifying with the child's same-sex parent. Learning theorists believe that gender identity is primarily the result of imitation of and reinforcement for sex-appropriate behavior. Cognitive theorists believe that gender identity develops naturally once the child has the cognitive ability to understand the concepts of "male" and "female" and learns that one of these concepts applies to himself or herself.

Perhaps you have wondered about the expectations that people have about males and females. Do men develop different attitudes about women than women do? Do women develop different expectations about men than men do? Do men and women both have different expectations for women than they do for men?

The following experiment is designed to pick up subtle differences in how men and women you know evaluate the competence of men versus women.

Experimental Procedure

STEP 1 Hand a copy of one of the forms to the first subject. Make sure that the twelve copies are distributed as follows:

Form A to 3 women
Form A to 3 men
Form B to 3 women
Form B to 3 men

STEP 2 Read the following instructions to the subject: "This experiment is designed to determine the kinds of attributions people make about authors. To participate in the experiment, please read each of the four poems carefully. These poems were written by college freshmen for an assignment requiring them to write a poem about some emotion they were feeling at the time. Your task is to evaluate how good you think each poem is, and then grade each on an A-B-C-D-F scale. You may use pluses and minuses (for example, an A- or a C+) if you wish. Try to discriminate differences in quality among the poems. Try to give each poem a different grade, based on its quality. Thank you for your participation in this experiment."

STEP 3 Ask the subject if he or she has any questions. If so, answer them. If not, let the subject grade each of the four poems.

STEP 4 Collect the completed sheet from the subject. Immediately mark the sheet with an M if the subject was a male, or with an F if the subject was a female. Don't forget this step, or you will not be able to record the data properly.

STEP 5 Repeat this procedure with the remaining eleven subjects. Again, make sure that:

3 female subjects get Form A
3 male subjects get Form A
3 female subjects get Form B
3 male subjects get Form B

STEP 6 Number the answer sheets from female subjects from 1 to 6 and from male subjects from 1 to 6.

Analyzing the Results

STEP 2 Convert each of the letter grades to a numerical score according to the following scale:

Write in the numerical score for each of the letter grades in the columns provided in the scoring tables.

STEP 3 Beginning with the data collected from female subjects, compute the average score for each of the four poems by adding up the six scores and dividing the total by 6 (the number of scores). Write in the average score for each poem's author in the corresponding box marked "averages."

STEP 4 Compute the average scores for each author based on scores from male subjects the same way you did for females in Step 3 above.

STEP 5 On the table for female subjects, calculate the average of the female authors' poems by adding together the average score for Cynthia plus the average score for Mary and then dividing the total by 2. Record this number in the "Female authors' average" box. Repeat this procedure for the male authors' scores given by female subjects.

STEP 6 Do the same calculations of averages for the scores based on responses of male subjects (see Steps 3-5).

STEP 7 Now transfer the female and male authors' average scores to the following table. Be careful to put the numbers in the right places.

STEP 8 Go back to the grade-score conversion scale in Step 2. Convert the average score in each quadrant to a letter grade. (You will need to round off your averages to the nearest whole number.) Write the letter grades that correspond to these four scores in the appropriate places in the table above.

Examine the results of your experiment as summarized in the table. What trends do you see? Are female subjects more or less likely than male subjects to give higher grades to female authors? Who is more likely to favor male authors? On the average, are poems written by male authors graded higher or lower than poems written by female authors?

Did you notice that the poems written by female authors on Form A are identical to those on Form B by male authors? (Actually, these poems were all written by the same person. The names of the authors are fake.*) Why is it necessary to have the same poem attributed to both a male and a female author? The reason for doing this is so that the grades cannot be attributed to the quality of the poem itself, but can only be attributed to the sex of the author.

This experiment is very similar to a classic experiment performed by Philip Goldberg in 1968. In his experiment, Goldberg asked female college students to read several scholarly articles and evaluate them. Some of the women read articles they believed were written by a female author—Joan T. McKay. Other women read identical articles that they believed were written by John T. McKay—a man. Overall, the women in Goldberg's study evaluated the articles much more favorably when they believed the articles had been written by a man rather than a woman. Thus, Goldberg found that the women had developed attitudes that had led them to assume that a female author would be less competent than a male author.

Do the results of your study replicate Goldberg's results? That is, did your female subjects given the poems higher grades when they believed the poems had been written by men? Did your male subjects show the same trend as Goldberg's subjects in rating these poems? How can you explain the results of your study? Have modern efforts to erase sexism worked, according to your data?

Finally, consider for a moment how these attitudes about differences between the sexes are developed. Can you think of examples of differential reinforcement for girls and boys that would lead to differences like those Goldberg found? Do you think children identify with their parents' attitudes? What other explanations can you offer for these results?