Masculinity, femininity, academic performance, and health: Further evidence concerning the androgyny controversy1

Abstract

Spence and Helmreich's (1978) claim that individual differences in four components of achievement motivation (mastery, work, competitiveness, and personal unconcern) are attributable to masculinity and femininity rather than to gender was generally supported, with one exception: Masculinity was associated with competitiveness for males but not for females. Furthermore, competitive women were more likely than noncompetitive women to have mental and physical health problems, but there was no such difference for males. In general, masculinity emerged as a beneficial constellation of traits for both males and females, correlating negatively with achievement conflicts and stress symptoms, and positively with mastery and work. Femininity, on the other hand, appeared to be a detrimental cluster of traits for both sexes, at least in terms of academic performance and health. Implications for the controversial concept of androgyny were discussed, and it was suggested that, in the future, research inspired by an ideal conception of adult behavior confront the ideal directly rather than describe it in terms of the traditional concepts of masculinity and femininity. Any such research effort will have to deal with the pivotal role of competitiveness.

Gender and Gender Identity Differences in Learning Styles

“…Although, to our knowledge, no studies have been performed on gender identity and learning styles, a few discussed academic performance and related topics. In accordance with Cook's conclusion, androgynous students score highest on academic performance (Olds & Shaver, 1980) and efficient use of intellectual ability (Baucom, 1980). Our finding of a higher score of androgynous persons on the use of the meaning-directed learning style seems to fit the more general observations on androgynous persons.…”

Some Ethical Implications of Individual Competitiveness

“…Prior research has shown that men tend to be more competitive than women (e.g., Olds and Shaver 1980;Spence and Buckner 2000), so it was important to control for gender in our analyses. We also controlled for social desirability given observed negative correlations with hypercompetitiveness (e.g., Ryckman et al 2009) which suggest that admitting the full extent of one's hypercompetitive tendencies may be a socially unacceptable thing to do.…”

“…6;Morey and Gerber 1995;Riskind and Wilson 1982;Tassi and Schneider 1997), are inclined toward counterproductive work behaviors (Dahling et al 2009), and are poor contributors to work teams (Tjosvold et al 2008). Highly competitive people rarely tend to be high performers, whether the specific context is school (Bing 1999;Elliot and McGregor 2001;Farmer 1985;Olds and Shaver 1980;Schroth and Andrew 1987), or various tasks (Johnson and Perlow 1992;Kline and Sell 1996) or jobs Fletcher and Nusbaum 2010;Kirk and Brown 2003;Helmreich et al 1986), even that of astronaut (Musson et al 2004;Rose et al 1994). Highly competitive nations (as assessed by mean levels of citizen competitiveness) tend to perform relatively poorly in terms of Gross Domestic Product (Furnham et al 1994) and national wealth (Van de Vliert et al 2000).…”

Constructed gender, approach to learning and academic performance

“…There appears to have been limited research, which has considered constructed gender and academic performance (Olds and Shaver, 1980) or constructed gender and learning styles (Severiens and ten Dam, 1997) within higher education. Olds and Shaver (1980) investigated the relationship between biological gender, masculinity, femininity and college performance and health.…”

“…Olds and Shaver (1980) investigated the relationship between biological gender, masculinity, femininity and college performance and health. The study found that the grade point average of androgynous and masculine students was higher than for feminine students.…”