Science: Yr 12 Psychology

Growing support for gender equality and a shift toward less restrictive views of gender roles suggest a significant transformation of US public opinion during the second half of the twentieth century. Following the initial discovery of these trends in the 1970s, attitudes toward gender roles received less scholarly attention in the 1980s, due in large part to questions about the relevance of this type of opinion change for understanding patterns of stability and change in behaviors and institutions related to gender.

This article reviews findings from anthropology, psychology, and other disciplines about the role of biological factors in the development of sex differences in human behavior, including biological theories, the developmental course of sex differences, and the interaction of biological and cultural gendering processes at different ages. Current evidence suggests that major biological influences on individual differences in human gender, to the extent that they exist, operate primarily in early development, during and especially prior to puberty.

The American Psychological Association defines gender identity as, “A person’s deeply-felt, inherent sense of being a boy, a man, or a male; a girl, a woman, or a female; or an alternative gender (e.g., genderqueer, gender nonconforming, gender neutral) that may or may not correspond to a person’s sex assigned at birth or to a person’s primary or secondary sex characteristics”
Here we review the evidence that gender identity and related socially defined gender constructs are influenced in part by innate factors including genes.

Levels of testosterone (T) and sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG) were measured in blood samples from pregnant women and related to gender role behavior in 342 male and 337 female offspring at the age of 3.5 years. Gender role behavior was assessed using the Pre-School Activities Inventory, a standardized measure on which a parent indicates the child's involvement with sex-typical toys, games, and activities.

There are two major theoretical perspectives explaining differences in gender-role attitudes: the socialization or social-learning theory, and situational theory in the form of macrosituational and microsituational (microstructural) hypotheses.

The union between a male and a female does produce not only new offspring but also a whole journey of gender experience. Scholars have posed countless questions, hypotheses, and articles seeking answers, validations, and explanations to how and why gender differences exist.

This study investigates sociologically the predictions of the cognitive developmental, the social learning, and the interactive models of gender-role development. We examine the effect of a variety of variables on gender-role stereotyping among a sample of 1264 four, five, and six-year-old children enrolled in preschool programs in a major metropolitan area.

Considerable research has shown that greater intergroup contact corresponds with lower intergroup prejudice, yet little is known regarding how the relationships between contact and prejudice may vary for members of minority and majority status groups. The present research examined differences in contact-prejudice relationships among members of minority and majority status groups, using data from a larger meta-analytic study of the effects of intergroup contact.

Recent research demonstrates that intergroup contact effectively reduces prejudice even among prejudice prone persons. But some assert that evidence regarding the benefits of contact among prejudice prone individuals is “mixed,” particularly for those higher in social dominance orientation (SDO), one of the field’s most important individual differences.

Research on intergroup contact suggests that contact relates more strongly to affective than cognitive dimensions of prejudice. However, work on these forms of prejudice focuses primarily on positive contact experiences.

Intergroup contact has long been lauded as a key intervention to reduce prejudice and improve intergroup attitudes among youth. In this review, we summarize classic perspectives and new developments in the intergroup contact literature, highlighting both prospects and challenges associated with achieving desired youth outcomes through contact.

Research on racial attitudes indicates that acceptance of the principle of racial equality is frequently offset by opposition to policies designed to eliminate injustice. At the same time, research on the contact hypothesis indicates that positive interaction between groups erodes various kinds of prejudiced attitudes.

Research in the field of prosocial behavior has shown that the presence of others has a significant effect on individuals’ prosociality. However, no research has explored such an effect of romantic partner’s presence.

Studies in evolutionary psychology have shown benevolence/prosociality as an important factor when choosing a romantic partner.

Observers of deviant social behavior sometimes communicate disapproval directly or indirectly to the perpetrator of a deviant act. This reaction has been termed ‘social control’. Three field studies were conducted to explore the influence of the number of bystander-observers on the likelihood of social control.

Models indicate that opportunities for reputation formation can play an important role in sustaining cooperation and prosocial behavior. Results from experimental economic games support this conclusion, as manipulating reputational opportunities affects prosocial behavior.

This paper reviews theory and research on the relationship between group size and conformity and presents a meta-analysis of 125 Asch-type conformity studies. It questions the assumption of a single function made in formal models of social influence and proposes instead that the function will vary depending on which social influence process predominates.

The authors review the effect of the presence of others on food intake. In social facilitation studies, people tend to eat more in groups than when alone. In modeling studies, the presence of others may facilitate or inhibit intake, depending on how much these other people eat.

Love is a universal emotion that has become the basis of marriage and family for many societies, which researchers continue to explore. This research will add to the knowledge of interpersonal romantic attraction, further exposing love’s complex nature.

What makes a face attractive and why do we have the preferences we do? Emergence of preferences early in development and cross-cultural agreement on attractiveness challenge a long-held view that our preferences reflect arbitrary standards of beauty set by cultures.

Inspired by studies demonstrating mate-choice copying effects in non-human species, recent studies of attractiveness judgements suggest that social learning also influences human preferences. In the first part of our article, we review evidence for social learning effects on preferences in humans and other animals. In the second part, we present new empirical evidence that social learning not only influences the attractiveness of specific individuals, but can also generalize to judgements of previously unseen individuals possessing similar physical traits.

A growing body of research explores that relationships are the significant part of our lives. The study examines important factors of attitude similarity and proximity working behind interpersonal attraction among same gender friends.

What might explain our instinctual attraction to certain individuals, aside from visible factors such as appearance? We examined possible biologically-driven selection for immunology genes, specifically preferences for Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC)-dissimilarity, through the ecologically-valid method of speed-dating.

Females gain direct or indirect fitness benefits by choosing between males with traits indicating
"good genes", but we usually know very little about the nature of these genes. However, it has
been suggested that genetic quality may often be defined as heterozygosity at certain loci.

An experiment was conducted to test a generalization or hypothesis suggested by
some of Latane's animal research — the hypothesis that social interaction may lead
to attraction.

Extremely high variability in genes of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) in vertebrates is assumed to be a consequence of frequency-dependent parasite-driven selection and mate preferences based on promotion of offspring heterozygosity at MHC, or potentially, genome-wide inbreeding avoidance. Where effects have been found, mate choice studies on rodents and other species usually find preference for MHC-dissimilarity in potential partners.

Textbook

Previous research indicates that males, compared with females, evaluate their relationships less favorably after exposure to physically attractive members of the other sex. An evolutionary model predicts a converse effect after exposure to opposite-sex individuals high in dominance, which should lead females to evaluate their current relationships less favorably than males. Women and men rated their current relationships after being exposed to opposite-sex targets varying in both dominance and physical attractiveness.

Highlights and landmarks of over 35 years of attraction research are summarized.