ATTRIBUTION OF CAUSALITY AS A FUNCTION OF GENDER IDENTITY

An investigation was conducted to determine whether sex-typed persons differed from androgynous persons on their causal attributions for equivalent successful performances by a male and a female on a perceptual discrimination and reasoning task. Gender identity of the subjects was determined by use of the Personal Attributes Questionnaire. Subjects made attributions along four dimensions: ability, luck, effort, and task difficulty, and then estimated the score they expected to receive on the same task. Contrary to prediction, sex-typed persons did not attribute success for a male more to ability, and success for a female more to luck and/or effort. There were no differences between the attributions of sex-typed and androgynous subjects on the factors of ability, effort, luck, or task difficulty. However, as predicted, masculine-typed and high androgynous subjects differed from feminine-typed and low androgynous subjects on their self-estimate scores. The utility of gender identity measures as predictors of sex-typed and sex-biased behaviors was discussed