Gender is determined by society, forming a self-concept whether we are male or female - gender concept. Sexual identity is a reference towards our biological status as males and females. However gender identity is society bred

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Gender is determined by society, forming a self-concept whether we are male or female – gender concept. Sexual identity is a reference towards our biological status as males and females. However gender identity is society bred, it refers to the classification of others, as male or female and us.

Gender role refers to behaviors and attitudes on which society expects from them or considers appropriate behavior to, their biological sex.  To be typically masculine or feminine they have to conform to their respective gender roles. Gender stereotypes are widely held beliefs about psychological differences between males and females, which can often lead to prejudices between the sexes.         

Prejudice is defined as an attitude. Stereotypes are over simplifications, which can lead to prejudices and discriminations. Prejudices are caused by three main theories: -

  • Social inequality theory
  • Scape-goating theory
  • Personality theory

Social inequality theory proposes that prejudice is caused by: -

  1. Competition for unequally distributed resources. For example the brown eyes, blue eyes experiment (Elliott, in Aronson & Osherow, 1980.
  2. Group identity, which relies on using language and dress to distinguish between in members and out members.
  3. Stereotyping is the simple distribution of certain characteristics to all members of a social group. For example brown-eyed people were more intelligent than blue-eyed people.
  4. Ethnocentrism is favoritism towards the in group and disfavor towards the out group in order to enhance our positive self image, especially those who have low self esteem. For example the robbers cave experiment conducted by Sherif et al., 1961

Scape-goating theory states that frustration arises from many situations, including overcrowding and unemployment, which may lead to aggression that is displaced onto another because the direct-aggression cannot be taken against the cause. These scapegoats are usually from socially approved target groups.

‘Weatherley (1961) had an experimenter insult students who were either low or high scorers on a measure of anti-Semitism as they completed another questionnaire. After this the students were asked to write short stories about pictures, two of which showed men with Jewish sounding names. Low and high scorer did not differ in the amount of aggression displayed in their stories about the pictures of men with non-Jewish sounding names. However high scorers displayed more aggression than low sounding scorers towards the pictures of men with Jewish sounding names. Similar effects have been found when frustration is induced in other ways, such as making people feel failures’  

        The personality theory was developed by Adorne, which grew from the anti-Semitism of the 1930’s and 40’s, in the USA and Germany. He developed four scales of measuring prejudice. These are: -

  1. F-scale which measures the potential for fascism
  2. E-scale which measures ethnocentrism
  3. PEC-scale which stands fro political- economic- conservatism
  4. AS-scale which is Anti-Semitism
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Moreover, Adorne found that ethnocentric people tend to share certain characteristics; they had rigid personalities and were very conventional in their attitudes. Many of these had also been raised harshly by disciplinarian parents and were through believers in disciple themselves.

This led Adorne to look into the idea that there was particular type of personality who was prone to be ethnocentric and authoritarian. He named this type of personality fascist, and devised the f-scale inventory to measure people’s potentiality for fascism.

Adorne found that his ‘fascist’ type to be conventional, submissive to authority, aggressive, authoritarian, hostile to ...

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