According to McGuire's distinctiveness theory, bemg a member of a numerical sex minority increases the salience of sex membership in self-descriptions. The same effect is observed in descriptions of others when the target person belongs to the numerical minority. The purpose of the present experiment was to study variations m sex-label salience from descriptions of male and female targets, especially as a function of the sex composition of the set of persons to which the targets belong. It was predicted that the target person 3 sex would have a main effect on its salience and would interact with numerical distinctiveness on this variable. It was found ( I ) that the salience of the target person's sex was greater when hislher sex was in the minority, as predicted by distinctiveness theory, and (2) that the sex of the target was more salient to female than to male subjects. There were some suggested interaction effects, such as that minority status affected the salience of male targets more than female targets; a significant distinctiveness effect on sex-membership salience was observed for male targets only. These differences in the cognitive processing of the two sex categories, if confirmed, can be interpreted in terms of membership in socially hierarchized groups, in reference to research on intergroup relations. tel: (33) 42 20 49 05, fax: (33) 42 20 59 05, e-mail. HURPICH@romarin.univ-aix.fr.We are grateful to Guido Peters and to the anonymous reviewers, whose comments and proposals helped us greatly. Thanks are also due to Vivian W a l t z for her translation.

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A partir de l'examen de la littérature, essentiellement américaine, un aperçu est donné sur les théories et les recherches qui rendent compte du processus de différenciation des sexes tel qu'il se manifeste dans les comportements, les représentations et le sentiment d'identité personnelle. Après une présentation critique des théories classiques (psychanalytique, de l'identification, cognitive-développementale, de l'apprentissage social), les points de vue exposés sont ceux de courants de recherche nouveaux apparus depuis une dizaine d'années, issus principalement du cognitivisme et de la psychanalyse.