Investigating the Relation between Gender Typicality and Pressure to Conform to Gender Norms
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Investigating the Relation between Gender Typicality and Pressure to Conform to Gender Norms Matthew G. Nielson 1 & Kingsley M. Schroeder 2 & Carol Lynn Martin 1 & Rachel E. Cook 1
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Previous research suggested that gender typicality and pressure to conform to gender norms were unrelated; however, this may have been due to how gender typicality was assessed (i.e., by only comparing the self to one’s own gender collective). In the present study, we used a dual identity approach (comparing oneself to both gender collectives: to own-gender and other-gender individuals) to create typologies of gender typicality to examine how similarity to own and other gender collectives might differentially associate with pressure to conform to gender norms. The potentially unique influence of pressure sources (parents, peers, or the self) was also analyzed. Participants were 378 U.S. 6th grade students (48% female; Mage = 11.44 years, range = 10– 13). Results indicated that male early adolescents felt more pressure than did female early adolescents and that those who felt more similar to own-gender (and less similar to other-gender) felt significantly higher levels of pressure and that the highest source of pressure was the self rather than peers or parents. We discuss how the present research provides insights into who experiences the highest levels of felt pressure to conform to gender norms and suggests that self-socialization plays a strong role in gender development for many early adolescents. Keywords Gender identity . Gender typicality . Felt pressure . Peers . Parents . Early adolescence
Egan and Perry (2001) presented a multi-dimensional view of gender identity that has guided many research efforts. Their model described one dimension of identity as involving gender typicality, which in their view was determined exclusively on how similar one felt to one’s own-gender collective.
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-020-01136-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Matthew G. Nielson [email protected] Kingsley M. Schroeder [email protected] Carol Lynn Martin [email protected] Rachel E. Cook [email protected] 1
Arizona State University, 3302 North 7th St. #237, Tempe, AZ 85014, USA
2
Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA 16801, USA
Analyses conducted with this unidimensional typicality measure indicated that own-gender typicality was seldom significantly related to felt pressure that individuals experience in which they feel like one has to act/think/feel a stereotypical way because of culturally held notions of what males and females should be like. Of the 22 studies we could locate which utilize some version of the Egan and Perry’s (2001) measure of felt pressure, 19 studies indicated no significant correlation between felt pressure and gender typicality (see Table 1s in the online supplement). The few studies tha
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