Download Gender Schema Theory

Chapter Two Theoretical Perspectives
“[Girls] notice the penis of a brother or playmate, strikingly visible and of large proportions, at once
recognize it as the superior counterpart of their own small and inconspicuous organ, and from that time
forward fall a victim to envy for the penis.”
Sigmund Freud
Psychoanalytic Theory
Psychoanalytic theory: a psychological theory originated by Freud; its basic assumption is that part of the
human psyche is unconscious.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
Humans are dominated by 2 basic instincts
Libido: sex drive or life force
Thanatos: death force
Libido is focused on the erogenous zones
Erogenous zones: areas of the body that are particularly sensitive to sexual stimulation
Stages of Development
One of Freud’s greatest contributions was to promote the view of human personality as being the result of
development
Stages characterized by focus on an erogenous zone
Stage 1: Oral
Infant derives pleasure from sucking, eating; experiences world through mouth
Stage 2: Anal
Toddler derives pleasure from defecating
Stage 3: Phallic
Ages 3-6; pleasure zone is the genitals; sexual feelings arise toward the parent of the other gender
Oedipal Complex
Named for the Greek myth of Oedipus
Boy develops sexual desire for his mother, but sees that father, who is his rival, is so
powerful that he might castrate his own son (boy feels castration anxiety) in retaliation
By repressing his sexual desire for mother, the boy identifies with his father, and
therefore introjects the values and ethics of society (as represented by father), developing
a conscience or superego
For a girl, the phallic stage is considerably different, beginning with the realization that she has
no penis
Recognizing that the penis is superior to her clitoris, she feels envious of males and develops
penis envy
She also feels mutilating, believing that she had a penis at one time, but that it was cut off
Electra complex
Holding her mother responsible for her castration, a girl develops an intense sexual
attraction for and desire to be impregnated by her father
Desire to impregnated by father develops into maternal urges
Passivity, Masochism, and Narcissism
Freud believed there are 3 key female personality traits:
Passivity: desire to be impregnated,
Masochism: the desire to experience pain, as in being “penetrated” and through childbirth
Narcissism
Immature Superego
The girl is not motivated to resolve the Electra complex (she’s already castrated), so she never
develops a fully mature superego and her moral development is inadequate
Thus, she maintains lifelong feelings of inferiority, a predisposition to jealousy, and intense
maternal desires
Freud (1948): “Their [girls’] superego is never so inexorable, so impersonal, so
independent of its emotional origins as we require it to be in men.”
Criticisms of Psychoanalytic Theory
Concepts cannot be evaluated scientifically to determine accuracy (how do we measure the unconscious?)
Freud derived his ideas from work with patients who sought therapy; his theory describes disturbed, not
normal, behavior
Freud overemphasized biological determinants of human behavior in seeing origins of gender differences
as rooted in anatomical differences
Freud’s views are phallocentric (male centered, penis centered), assuming that the vagina and clitoris are
inferior to the penis
Phallocentric theory is an example of a male-as-normative, androcentric model in psychology
Variations on a Freudian Theme: Karen Horney (1885-1952)
Importance of penis envy was overstated, that the critical factor was actually womb envy, male’s envy of
woman’s uterus and reproductive capacity
Male achievement represents overcompensation for feelings of anatomical inferiority
Emphasized cultural and social influences and human growth
Variations on a Freudian Theme: Helene Deutsch (1884-1982)
The Psychology of Women (1944)
Extended Freud’s theory to later development, focusing on motherhood
Focused on “feminine core” of personality, including narcissism, masochism, passivity, instinct, and
intuition
Masculinity complex: some women’s failure to adjust, seen in aggression, active masculine tendencies
Variations on a Freudian Theme: Anna Freud (1895-1982)
Youngest of Sigmund Freud’s children, but only child to continue father’s work
Enormous impact on field of psychoanalysis: founding child psychoanalysis and play therapy
Founded a school for orphaned children during WWII, studying their behavior
Variations on a Freudian Theme: Nancy Chodorow
The Reproduction of Mothering (1978)
Childcare done by women produces vastly different experiences for daughters than for sons;
daughters want to mother, sons devalue and dominate women
The early, intensely close relationship with the mother affects the sense of self and attitudes
toward women: expect women to be caring, self-sacrificing
Girl sees similarity to mother, defines self in relational terms, but boys define masculinity as
non-femininity, and thus devalue women
Mothering perpetuates itself and the gendered division of labor
Chodorow’s work integrates feminism
Feminist reconstruction of Freudian theory: penis envy stems from the fact that the penis
symbolizes the power men have in our society
Prescription for social change to eliminate inequities for women: men must participate equally in
childcare to break cycle of female devaluation
Testing Chodorow’s Theory
Mother-daughter pairs are physically and psychologically closer than mother-son pairs
Criticisms of Chodorow’s Theory
Heterosexist bias: no attempt to understand lesbian development
Ignores influences of race and social class
Like Freud, Chodorow’s evidence stems from observations of clinical population
Sociobiology & Evolutionary Psychology
Sociobiology: application of evolutionary theory to explaining the social behavior of animals, including
people.
Initially proposed by E.O. Wilson (1975)
E.g., how does evolution shape maternal behavior?
Review evolution by natural selection…
Evolution by Natural Selection
First proposed by Charles Darwin (1881)
The process by which the fittest animals survive, reproduce, and pass their genes on to the next
generation, whereas animals that are less fit do not reproduce and therefore do not pass on their
genes
Central theorem of sociobiology: When a social behavior is genetically influenced, the animal
should behave so as to maximize fitness.
Parental investment: behaviors or other investments in the offspring by the parent that increase the
offspring’s chance of survival
Importance to psychology of women:
Females invest egg, pregnancy, nursing...
But males must invest only sperm
Parent with greater investment should care for young—quality, not quantity
Other parent should try to produce as many offspring as possible—quantity, not quality
Why do women do the childcare?
Greater parental investment
Maternity is always certain, paternity is not
Exception to pattern of maternal care:
Songbirds: equal participation in care of young; monogamous mating system makes paternity
certain
Explaining female orgasm…
Babies are born helpless, dependent, in need of care
Monogamous mating systems are adaptive
Female orgasm evolved to keep the parents together
Explaining the double standard…
Tolerance of male promiscuity and disapproval of female promiscuity is adaptive, given the
gender differences in parental investment
Sexual selection: process by which members of one gender (usually males) compete with each other for
mating privileges with members of the other gender (usually females), and members of the other gender
(females) choose to mate only with certain preferred members of the first gender (males)
Evolutionary psychology (Buss, 1995)
Humans’ complex psychological mechanisms are the result of evolution based on natural
selection
Sexual strategies theory: women and men had different short- and long-term mating strategies
It is to men’s evolutionary advantage to inseminate many women, so they invest in
short-term mating (especially because they can’t be certain of paternity), preferring
younger women who are at peak fertility
Because women have greater parental investment, they put energy into long-term mating
strategies to ensure a man’s commitment to provide for family, preferring men who
possess resources
Feminist criticisms
Biology is often a convenient rationalization for perpetuating the status quo
Sociobiologists view data from an androcentric perspective, only discussing data that support
their androcentric theories
Sociobiology rests on an outmoded version of evolutionary theory that modern biologists
consider naïve
Many studies contradicting evolutionary psychology are beginning to emerge
Eagly & Wood (1999) re-analyzed Buss’s cross-cultural data and proposed an alternative to his
sexual strategies theory
Social-structural theory: a theory of the origin of psychological gender differences that focuses on
the social structure, particularly the division of labor between men and women
Social Learning Theory
Principles of operant conditioning explain the acquisition of gender roles
The mechanisms of social learning theory:
Reinforcement: something that occurs after a behavior and makes the behavior more likely to
occur in the future
Imitation: when people do what they see others doing; we imitate same-gender adults more than
other-gender adults
Observational learning: when a person observes someone doing something, and then does it at a
later time;
Evidence for social learning theory:
Effectiveness of imitation and reinforcements in shaping children’s behavior, in particular
gender-typed behaviors such as aggression
Bandura (1965) found boys to be more aggressive than girls
gender differences disappeared when children were offered reinforcements for being
aggressive
Cognitive-Developmental Theory
Piaget & Inhelder: children have different cognitive organization from adults
Gender identity: individual’s knowledge that she or he is a female or male; develops ~18-24 mos
Gender constancy: child’s understanding that gender is a permanent, unchanging characteristic of the self;
develops ~5-7 yrs; crucial for adoption of gender roles
Gender-role learning as one aspect of cognitive development
Children self-socialize based on gender constancy
Evaluation of theory
Children who have acquired gender constancy imitate same-gender models
Preschoolers who have acquired gender constancy are more stereotyped in their views of adult
occupations than are preschoolers who do not have gender constancy
But, children’s gender-typed interests appear before gender constancy (~ 2-3 yrs)
Gender Schema Theory
Gender Schema Theory
A father and his son were involved in a car accident in which the father was killed and the son was
seriously injured. The father was pronounced dead at the scene of the accident and his body was taken
to a local mortuary. The son was taken by ambulance to a hospital and was immediately wheeled into an
operating room. A surgeon was called. Upon seeing the patient, the attending surgeon exclaimed, “Oh
my God, it’s my son!”
Can you explain this?
A schema is a general knowledge framework that a person has about a particular topic; it processes,
organizes new information on topic
Our perception and memory of information are a result of an interaction of incoming information with our
preexisting schema
A gender schema (Bem, 1981) is a person’s general knowledge framework about gender; it processes
and organizes information on the basis of gender-linked associations
Gender schemas are closely linked to our self-concept
A girl’s self-esteem is dependent on how well she measures up to her girl schema
Different individuals have, to some extent, different gender schemas
The gender schema is more central to self-concept for some people—those who are highly gender-typed
Evidence for gender schema theory
5- and 6-year olds tend to remember the picture on the left but distort the picture on the right so
it’s stereotype-consistent
Feminist Theories
Gender as status and power
Gender is a class variable in our society; males and females are unequal in status
Sexism is pervasive, existing in political, academic, economic, and interpersonal spheres
Men have greater power than women
The personal is political: personal, individual experiences are manifestations of larger political
issues
Sexuality
A central issue for feminism because women’s sexuality has been repressed and depressed, but
rarely expressed
Women’s sexuality is controlled by men
Gender roles and socialization
American society has well-defined roles for males and for females; such roles are constricting to
individuals
External vs. internal attributions of problems
Feminists view the sources of women’s problems as being external
Consciousness raising
Major technique of analysis, structure of organization, method of practice, and theory of social
change of the women’s movement (MacKinnon, 1982)
Focus on seeing personal experiences in larger political context
Varieties of feminism:
Liberal feminism: women should have the opportunities and rights equal to those of men; work to
reform current system
Cultural feminism: women have special, unique qualities that differentiate them from men; our
patriarchal society devalues those qualities
Marxist feminism: oppression of women is just one instance of oppression based on class, rooted
in capitalism
Radical feminism: patriarchal values have saturated society to such an extent that radical changes
are needed, such as female-only space safe from oppression
Postmodern feminism: questions rationality and objectivity as methods for getting at truth;
advocates social constructionist epistemology
Gender, race/ethnicity, and class
Gender cannot be understood as a social variable in isolation; it can be understood only in the
context of race and social class as well
Social construction of gender
Social constructionism: theoretical viewpoint that humans do not discover reality directly; rather,
they construct meanings for events in the environment based on own prior experiences and beliefs
Attitudes toward feminism
21% of women think of selves as feminists
75% of women think feminism improved lives