SEX ROLE STEREOTYPING AND SELF-CHARACTERIZATIONS

Research assessing sex-role characteristics has been derived from personality assessments or interests and has often reflected the conceptual biases of the researchers. A study was conducted using common but unselected attributions by requiring absolute judgments and by using factor analysis on the data. The 367 adjectives were selected by methods designed to eliminate any researcher bias. Participants (N=683) were men and women from an introductory psychology class. Stere,typic judgments were obtained by having two groups of men and two groups of women, with 50 subjects in each of the two groups, rate the extent to which a characteristic described a typical male or female today on an 11-pont scale. Self-characterizations were obtained by having 69 men and 84 women describe themselves on the same scale. Ratings of desirability characteristic of the typical male, female, and self were made independently. Men and women had high agreement concerning the attributes of typical males and females with a correlation of.76. Differentiating characteristics were identified. The results do not support traditional findings of the lesser desirability of the feminine stereotype compared to the masculine stereotype. The single factor which explained 83.3 percent of the total variance conflicts with results from earlier studies. (ABL) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document