Christina Spears Brown - Shyness Doesn’t Make a Boy Any Less of a Man

One of the better blogs at Psychology Today is Beyond Pink and Blue by Christia S. Brown, Ph.D. In this recent post (yesterday), she reports on a new study from Sex Roles: A Journal of Research - Bashful Boys and Coy Girls: A Review of Gender Differences in Childhood Shyness.

This particular study found that by elementary schools boys report 50% lower incidence of shyness than do girls (by 5th grade). This is interesting because at birth, rates of shyness (being inherited) are roughly equal between the sexes. 

Based on these findings, it seems boys begin to under-report their shyness - and the likely reason is that shyness is not masculine.

Shyness Doesn’t Make a Boy Any Less of a Man

Parents, teachers, and peers penalize shy boys, leading to long-lasting stress

Published on September 3, 2014 by Christia S. Brown, Ph.D. in Beyond Pink and Blue

Maybe it’s our culture’s preoccupation with superheroes, or pirates, or football players, or cowboys, or explorers, or astronauts, or firefighters. All of these brave and bold archetypes are almost always depicted as men, and are heavily marketed to boys. I have learned these facts the hard way, slogging through toy aisle after toy aisle. As a mother of a daughter who loves superheroes, I am well aware of how difficult it is to find female superheroes (thank goodness for eBay). And we have plenty of firefighter toys, because my husband is one, but they are all men. This is a minor frustration to me, as I would love to more easily show my daughters models of brave, bold, and daring women.

But a new study published in Sex Roles: A Journal of Research by researchers Laura Doey, Robert Coplan, and Mila Kingsbury is a stark reminder that there are times when living in a gender stereotypical culture is much harsher for boys than girls.

The study examined the issue of shyness in children. Shyness is part of our temperament from birth. It has complex biological foundations, and seems to be largely heritable. Shyness is associated with fear and anxiety in social situations, and leads kids to feel self-conscious and inhibited. Shy kids do not boldly rush into new situations. They typically speak less and interact with their peers less often. They are not depressed or “broken.” They are simply shy (largely because of the genes they inherited from mom and dad).

When children are infants, in preschool, and in early elementary school, there are no differences in shyness between boys and girls. By 5th grade, however, twice as many American girls than boys label themselves as shy! These vast gender differences continue through adolescence as well.

What happened? Why did shyness, which started as a biological trait that was similar across boys and girls, become doubled in girls relative to boys by middle school?

Although the answers are complex, a big reason, according to the authors, is that boys aren’t SUPPOSED to be shy, fearful, or anxious. Shyness definitely doesn’t’ fit the stereotype. We never hear about the meek and quiet superhero, pirate, football player, cowboy, explorer, astronaut, or firefighter.

It appears that boys begin to under-report feeling shy by late elementary school. In other words, they don’t become less shy. They just learn to hide it better. The question immediately becomes why hide a biological, heritable, perfectly normal trait. Because boys (but not girls) are penalized for showing shyness, as though it is a sign of weakness.

In a review of past research, the researchers highlight the ways that parents, teachers, and peers discourage and punish boys for displaying signs of shyness. We see that shy boys are consistently encouraged to be assertive and bold, whereas shy girls are allowed to be who they naturally are. Parents in cross-national samples reward sadness, fear, and shyness in girls, but punish boys for the same emotions. In other studies, mothers interact less positively with shy boys than with shy girls. These differences seem to be exacerbated among parents who endorse gender stereotypes.

We also see differences in how shy boys and shy girls are treated in the classroom. “For example, teachers from the U.S. tend to praise boys for outspoken behaviors, but praise girls for restraining spontaneous conversations in the classroom.” Boys get the message from their peers at school, too. Shy boys are more likely to be rejected by their peers than shy girls.

The researchers even point to studies that have examined children’s books. In one study, children’s storybooks were analyzed and found that shy male characters were portrayed as having exceptionally unhappy and difficult lives compared to shy female characters (who seem pretty content to sit and read a book). It doesn’t take much in-depth research to notice that boys’ toys almost exclusively feature aggressive, heroic action figures.

The stereotype that boys should not be shy is even reflected in children’s memory. When children were read vignettes about other children, they remembered more information about the story and the characters when the story involved a shy girl compared to a shy boy. This is a common principle in the stereotyping literature­– when it fits the stereotype, it is easier to remember.

Why does penalizing boys for being shy, and only showing them bold brave role models, matter? Because research shows that it is extremely stressful to be shy when you are a boy. Even in preschool, shy boys have higher cortisol levels (the hormone that becomes elevated when stressed) throughout the day compared to shy girls. This increased stress level stays throughout childhood. If you conceptualize drug and alcohol use as a means of coping with stress, it is not surprising that being shy increases the likelihood that boys will engage in substance abuse in adolescence. For girls, being shy actually reduces their likelihood to drink or do drugs.

This research puts my frustration at only finding Wonder Woman party supplies on eBay in perspective. The reality is that I can find Wonder Woman, so I can show my daughter bold role models (in tiaras). I can also find plenty of quiet role models. She is allowed to be timid when she wants to be and no one seems to mind.

My concern is for all the shy boys who have a much harder time finding timid or meek male role models. Timid men are only portrayed as less-than "real men." The Clark Kent rube hiding the real hero Superman. "Man up!," boys are frequently told. But the reality is not the stereotype: being timid is not a weakness nor a deficit. It is simply a temperamental style children are born with, one without a real gender difference, and one not to be punished or penalized.

Reference:
Doey, L., Coplan, R.J., & Kingsbury, M. (2014). Bashful boys and coy girls: A review of gender differences in childhood shyness. Sex Roles: A Journal of Research; 70(7-8): 255-266.

Abstract

Shyness is a temperamental trait characterized by a fear of novel social situations and self-consciousness in situations of perceived social evaluation. From early childhood to adolescence, shyness is associated with a host of negative outcomes including poor peer relationships (e.g., exclusion, victimization), internalizing problems (e.g., anxiety, depression), and school adjustment difficulties (e.g., lack of academic success, school avoidance). It has been suggested that shyness may be less socially acceptable for boys than for girls because it violates gender norms related to male social assertion and dominance. In the current paper, we review the empirical support for this assertion. More specifically, we examined: (1) possible gender differences in the prevalence of shyness; (2) how important others (i.e., parents, teachers, peers) might respond differentially to shyness in boys compared to girls; and (3) potential gender differences in the implications of shyness across multiple domains. Most of this research has been conducted with school-aged children from Canada and the United States. However, we also explore findings from emerging cross-cultural studies in this area. Possible conceptual mechanisms that may underlie differences in the potential implications of shyness for boys and girls are then discussed, as well as several prospective directions for future research.

The same journal posted a commentary on this article, and it also is not available due to a paywall. For those who might be interested, here is the abstract:
 

Sex Roles; April 2014: 70(7-8): 285-308.

Commentary: Bashful Boys and Coy Girls: A Review of Gender Differences in Childhood Shyness

Heidi Gazelle, Divya Peter, Maedeh Aboutalebi Karkavandi

Abstract

In this commentary we argue that subjective reviews of gender differences, as opposed to empirical meta-analyses, can be more affected by influences which may not yield an objective evaluation of the available evidence, including the potential overrepresentation of articles that do versus do not find gender differences and lack of a systematic evaluation of factors that influence findings. We consider theoretical bases for considering shyness to be detrimental to the development and wellbeing of girls. These include perspectives that characterize girls as being particularly affected by their personal relationships and children of both genders as influenced by patterns of same-gender interaction. Some perspectives are helpful in conceptualizing why gender difference patterns can be nuanced over the course of development, across different outcomes, contexts, and historical periods. We also briefly consider the utility of diathesis × stress and differential susceptibility models in understanding gendered patterns of adjustment. We argue that reviews of gender differences in childhood shyness should address the gender difference paradox in childhood shyness and anxiety. That is, why are gender differences in the prevalence of shyness typically absent in early to middle childhood (as concluded in the review article), but girls and women consistently demonstrate higher rates of anxiety disorders, including social anxiety disorder, than their male counterparts in adolescence and adulthood? Finally, we conclude with comments encouraging researchers to consider the potential consequences of how they convey messages about gender differences in childhood shyness. We suggest how such information can be communicated in a responsible manner.

This is an interesting article - here is a good summary of the findings:

The researchers found that male participants tended to partake in more essentialist thinking than their female counterparts, regardless of the group to which they were assigned. They also found that all participants, regardless of condition or their own gender, held stronger stereotypes about males than about females. "People," Eidson explained, "are less willing to accept violations of the male gender role than of the female gender role."

This is why I keep doing this blog - men are much more locked into strict gender roles than are females, and it's both sexes who enforce these expectations.

That's an important finding - if women really want men to change, they have to support those changes.

The thinking behind gender stereotypes

by Angela Herring | Medical Xpress

Associate professor of psychology John Coley, right, and R. Coley Eidson, a doctoral candidate in Coley’s lab, recently released a paper overturning a body of research on the way we think about gender roles. Credit: Brooks Canaday

If you ask a kid what it means to be male or female, you'll likely get a pretty stereotypical response. Boys, kids tend to think, are inherently interested in boy-like things—trucks, baseball, and construction work—while girls are inherently interested in dolls, dress-up, and tea parties. Boys like to build things and go fishing and want to be football players when they grow up. Girls like to sew, wear makeup, and want to be ballerinas. For the young examinee, the behavioral tendencies of boys and girls are just as fundamental as their physical attributes.

Most research has found that this stereotypical, or "essentialist," thinking tends to fade as we get older. According to associate professor of psychology John Coley, the academic literature has suggested that by the time we're in elementary school we start to see environment as playing a large role in the manifestation of gender roles. We learn that girls aren't inherently more inclined to be teachers and nurses, but that our environment and our experiences urge us into such gender-normal behaviors.

But new research from Coley and R. Cole Eidson, a doctoral candidate in his Categorization and Reasoning Lab at Northeastern, suggests that we retain some of our childlike, essentialist-thinking into adulthood. In a paper published earlier this year in the Journal of Cognition and Development, the duo repeated earlier studies of children using a group of undergraduate students, but they added a twist.

Eidson explained that if you could strip away an adult's years of cultural learning—in which they collect a better understanding of people's individuality and how they think and behave—"then you might still find essentialist thinking lurking beneath the surface." To accomplish this, they gave the study's participants a time constraint.

First, they presented the 36 male and 33 female participants with four characters: a girl raised by only women, a girl raised by only men, a boy raised by only women, and a boy raised by only men. Then, just as with the earlier studies on children, they asked the participants how the individual would behave in a particular situation or what kinds of physical attributes the person would have as an adult. But unlike the earlier studies, Eidson and Coley split their participants into two groups with two different directives. Half of them had to wait 10 seconds before making their decision about the character while the other half had to make a snap judgment, answering the question in less than two seconds.

The constraint made a significant difference. Those who had to reply quickly tended to respond with more stereotypical answers, just as a pre-elementary-school child might do. The participants who had more time to consider their replies tended to respond with more socially-acceptable answers.

"This work shows that essentialist thinking is automatic and deeply-rooted, but that people can overcome this bias given time and cognitive resources," Coley said.

The researchers found that male participants tended to partake in more essentialist thinking than their female counterparts, regardless of the group to which they were assigned. They also found that all participants, regardless of condition or their own gender, held stronger stereotypes about males than about females. "People," Eidson explained, "are less willing to accept violations of the male gender role than of the female gender role."

Coley and Eidson can only speculate on why this might be the case, but perhaps, Coley said, it has something to do with the fact that female gender roles have undergone a determined shift over the past century.

This research continues the work being done in Coley's lab examining the way humans categorize their world. But this study is among the first to look at the cognitive processes underlying the way we categorize our fellow humans based on gender.

The work, Eidson said, has implications for dealing with social phenomena such as prejudice and stereotyping. If we believe that different groups have different inherent properties and we start assigning values to those properties, "then really quickly you can move into a place where one group is less desirable than another," he said. "Even adults are still doing this, it's just under the surface. Understanding that may give you some kind of inroad to dealing with those kinds of issues."

Explore further: The brain's reaction to male odor shifts at puberty in children with gender dysphoria

More information: 
Eidsona, RC & Coleya, JD. (2014). Not So Fast: Reassessing Gender Essentialism in Young Adults. Journal of Cognition and Development; 15(2). DOI: 10.1080/15248372.2013.763810

Provided by Northeastern University

Understanding High Sensitivity in Boys More Deeply

I stumbled upon the first article through finding the second article yesterday on the Psychology Today blogs. Taken together, the two pieces (written more than two years apart) offer a good overview of raising and nurturing a highly sensitive boy.

I suspect there is a false belief out there that girls are more likely than boys to become HSPs (The Highly Sensitive Person). However, at birth boys tend to be more clingy and emotionally needy than girls; by the end of the first year this difference has equalized; by the third year girls are more emotionally needy than boys.

This may in large part be due to how parents raise their children based on their own gender biases. This passage comes from Cordelia Fine's Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference (2010):

Psychologists often find that parents treat baby girls and boys differently, despite an absence of any discernible differences in the babies’ behaviour or abilities. One study, for example, found that mothers conversed and interacted more with girl babies and young toddlers, even when they were as young as six months old.[7] This was despite the fact that boys were no less responsive to their mother’s speech and were no more likely to leave their mother’s side. As the authors suggest, this may help girls learn the higher level of social interaction expected of them, and boys the greater independence. Mothers are also more sensitive to changes in facial expressions of happiness when an unfamiliar six-month-old baby is labelled as a girl rather than a boy, suggesting that their gendered expectations affect their perception of babies’ emotions.[8]

Even more support for boys and girls being essentially equal in their socio-emotional needs as infants comes from Lise Eliot's Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow Into Troublesome Gaps -- And What We Can Do About It (2009).

Boys are no less sensitive, by nature, than are girls. However, before they are even born, assuming the parents know the gender, the child is being socialized according to the gender norms of the parents.

The Highly Sensitive Boy

Does your son cry often?

Published on January 23, 2012 by Maureen D. Healy in Creative Development

Does your boy cry often? Has he ever been bullied? Does he enjoy his time alone and quiet space? Is he deeply affected by violence? Or keenly perceptive to how you are feeling or thinking? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you may be raising a highly sensitive boy. Highly sensitive boys come with deep talents but can be "trying" if you seek to raise them in the regular way.

Sensitive Boys: Who are they?

Last week, I had an eleven year-old client named Matt in my office. His folks brought him to me because Matt had been bullied and today — he seems to be suffering from low self-esteem and a mild depression. When I asked Matt about what happened at school, he said: "Two boys took my glasses, broke them and left me at lunch unable to see." He told me as a tear ran down his face.

What makes Matt different than the other kids? He is deeply sensitive, affected by how he is treated by other kids and is different. At age eleven, he has already made storyboards for films he "sees" in his mind and knows more about cinema than most adults. Matt's remarkably high creativity, giftedness in this area and heightened awareness of everything in his life indicates that he is likely a highly sensitive child.

Highly sensitive boys are deeply affected by what others say to them, the images in their mind and their surroundings (for example, sound, smell, taste, touch and so on). Matt was so hurt that these bullies picked on him that just remembering that moment brought him to tears. Aidan, age 8, is another highly sensitive client of mine who cannot watch violence in movies (unlike other kids) and he has to turn away at the slightest hint of it. Aidan is also a gifted musician and just hearing Beethoven's 5th symphony brings him to tears.

Simply said, the creativity and giftedness of highly sensitive boys is typically there but you can imagine the frustration as a parent (teacher or adult) when you are doing "everything" you did with his older brother Billy, and it all worked out just fine then but now it's not working with your other (and sensitive) son: Highly sensitive boys need a whole new way of nurturing to support their success (which is possible).

Supporting their Success

Sensitive boys benefit greatly from parenting (or educational) approaches that take into account their sensitivity and celebrate it. Yes, I realize this is a "challenge" at times when your highly sensitive son comes home crying and your "regular" daughter is doing just fine. I am keenly aware that this doesn't feel like the moment you want to sing and dance about the joys of raising a sensitive son. But I promise it is his sensitivity that will be his greatest strength and not the opposite.

Sensitive Boys that succeed learn:

- Sensitivity is a Strength - Our culture often teaches (knowingly or unknowingly) that boys are tough, strong on the outside and just "get over things" when that is not always the case. Embracing your child's inherent sensitivity as a strength versus a problem is "turning point" for parents. This means you no longer push your son to be "more like the other kids" but appreciate him for who he is — deep feelings, sensitive responses, gifts, unique perspective and all.

For example, I helped Aidan's parents see that his sons' giftedness and exceptional creativity comes along with his deep sensitivity. It is a package deal. So learning how to appreciate his discomfort with crowds, dislike of "regular" movies and parent him in a way that honors his sensitivity as valuable (versus a nuance) has the power to change everything for the better --- and it has!

- Different is Good - Children naturally want to fit in with the other kids. The highly sensitive boy often doesn't though like Matt discovered when his classmates took his funky classes, stepped on them and went off laughing! Matt took this personally, cried, and had to have his parents pick him up from school.

Such an experience had the potential to devastate his self-esteem or become a "turning point" in Matt's life where he began not caring about what others think of him as well as starting to see his uniqueness as a "good thing." I can report that Matt is making real progress as seeing his differences as a good. (After all the great inventors on this planet were so notably different like Einstein and Edison! They were likely highly sensitive too.)

In my upcoming book, Growing Happy Kids: How to Foster Inner Confidence, Success and Happiness, I discuss how to help kids use challenges as stepping-stones to their success because all need to learn this — but especially the highly sensitive ones.

-Self-Care is Crucial - Boys tend to want to "shake things off" like when they fall off their bicycle and bruise their knee. They don't want to appear hurt or seem weak. But the highly sensitive boy needs to learn radical self-care first — he needs to learn when it's time to walk away, when to take better care of himself and then re-enter situations when he is stronger.

Sometimes boys that are sensitive just push their sensitivity down but the problem with that is — it hides who they are and also their gifts. Learning how to be a highly sensitive boy and navigate this not-so-sensitive world is important stuff. It's where they can learn how to lead their best (and happiest) lives.

Success is Possible

Being an active parenting coach, I work with adults all around the globe to help them raise their sensitive sons (and daughters) to be who they came here to be. These children no longer fit the old model of what works and they need a whole new approach that honors their sensitivity — as well as sees it as the basis of their greatest gifts they have to give.

* * * * *

Highly Sensitive Boys

Understanding high sensitivity in boys more deeply

Published on June 27, 2014 by Maureen D. Healy in Creative Development

I am one of the most sensitive beings on Earth – and I know it.
- Jean-Claude Van Damme

One mom recently said to me, “I don’t want my son’s sensitivity to be stuck in his personality” and I get it. Sensitivity isn’t always easy. Of course, it’s also not like sprinkles on ice cream that you can either have or not have --- it is inherent to your child’s nature. The bigger (and better) questions to ask are: How can I help my highly sensitive son succeed? What does he need to learn? Can I do something today? Before I begin I want to elaborate on the complexity of highly sensitive boys, too.

Boys are Different

Highly sensitive boys may not want to talk about their sensitivity, or go around saying they are highly sensitive. They want to be strong on the outside yet inside they feel things so deeply --- words hurt them, violent images upset them, and they know that they aren’t like the other kids. Perhaps they’d rather play with teddy bears at age twelve versus football in the field.

So my recommendation isn't going directly at highly sensitive boys, and saying, “You are sensitive. I need to help you." What they do need is to make other like-minded friends (other sensitive boys), and learn how to manage their emotions while developing their unique skillset (i.e. acting like Neil Patrick Harris, or martial arts like Jean-Claude Van Damme) so they can find their place in the world.

Getting Started

Going back to my earlier questions, I’ll get you started in the “right” direction at starting to answer those questions about your highly sensitive son. Please note that this is a short article and of course, I can go into more depth in a talk or personal consultation. But here we go:

1. How can I help my son succeed? Of course, this is a complex question but for brevity’s sake let me share two suggestions: You need to make sure he’s got a like-minded friend (another sensitive boy), and also a mentor (someone besides his parents). The truth is that high sensitivity can be a liability unless you learn how to be the alchemist of your own life. With that said, I have started a mentoring program for HSC but it can be my program or something else – the point is to connect your child to someone who has learned how to be successful with their highly sensitive nature in a sometimes not-so sensitive world.
2. What does he need to learn? This is a big one. And frankly, every child is different but highly sensitive boys in general need to learn: How to manage their emotions, handle their intensity and ultimately make better choices. Oftentimes highly sensitive children are very impulsive because they are letting their “right brains” lead without assistance from their “left brains” (logic, reason) and before they know it they hit a sibling or sassed you back.
3. Can I do something today? Yes. Set the intention to embrace your son’s sensitivity as a good thing and connect him to people who can help him (or learn yourself, and commit to growing together). What I know for sure is that sensitivity was intended as a gift to your child and with guidance he can learn how to make it so.

© Maureen Dawn Healy

Maureen Healy is an award-winning author, popular speaker and professional working with parents and their highly sensitive children. Her books include: Growing Happy Kids (2012) and The Energetic Keys to Indigo Kids (2013). In November, she’s also releasing a new e-book titled “Playbook for Parents” about how to help highly sensitive children thrive.

Learn more, sign up for her newsletter or stay connected via twitter: www.growinghappykids.com or www.twitter.com/mdhealy

WOW, I think I am speechless. How did these obvious morons think this was a good idea, that it would bring in female votes. Morons is perhaps too soft a word, I guess.

This is the quite the object lesson in stereotypes around gender, and why the old, rich, white men just don't get it.

This comes from Politicus USA.

Michigan GOP’s ‘We Understand Women’ Photo-Op Goes Down In Flames

By: Keith Brekhus
Friday, June, 6th, 2014


Michigan House Republicans jumped on Twitter to demonstrate they “understand women” and quickly proved how clueless they really are. Three GOP House Reps were photographed holding fashion magazines. Michigan Representatives Victory, Glardon and Pettalia smugly help up copies of “Women’ magazines”, and Representative Pettalia quipped “Don’t say we don’t understand women.” The three men smugly held up copies of fashion magazine in their attempts to appeal to female voters. One has to be pretty deeply immersed in misogynistic patterns of thought to think that the secret to securing more women voters is as simple a holding up a copy of Glamour magazine in front of camera.

Republicans continue to have difficulty re-branding themselves as a female friendly party. In Michigan, even running a woman for U.S. Senate has done little for the GOP’s image, because that woman, Terri Lynn Land, infamously remarked that women do not want equal pay with men, because they prefer job flexibility to better salaries. Land’s ardent defense of GOP misogyny has put her at a significant disadvantage against Democrat Gary Peters who has consistently held a double-digit lead over Land with female voters throughout 2014.

The Michigan GOP’ latest stunt to attract women voters was deservedly ridiculed almost immediately. Four women members of Michigan’s Democratic House delegation, retorted with a tweet stating”Real women read bill not fashion mags…” The accompanying photo showed the four Reps scanning proposed legislation.

Of course the central issue is not whether or not women should or should not read fashion magazines, but where do the candidate stand on issues important to women. While not all women think alike, when one looks at issues like reproductive rights, equal pay for equal work, and addressing domestic violence, it is pretty clear that the Republican Party fails to understand what matters to most women. While they can always find a steady pool of female candidates to run on the GOP platform, that pool is unrepresentative of the majority of women in the country. For that reason, Republican candidates run poorly with female voters, not only in Michigan but across the country. Having three male Republican lawmakers awkwardly holding up fashion magazines with self-satisfied smile on their face will not close that gender gap with voters. However, it may widen the gap as Republican once again prove how little they understand women.

Good Men Project - Call for Submissions: Against Stereotypes

Via the Good Men Project . . . a call for submissions. JJ Vincent is looking for men who do not fit into the constrictive gender stereotypes we are offered as options for masculinity and manhood - he wants to read (and publish!) your stories.

Call for Submissions: Against Stereotypes

January 8, 2014 by JJ Vincent


Videographer by day, Fantasy Man by weekend.
JJ Vincent is looking for a bunch of Good Men with a bunch of Good Stories.
Stories, please!

I’m looking for a few good stories from men who are not gender stereotypes, who take expectations and toss them out the window.

Do people assume that you are one thing, but that’s not you at all? Or maybe you are everything they assume, but so much more, or different?

Do you interact in the world in unexpected ways? Did you choose a life path that most men would walk away from?

• Are you my friend Joe, who’s a burly, bald, former Army Ranger turned SAH/homeschooling/fingerpainting Dad?
• Are you my friend Marco, who is a tyed-in-the-cotton hippie and spends his days designing jet engines?
• Do you love guns and trucks and football and playing in the kitchen with your grandkids?
• Do people see a skinny, bespectabled “computer geek” and gasp in shock that you are a carpenter?

How have your choices and passions affect how you see the world and others around you, and how they see you?

What happens when you are not what they expect?

Tell me a story. Show me why stereotypes are dead. First-timers, new writers, all ages welcome.

jj.vincent@goodmenproject.com
photo courtesy of the author

Cordelia Fine - New Insights into Gendered Brain Wiring, or a Perfect Case Study in Neurosexism?

A recent article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Ingalhalikar, et al., 2013, Dec 2), "Sex differences in the structural connectome of the human brain," has generated a lot of nonsense, and in this article published in The Conversation, Cordelia Fine (author of Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference, 2010) offers a little corrective perspective.

New insights into gendered brain wiring, or a perfect case study in neurosexism?

Cordelia Fine - ARC Future Fellow, Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences; Associate Professor, Melbourne Business School at University of Melbourne

Disclosure Statement
Cordelia Fine receives funding from an ARC Future Fellowship.


Male brains are, on average, larger than females but this doesn’t mean men are better at reading maps. Flickr/pedrosimoes7
The latest neuroscience study of sex differences to hit the popular press has inspired some familiar headlines. The Independent, for example, proclaims that:

The hardwired difference between male and female brains could explain why men are “better at map reading” (And why women are “better at remembering a conversation”).

The study in question, published in PNAS, used a technology called diffusion tensor imaging to model the structural connectivity of the brains of nearly a thousand young people, ranging in age from eight to 22.

It reports greater connectivity within the hemispheres in males, but greater connnectivity between the hemispheres in females. These findings, the authors conclude in their scientific paper,

suggest that male brains are structured to facilitate connectivity between perception and coordinated action, whereas female brains are designed to facilitate communication between analytical and intuitive processing modes.

One important possibility the authors don’t consider is that their results have more to do with brain size than brain sex. Male brains are, on average, larger than females and a large brain is not simply a smaller brain scaled up.

Larger brains create different sorts of engineering problems and so – to minimise energy demands, wiring costs, and communication times – there may physical reasons for different arrangements in differently sized brains. The results may reflect the different wiring solutions of larger versus smaller brains, rather than sex differences per se.

But also, popular references to women’s brains being designed for social skills and remembering conversations, or male brains for map reading, are utterly misleading.

In an larger earlier study (from which the participants of the PNAS study were a subset), the same research team compellingly demonstrated that the sex differences in the psychological skills they measured – executive control, memory, reasoning, spatial processing, sensorimotor skills, and social cognition – are almost all trivially small.

  

Biological sex is a dismal guide to psychological ability. Karel Seidl

To give a sense of the huge overlap in behaviour between males and females, of the twenty-six possible comparisons, eleven sex differences were either non-existent, or so small that if you were to select a boy and girl at random and compare their scores on a task, the “right” sex would be superior less than 53% of the time.

Even the much-vaunted female advantage in social cognition, and male advantage in spatial processing, was so modest that a randomly chosen boy would outscore a randomly chosen girl on social cognition – and the girl would outscore the boy on spatial processing – over 40% of the time.

As for map-reading and remembering conversations, these weren’t measured at all.

Yet the authors describe these differences as “pronounced” and as reflecting “behavioural complementarity” – scientific jargon-speak for “men are from Mars, women are from Venus”. Rather than drawing on their impressively rich data-set to empirically test questions about how brain connectivity characteristics relate to behaviour, the authors instead offer untested stereotype-based speculation. Even though, with such considerable overlap in male/female distributions, biological sex is a dismal guide to psychological ability.

Also missing from the study is any mention of experience-dependent brain plasticity. Why?

As prominent feminist neuroscientists have noted, the social phenomenon of gender means that a person’s biological sex has a significant impact on the experiences (including social, material, physical, and mental) she or he encounters which will, in turn, leave neurological traces.

Yet the researchers do not pay any attention to the gendered experiences (such as hobbies, subjects studied at school or higher education, or participation in sporting activities) of the young males and females in their sample.

This absence has two consequences. First, the researchers miss an opportunity to investigate whether gendered experiences might influence brain development and enhance the acquisition of important skills valuable to all. The second consequence is that, by failing to look at gendered social influences, the authors guarantee that no data will be produced that challenge the notion of “hardwired” male/female neural signatures.

These characteristics of the PNAS study are very common in neuroscientific investigations of male/female sex differences, and represent two important ways in which scientific research can be subtly “neurosexist”, reinforcing and legitimating gender stereotypes in ways that are not scientifically justified. And, when researchers are “blinded” by sex, they can overlook potentially informative research strategies.

 

The study did not find evidence that women’s brain wiring was linked to their ability to nurture. Flickr/shootingjaydred

Returning to the popular representations, we can now see a striking disconnect with the actual data. The research provides strong evidence for behavioural similarities between the sexes. It provides no evidence that those modest behavioural sex differences are associated with brain connectivity differences. And, it offers no information about the developmental origins of either behavioural or brain differences.

Yet, the popular press presents it as evidence that “hardwired” sex differences explain why men are from Mars and women are from Venus. While this is tediously predictable, what is more surprising is for a study author to push along such misinterpretations, claiming to have found evidence for “hardwired” sex differences, and suggesting that this might explain behavioural sex differences not actually measured in the study, such as in “intuition” skills “linked with being good mothers”.

In the latest issue of Trends in Cognitive Sciences, co-authors Rebecca Jordan-Young, Anelis Kaiser and Gina Rippon and I argued that scientists investigating sex differences have a responsibility to realise “how social assumptions influence their research and, indeed, public understanding of it.” We then called on scientists working in this area to:

recognise that there are important and exciting opportunities to change these social assumptions through rigorous, reflective scientific inquiry and debate.

The continuing importance of this message is only reinforced by this latest case study in how easily scientific “neurosexism” can, with a little stereotype-inspired imagination, contribute to inaccurate and harmful lay misunderstanding of what neuroscience tells us about the sexes.

What Does Manhood Mean in 2013? (from New York Magazine)

From New York Magazine, Ann Friedman looks at what it means to be a man in 2013 - and she uses four press items from the weeks preceding the September 20 article. One of the cool things she included is the Life of Men from Esquire magazine - check it out.

Here is a summary of what she finds in the confusion of men today around definitions of masculinity:

The JWT report gives an overall impression that, just like femininity, masculinity is increasingly defined by both playing to and against type. It's growing a really impressive beard and ordering a kale salad for lunch. It's knowing Super Bowl trivia and being an emotionally supportive partner. But if this makes it sound like men are joining women in having a less gender-bound view of their sense of self, it’s not that simple. According to the JWT research, even though millennial men are, more than older men, okay with using concealer and learning to poach eggs, they also say they're more frustrated with not knowing what it "means" to be a man.

The confusion around masculinity, as far I am concerned, is a good thing - it indicates that the old stereotype of the rugged, emotionally distant, and potentially violent male is no longer a given, no longer the gender role in which boys are automatically embedded as they grow into men. There are now masculinities - and that makes a better world for men and women.

What Does Manhood Mean in 2013?

By Ann Friedman
9/20/13

What does it mean to be a man in 2013? Consider four data points from recent weeks:

1. Tech entrepreneur Bryan Goldberg, who became an Internet laughingstock last month when he issued a stupendously tone-deaf announcement for Bustle, his new site aimed at women, was bashed all over again this week following a New Yorker profile in which he appeared to be overcompensating for his prior gender gaffes. “We didn’t want pink everywhere,” he told the magazine, noting that women seem to be interested in all kinds of things, from earrings to Zumba to Amanda Bynes to Syria. Women, in Goldberg’s view, have complex desires and interests, some of which conform to classic feminine stereotypes, but many that do not. And what of men? According to Goldberg, they like sports and financial markets and ... not reading books. A man is a simple creature.

2. Hanna Rosin, author of The End of Men, declared the end of patriarchy. In an era when middle-class men are struggling to hang onto their jobs and cultural relevance, it’s only feminists who keep the concept of male dominance alive, she argued, by purposefully highlighting the “statistics that make women look most beleaguered.” In other words, how can we be living in a patriarchy if the definition of “male” no longer carries with it a guaranteed level of social and economic status? Without such power, man is over.

3. Esquire revealed its “Life of Men” project, a photo gallery and accompanying questionnaire that aims to “create a living portrait of the American man right now.” There’s a healthy dose of masculine swagger among the subjects, but if there’s one common theme, it’s family. Over and over, these men — some of the most professionally accomplished specimens in America — name their children as their greatest achievement, their best day as the one on which they met their wife. A man is a nurturing partner and father.

4. That theme was echoed somewhat in a new report from the market-research firm JWT on male consumers and masculinity, which found that “emotional support for family” ranked just behind “financial support for family.” The JWT report says two thirds of men would make their work schedule more flexible or stay home with their family full-time if they could afford to. This was confirmed by a new Pew study this week, which declared that there are more men on the “daddy track” than ever before — though not always, it took pains to note, voluntarily. “Men’s ideas,” reported NPR, “have shifted closer to what many women have long felt.” But still, a man is a provider.

What’s striking isn’t the lack of consensus on what defines masculinity now, but the utter confusion about how to go about doing so. That’s because America is finally getting around to having the conversation about what it means to be a man that, decades ago, feminism forced us to have about womanhood. Women still face social consequences when they don’t conform neatly to gender norms, but many of even the most ideologically progressive men are just now starting to talk about how to break with masculine stereotypes and still hang onto a sense of gender identity. Goldberg and Rosin, in using traditional definitions of manhood (the simple, stoic breadwinner), declare him dead, or at least less marketable to advertisers. Men’s magazines, which now peddle facial moisturizers but still often shy away from heartfelt confessionals, have spotted how hard it is for men to balance both embracing and rethinking masculine stereotypes — and they’ve made some attempts to address it, but mostly ended up documenting the confusion.

And much of that confusion can be traced back to the fact that we’re still adapting to an expanded definition of what it means to be a woman. “The most complicated aspect of manhood is dealing with antiquated social norms about gender roles,” says my friend Eric Uhlir, who lives in D.C. “Society, at least American society, still hasn't realized that it's not just a woman's job to raise a child but everyone's job in a sense. We just drop it in women's laps and men just pretend like it's not even a problem. That feels like the most pervasive gender stereotype the world's brohemians don't seem to understand or just choose to ignore.”

Brohemian is an apt term: The JWT report gives an overall impression that, just like femininity, masculinity is increasingly defined by both playing to and against type. It's growing a really impressive beard and ordering a kale salad for lunch. It's knowing Super Bowl trivia and being an emotionally supportive partner. But if this makes it sound like men are joining women in having a less gender-bound view of their sense of self, it’s not that simple. According to the JWT research, even though millennial men are, more than older men, okay with using concealer and learning to poach eggs, they also say they're more frustrated with not knowing what it "means" to be a man.


JWT’s millennial men were more likely to answer affirmatively to statements like "Men can't be men anymore.” These guys have never lived in an era of rigid gender rules. The report says they seek the perceived trappings of manly men of the past to reinforce their masculinity while they pursue the other, more traditionally feminized lifestyle choices they also desire. This theory might explain why you can often find rugged pickaxes in high-end clothing shops of urban America.


“One of the reasons that I think facial hair — mustaches and beards, specifically — have come so much back in vogue is because there seems to be an almost primal urge to reclaim our right to be men and to look like men,” says Phil Walker, a gay man who lives in D.C. and has been known to sport an impressive mustache.


Sometimes the thick beard and the artisanal pickax on the mantel betray the fact that — gender enlightenment aside — a man may not be completely ready to abandon the traditional greatness of being a guy. Even if he wanted to, it would be tough to pull off. “How can guys pick themselves up by their bootstraps and bring home the bacon when we're also embracing the idea that everyone is entitled to whatever bacon they want, however they want to get it?” asked my friend Dylan Lathrop. The real challenge is compromise and balance.

And this is why I think Rosin is wrong about the end of patriarchy. “Patriarchy” doesn’t just mean concrete systems that ensure only men have access to the upper echelons of power; it also encompasses our ingrained cultural understanding of what men should be and how they show dominance. If it looks like we’ve reached the “end of men,” that’s only because patriarchy (alive and well!) tells us the only way to be a man is to be The Man — economically, politically, and socially. If patriarchy were really over, stay-at-home dads wouldn’t be the death knell of an entire gender. They’d just be … men. They are men.

Ultimately, confusion about modern masculinity is a good thing: It means we’re working past the outmoded definition. Men are increasingly comfortable breaking masculine gender stereotypes, but want to hold on to certain gender signifiers? They're uneasy about living in such a mixed-up, muddled-up, post-gender world, but don't want to go back to the rigid roles of the past? Welcome to where women have been since second-wave feminism! It's confusing out here.

Brit Mandelo - Doing Damage to the Text: Gender in Neil Gaiman’s Coraline(s)

I liked Coraline the movie (2009), but I had never read Coraline (2002), the Neil Gaiman novel on which is was supposed to be based. After reading this article about the two different (very different) Coralines, now I feel compelled to go back and read the book to see what Gaiman really intended for this young heroine.

If you haven't read the novel, maybe this will convince you, too, to go back to the original - and thanks must go out to Brit Mandelo for exposing the heteronormative narrative the director of the film, Henry Selick, imposed on the original text. [And thanks to Arthur for pointing me toward this article.]

Doing Damage to the Text: Gender in Neil Gaiman’s Coraline(s)

Brit Mandelo

Neil Gaiman’s Coraline is a remarkable book. Naturally, given its appeal to children and adults as well as its handsomely creepy narrative, somebody was going to make a movie out of it—and that movie was Henry Selick’s Coraline (2009). I went to see that film in theaters, and though I initially loved it—it was gorgeous, certainly—after a little while something began to itch at me. Something didn’t seem right. There had been quite a lot of revision in the adaptation, but that’s par for the course in making a movie. The text has to be adapted to fit the screen, sure. But then the real problem occurred to me, and it wasn’t that Selick’s version had made changes. I don’t much care about that on principle.

It was that those revisions had turned the initial text into its opposite, retaining the general shape of the plot but gutting the thematic content.

Neil Gaiman’s novel Coraline is a coming of age story; it’s participating in the tradition of stories in which a youth overcomes a trial to develop their identity. The book is about independence, identity, and development. The significant thing is that it is really very much concerned with having a girl as the protagonist, a girl who is fully rounded and develops on her own as a stable, coherent individual subject.

Henry Selick’s adaptation is firmly not. In fact, in his film all of the interesting potentially-feminist freight of Gaiman’s novel disappears, edited away and replaced with a heterosexist couple-narrative. Selick drastically alters and lessens the narrative of female competency and independence contained in the original.

While the basic adventure plot remains in both book and film—Coraline rescuing her parents by challenging the beldam, exploring the frighteningly transformed “other” world to find the souls of the trapped children, and tricking her way through the door back to her own world—the thematic shape changes distinctly, altered by those aforementioned additions (of an entire character and new scenes), as well as serious alterations to other scenes. Exploring and comparing those scenes reveals the problematic shift in theme and tone between the two Coralines—something that matters to me, as a person who would like there to be more authentic, wholly realized stories about young women as protagonists and adventurers, as full subjects of their own stories.

Because it’s not just academic, and it’s not just about having something to argue, this whole thing about the Selick film. Texts are important to shaping culture—to shaping how people see themselves, the roles they’re allowed to step into, and the way they understand the world. Having coming of age stories for girls that are about danger and bravery, trouble and problem-solving, matters. Having a heroine like the Coraline of the novel matters, and having her taken apart and reshaped into a trope matters, too.

So, without further ado, let’s dig in to the argument I’m making about potentially-feminist, certainly-important content in the novel and the opposite of that in the film of the same name.

First off, contrast the opening chapter of the novel and the first ten minutes of the film. The novel’s Coraline, we find, is independently motivated and curious; she does a lot of exploring, all alone, and does not seem to really know fear. The opening of the book is all about her solitary adventures. Tellingly, her response to being told to avoid an old well is to “explore for it, so that she knew where it was, to keep away from it properly” (5). (And pay attention to that well, too; it comes up a few times.)

However, in the film, Coraline simply wanders from her new house onto the grounds out of boredom rather than a desire to explore. Once outside she is alarmed by noises and runs down a hill terrified; there’s some screaming. She’s then nearly run over by a person on a bike, who looms threateningly over her while she sits in the dirt. That person on the bike is a young man named Wybie: Selick’s addition to the screenplay and his film.

Their initial meeting has already presented Coraline as a girl who is easily frightened and subdued by the young man, Wybie. Therefore we have shifted already from a young woman alone exploring to a girl and a boy together, in which the boy has taken a dominant position in the pair. This trend of Wybie as a masculine figure, a source of authority, continues; the well, for instance, is introduced by Wybie. Coraline doesn’t discover it on her own. (Having knocked her over, he warns her that she’s standing on the planks covering the old well.)

In addition, he later informs Coraline that his grandmother lost a sister in the house she now rents out and has warned him and all children away from it. He delivers these warnings as a figure of authority on the house—he knows, Coraline doesn’t, and he tells her. His information, delivered to her from a protective position, entirely removes her potential to discover the danger on her own. Again, this Coraline does not achieve things independently: the introduced male character does them for her.

The narrative of “Wybie as male companion and protector” extends to the Wybie created by the beldam in the other-world, too. Other Wybie is provided to Coraline as equal parts entertainment and companion for her at-first pleasant explorations in the magical, supernatural other-world. He offers her cotton candy at the mouse-circus, sits with her during the burlesque performance at Other Miss Spink & Other Miss Forcible’s, walks with her around the grounds. Conversely, in the novel Coraline braves the eerie circuses and not-quite-right displays entirely on her own.

The independent young woman of the novel is, in the adaptation, sublimated into one half of a heterosexual couple. Her individuality is made a duality, with the young man as a necessity to her exploration. The adventures cannot be had alone, as they must be in the novel; therefore, the element of girlhood exploration and coming-of-age is weakened. There is a shift from explicit concern with the identities of young girls as themselves in the novel to the identities of young girls as they relate to boys in the film. The film is not Coraline: it is Coraline and Wybie.

And it gets worse. That stuff, maybe, could be brushed off—it’s irritating but minor, and possibly works to move the plot along sometimes by offering exposition (though I don’t buy that for a second). The problem is that in the end it’s more than just reducing the danger/bravery element by taking the lone girl explorer protagonist and turning her into half of a couple. It’s more than having the male half of the couple be the deliverer of information and guidance. Because then Wybie has to start rescuing Coraline, and things go way further off of the rails of Gaiman’s novel in a way that renders its whole thematic point—the girl, her subjectivity, her competence—moot.

In both versions the beldam uses a mirror as a prison for her abandoned children, into which she throws Coraline, and in both versions she does so with similar dialogue: “You may come out when you’ve learned some manners […] and when you’re ready to be a loving daughter” (79) in the novel and “You may come out when you’ve learned to be a loving daughter!” in the film. But that’s where the similarity stops.

In the novel, the beldam simply abandons Coraline in the mirror-closet and eventually takes her out when she feels she’s been punished enough—it’s a helpless imprisonment. The point, though, is that Coraline has lasted her out—she doesn’t break, and she even manages not to cry despite the urge to. The mirror-imprisonment is one of the more intense, emotional scenes of the novel. In the film, the scene is translated similarly throughout; the beldam’s speech is the same, the three ghost children are similar, et cetera. It is the ending which has been drastically altered.

Instead of Coraline waiting out the beldam, Other Wybie bursts through into the mirror and rescues her; he then shoves her down the hall and through the door back to her world with the beldam on their heels. As she reaches out to offer to rescue him, he slams the door in her face to force her to go on without him. Other Wybie, not Coraline, is the winner. He has rescued the girl he likes, physically hustled her to safety as if she were incapable of escaping on her own, and slammed a door between them to heroically sacrifice himself.

Coraline, however, is now simply the rescued girl. Faceless and nameless as most of the rescued girls in coming-of-age narratives are, at this point her strength and independence are nonexistent. Again: a boy has to not only rescue her from the mirror-prison but physically force her to safety. It is a rescue she never needs in the novel. Her speech on bravery (“Because, when you’re scared and you still do it anyway, that’s brave” (59)) is also not translated from the book to the film, and this scene makes the reason why particularly obvious: because this translation of Coraline to the screen may be spunky and fun to watch having an adventure, but her story is not about her individual bravery and competence. She may go on to save her own parents, but this rescue comes first, and another rescue follows at the end.

Because in both versions, after Coraline has escaped through the door with the key, the children’s souls, and her parents’ snow-globe—locking the beldam safely behind it again—there is still one threat left: the beldam’s severed hand, which has followed Coraline back to her world. The resolution of this last plot point in the two endings is so completely different that even a viewer not particularly queued into to the gender dynamics otherwise would notice.

In Gaiman’s novel, Coraline notices the hand on her own after it attacks the downstairs neighbor’s dog, frightens the mouse-circus upstairs, and begins scratching gouges in her windows. There’s still one problem left to solve, then, and Coraline sets herself to completing it. She talks her way into getting a tablecloth from her mother for a tea-party with her old dolls and tricks the hand—by talking loudly to the actresses downstairs about the key and her plans to go have a tea-party by herself—into following her. In advance, she had pulled all the boards from the well, even though they were too big for her, and laid the tablecloth over it as camouflage. She lures the hand down to the well, “and then, as carefully as she could, she leaned over and, gently, placed the key on the tablecloth. […] She held her breath, hoping that the cups of water at the edge of the well would weigh the cloth down, letting it take the weight of the key without collapsing into the well” (157). She then moves away to the other side of the well, pretending to serve cake to her dolls, and the hand scrabbles for the key as she watches. “Time slowed for Coraline. The white fingers closer around the black key… And then the weight and the momentum of the hand sent the plastic dolls’ cups flying, and the paper tablecloth, the key, and the other mother’s right hand went tumbling down into the darkness of the well” (158-159).

Once this is done, she hauls the planks back over the well and weighs them down again. To reiterate: she figures out the hand is following her on her own, she makes a plot to get rid of it on her own, she executes the—very physically and emotionally taxing—plan on her own, and she wins on her own. Throughout the course of the novel Coraline has been independent, challenged by horror, by death, and by fates worse than death—and she comes out on the other side of the trial a braver, happier, more centered young woman. It is a coming-of-age scary story for girls, about girls, and concerned with the identities of girls—their power as themselves, by themselves. Hoorah, yes, thank you, etc.

And then, there’s Selick’s film rewrite of the ending. Coraline does not realize the hand is after her; instead, she misses all the clues, and decides she wants to throw away the key for her own peace of mind. She goes to the well, intending to throw the key down it for real—this is not an ingeniously plotted trap—and is attacked by the severed hand. It grabs her and she shrieks, falling. She is about to lose the key to the hand when Wybie appears as rescuer, one last time. He charges down the hill on his bike, knocks the hand away from her, wrestles with it, and is nearly knocked down the well himself—risking his life as the protective man is expected, narratively, to do. He climbs out, finds the hand about to hurt Coraline, and smashes it with a rock. Coraline, so very grateful for her rescue, gives him her hand and gets up off the ground.

The stripping out of the feminist freight about independent young women having adventures, being smart, and saving themselves is finally and irrevocably completed, leaving a story about a heterosexual couple where the man, in the end, rescues the (silly, incompetent) woman from the big bad evil. A story we’ve all seen quite enough.

That’s uncool.

Gaiman’s novel Coraline is a sharply creepy, edge-of-your-seat read starring a young girl who does make mistakes but who also solves problems. She is a power unto herself, and her adventures show readers—other young girls, often—the possibilities of their own subjectivity. They can be brave, they can be competent, and they can win. That’s the argument about gender I’d rather take away from the dual Coraline texts—and that’s why the movie doesn’t sit well with me. I want more coming of age stories about girls who are whole subjects in themselves, rather than stories where the role of the girl is to be rescued. I’ve had about enough of that, thanks.

~ Brit Mandelo is a writer, critic, and editor whose primary fields of interest are speculative fiction and queer literature, especially when the two coincide. She can be found on Twitter or her website.

Behavioral Descriptions, But Not Personality Descriptions, of Counterstereotypical People Cause Greater Prejudice

This is interesting article comes from Mark Rubin's Social Psychology Research Blog, hosted by Mark Rubin, a senior lecturer in the School of Psychology at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Rubin is a social psychologist whose research focuses on "evaluations of deviant people, interdependent problem-solving, migration processes, perceived group variability, prejudice,stereotyping, social class, social identity, and social integration."

In this post, Rubin looks at a new study that suggests offering people behavioral vs. personality descriptions of counter-stereotypical people (those who who don't match the standard stereotype people hold, about gender roles for examples) changes how the counter-stereotypical person is perceived.

This new evidence shows that, although counterstereotypical individuals are disliked when they are described using behaviours, they are actually liked when they are described using personality traits. So, for example, although people may dislike “a man who is crying”, they like “a sensitive man”. In both cases, the man is counterstereotypical because he contradicts a gender stereotype. However, in the former case he is described using a behavior (“crying”) and in the latter case he is described using a personality trait (“sensitive”). 

The upshot is that it is better to describe personality traits than to describe behaviors because it seems (my opinion) we have evolved to notice and judge behaviors, which are concrete and tangible, while personality traits are more abstract.

Boys Don’t Cry, But They Can Be Sensitive! Behavioral Descriptions of Counter-Stereotypical People Cause Greater Prejudice than Personality Descriptions

By Mark Rubin 

Saturday, 3 August 2013

Stereotypes are pretty useful things! We use them to help us to understand and respond to people from a large and diverse array of social groups. But how do people feel about individuals who buck the trend and contradict stereotypes? For example, how do people feel about a man who is crying or a woman who is smoking a cigar!

Most evidence shows that people react quite negatively towards counterstereotypical individuals. The typical explanation for this negative bias refers to people’s need to protect and maintain their stereotypes: People are biased against counterstereotypical individuals because they disconfirm stereotypes and threaten people’s need to maintain stable and coherent stereotype systems.

However, recent social psychological research has provided some hope for counterstereotypical people. This new evidence shows that, although counterstereotypical individuals are disliked when they are described using behaviours, they are actually liked when they are described using personality traits. So, for example, although people may dislike “a man who is crying”, they like “a sensitive man”. In both cases, the man is counterstereotypical because he contradicts a gender stereotype. However, in the former case he is described using a behavior (“crying”) and in the latter case he is described using a personality trait (“sensitive”). Notably, this linguistic description effect occurs even when the particular valence of the words that are used (positive/negative) is taken into account.

So, why does this linguistic description effect occur? Well, it’s possible that counterstereotypical individuals are evaluated relatively negatively when they are described using behaviours because this linguistic description promotes a deeper, more systematic processing of the person that highlights their stereotype disconfirmation and, as we know, people don’t like individuals who step out of line with their stereotypes! In contrast, counterstereotypical individuals may be evaluated relatively positively when they are described using personality traits because this linguistic description promotes a more superficial type of processing that highlights individuals’ uniqueness, and people tend to value uniqueness.

How is all this relevant to you? Well, if you stop for a minute and consider your own social categories (i.e., your gender, religion, occupation, age group, political orientation, etc), then I’m sure you’ll find at least one in which your own characteristics contradict your group’s stereotype. Now don’t worry – it's often good to be the black sheep! Throughout the ages, counterstereotypical people have been the agents of beneficial social change. For example, independent women (who were counterstereotypical for their time) spearheaded the Feminist movement. In addition, the diversity embodied by counterstereotypical people brings with it a wealth of positive outcomes in work and organisational contexts. So, you should feel proud if you’re different from the rest of your group. The trick is to get other people to appreciate you for your uniqueness, rather than to denigrate you for your deviance. And describing yourself in terms of personality traits rather than behaviours may provide one way to do this.

For further information, please see the following journal article:

Rubin, M., Paolini, S., and Crisp, R. J. (2013). Linguistic description moderates the evaluations of counterstereotypical people. Social Psychology, 44 (4), 289-298 DOI: 10.1027/1864-9335/a000114

For a self-archived version of the original article, please see here.

This research was supported by the Australian Research Council's Discovery Projects funding scheme (Project DP0556908). However, the views expressed above are not necessarily those of the Australian Research Council.

Wow. Seriously!? Leave it to MTv to come up with something as asinine as this. What men do NOT need is to be judged on their masculinity. Period.

Even worse, if that is possible, is that the guys will be judged masculine or not according to the Guy Code, another MTv show in which men discuss manly things (like porn, drinking like a man, manscaping, masturbating, ex-girlfriends, and so on).

They really should call this the Man Box, as in a little tiny box that en are supposed to fit themselves into to be considered masculine.

Via Huffington Post.

'Guy Court': MTV's New Reality Show Judges Male Contestants' Masculinity

The Huffington Post | Posted: 04/29/2013

Forget Judge Judy, now there's a court-based TV show designed especially for bros, called "Guy Court"! Faux legal drama and reinforcing stereotypical masculinity? Just what unscripted television always needed...

"Guy Court," which will premiere on MTV2 this fall, seems to take every stereotype about men and cram it into a television series. Here is the official description of "Guy Court", which seems to be a spin-off of the existing series "Guy Code," where dudes discuss dude topics (via Yahoo):

In the half-hour comedic courtroom series Guy Court, ... the laws of manhood will be upheld as some familiar MTV2 faces will determine the guilt or innocence of a variety of cases in accordance with Guy Code. Each real life case will be judged, defended and prosecuted with the perfect combination of comedy and justice.

One can only wonder what sort of "cases" this TV show will address. The aforementioned "Guy Code" features commentary on topics like girlfriends, bachelor pads, cars and "drinking like a man." "Girl Code," the show's lady counterpart, touches on typically women-centric topics like crushes, boobs and trying not to get "sloppy drunk."

There are already enough things out there that remind us what it means to be the "right kind" of woman or man. We probably don't need an MTV show to enforce it.

[H/T The Frisky]

From The Frisky:

“Guy Code” refers to another reality show which airs on MTV2 and determines the bro-ishness of topics such as bachelor parties, rebounds, wine, manscaping, crying, and shopping. (Another spinoff, “Girl Code,” debuted this week, which you can watch online.) I know these types of shows just exist for a few laughs, but I’m so over policing other people on how they perform their gender. Girls can play football and fart. Guys can drink white wine and cry. (Hopefully not in that order.) How about we just let people be people?

Exactly!