Traditional and evaluative aspects of flexibility regarding transgressions across several domains (masculine and feminine gender roles, moral rules, social etiquette, and physical law) were assessed in 24 4-year-olds, 40 8-year-olds, and 46 college undergraduates. Traditional and evaluative aspects of flexibility yielded distinctly different patterns of response. Data indicated an age-related increase in flexibility on traditional measures (i.e., traditional rule flexibility, cultural relativity) for transgressions in all domains, except physical laws. In contrast, subjects in all age groups were consistently negative in their evaluations of transgressions in moral rules, etiquette, and masculine gender roles. Female subjects viewed masculine gender role transgressions with greater flexibility and less negativity than did male subjects. Results demonstrate the multidimensional character of flexibility development in different social and physical domains. Results suggest that masculine and feminine gender roles and social etiquette may not fall within a common domain of social convention.

Male (n = 170) and female (n = 212) college students viewed photographs, which had been prerated for physical attractiveness, of three opposite-sex individuals. These photographs were paired with three levels of occupational status and income. Subjects indicated their willingness to engage in relationships of varying levels of sexual intimacy and marital potential with the portrayed individuals. Analyses of variance, correlations, and trend analyses supported the hypotheses. Compared to men, women are more likely to prefer or insist that sexual intercourse occur in relationships that involve affection and marital potential, and women place more emphasis than men do on partners' SES in such relationships. Consequently, men's SES and their willingness and ability to invest affection and resources in relationships may often outweigh the effects of their physical attractiveness in women's actual selection of partners. These results and the literature reviewed are more consistent with parental investment theory than with the view that these sex differences are solely the result of differential access to resources and differential socialization.

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