Gender, “masculinity,” and “femininity”: A meta-analytic review of gender differences in agency and communion.

Hsu, Ning; Badura, Katie L.; Newman, Daniel A.; Speach, Mary Eve P.

doi:10.1037/bul0000343

Cited by 80 publications

(47 citation statements)

References 134 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…As discussed in the previous sections when describing the basic tenets of social role theory ( Wood and Eagly, 2002 ; Eagly and Wood, 2012 ), although the origins of these gender differences are likely multiply determined, one clear source can be found in different socialization practices that, from a young age, encourage girls more so than boys to cultivate communal attributes ( Brody, 1993 ; Hibbard and Buhrmester, 1998 ; Shields, 2002 ; Chaplin et al, 2005 ). Women consistently report a stronger communal self-concept than men, viewing themselves as friendlier, less selfish, and more concerned with others (e.g., Witt and Wood, 2010 ; Hsu et al, 2021 ). Thus, the evidence indicates that women are more highly internally motivated than men to practice emotional labor.…”

Section: What Is Emotional Labor and What Are Its Antecedents?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Heavier Lies Her Crown: Gendered Patterns of Leader Emotional Labor and Their Downstream Effects

Vial

Cowgill

2022

Front. Psychol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Women use power in more prosocial ways than men and they also engage in more emotional labor (i.e., self-regulate their emotions to respond and attend to the needs and emotions of other people in a way that advances organizational goals). However, these two constructs have not been previously connected. We propose that gendered emotional labor practices and pressures result in gender differences in the prosocial use of power. We integrate the literature on emotional labor with research on the psychology of power to articulate three routes through which this happens. First, women may be more adept than men at the intrapersonal and interpersonal processes entailed in emotional labor practices—a skill that they can apply at all hierarchical levels. Second, given women’s stronger internal motivation to perform emotional labor, they construe power in a more interdependent manner than men, which promotes a more prosocial use of power. As a result, female powerholders tend to behave in more prosocial ways. Third, when they have power, women encounter stronger external motivation to engage in emotional labor, which effectively constrains powerful women’s behaviors in a way that fosters a more prosocial use of power. We discuss how, by promoting prosocial behavior among powerholders, emotional labor can be beneficial for subordinates and organizations (e.g., increase employee well-being and organizational trust), while simultaneously creating costs for individual powerholders, which may reduce women’s likelihood of actually attaining and retaining power by (a) making high-power roles less appealing, (b) guiding women toward less prestigious and (c) more precarious leadership roles, (d) draining powerful women’s time and resources without equitable rewards, and (e) making it difficult for women to legitimize their power in the eyes of subordinates (especially men). Thus, emotional labor practices can help explain the underrepresentation of women in top leadership positions.

show abstract

Section: What Is Emotional Labor and What Are Its Antecedents?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Heavier Lies Her Crown: Gendered Patterns of Leader Emotional Labor and Their Downstream Effects

Vial

Cowgill

2022

Front. Psychol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Another traditional theme of gender theory is the tradeoff between agency and communion (Bakan, 1966), with women being less agentic but more communal than men (Hsu, Badura, Newman, & Speach, 2021). This too fits well into the selfprotection analysis.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 78%

The pregnancy compensation hypothesis, not the staying alive theory, accounts for disparate autoimmune functioning of women around the world

Kunz

Goodnight²,

Wilson³

2022

Behav Brain Sci

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Whereas infants' and toddlers' preferences for prosocial agents assessed in tasks used by the meta-analyzed studies are not to be equated fully to the complex moral judgements and actions by older children or adults, these preferences may still be an important basis for prosociality, inasmuch as they have been linked to relatively higher sociomoral functioning later in life (Tan et al, 2018). Adding to what we know about the developmental trajectory of sex differences in morality, the current findings suggest that gender differences in valuing prosociality found in older children (Block et al, 2018;Ojanen et al, 2005;Sierksma et al, 2014) and adults (Atari et al, 2020;Falk & Hermle, 2018;Hsu et al, 2021;Jaffee & Hyde, 2000;Schwartz & Rubel, 2005) do not derive from early sex differences in the very basic ability to evaluate prosocial and antisocial behavior, and to prefer the former to the latter.…”

mentioning

confidence: 77%

Meta-analytic evidence against sex differences in infants’ and toddlers’ preference for prosocial agents.

Margoni¹,

Block²,

Hamlin³

et al. 2023

Developmental Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Can well-documented gender differences in evaluations of prosocial versus antisocial actions found in childhood and adulthood be traced to sex differences in basic sociomoral preferences in infancy? We provide an answer to this question by meta-analyzing sex differences in preference for prosocial over antisocial agents in a set of 53 samples of American and European infants and toddlers aged between 4 and 32 months (N = 1,094). Although the original studies were agnostic to sex differences, we were able to retrieve the original data sets and estimate the effect of infants' and toddlers' sex on sociomoral preferences. Employing both a standard frequentist and a Bayesian approach to meta-analysis, we found strong evidence supporting the absence of sex differences in sociomoral preferences among infants and toddlers. We discuss the relevance of this finding for theories and descriptions of the emergence and developmental trajectory of gender differences in morality. Public Significance StatementWe found strong evidence that, within the first 3 years of life, males and females do not differ in their tendency to prefer prosocial agents over antisocial agents, a tendency that is considered by many to be a building block of adult moral cognition. The present meta-analysis gives evidence to evaluate theories and hypotheses about the development of gender differences in moral judgment.

show abstract

Gender, “masculinity,” and “femininity”: A meta-analytic review of gender differences in agency and communion.

Cited by 80 publications

References 134 publications

Heavier Lies Her Crown: Gendered Patterns of Leader Emotional Labor and Their Downstream Effects

Heavier Lies Her Crown: Gendered Patterns of Leader Emotional Labor and Their Downstream Effects

The pregnancy compensation hypothesis, not the staying alive theory, accounts for disparate autoimmune functioning of women around the world

Meta-analytic evidence against sex differences in infants’ and toddlers’ preference for prosocial agents.

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About