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Biosocial Theories of Gender Development

Essay title - due Thursday if not already handed in:
"Discuss the biosocial approach to gender development." 8 + 16 marks

'Biosocial' simply means that a theory deals with both biological and social factors. It's worth knowing two, and we have looked at Money & Ehrhardt's biosocial theory and Eagly & Wood's Social Role Theory.

Money & Ehrhardt developed their theory based on research with abnormal individuals born with 'ambiguous genitalia' - somewhere between a penis and vagina. Their theory is basically that the factors we covered in our look at Social Learning Theory (parents, peers, the media and schools, through reinforcement, modelling and direct tuition) are the key shapers of gender identity, but with labelling as 'male' or 'female' based on biology at birth, and hormones (especially at puberty) interacting with the socialisation.

They supported their claim that a child's gender could be simply reassigned as long as the process was started before they were two with the Bruce/Brenda/David Reimer case study. Of course, the truth of this supports the claim of the biological approach that prenatal hormones are crucial to gender identity.

Eagley & Wood put a 'social constructionist' twist on the claims of Evolutionary psychology. Their theory states that biological differences between the sexes have evolved, but not behavioural differences. They state that these arise through socialisation, but due to the 'social roles' which are assigned to men and women (by society) based on their physical differences. Furthermore, they claim that hormonal differences between men and women are largely due to the different social situations they are encouraged into (men have more testosterone because they are competitive and hostile, rather than the other way round).

Here is the 'colourful' presentation which has some more details, and here is an exemplar essay written by a helpful psychology teacher somewhere - careful though, it's not necessarily great!

Gender Schema Theory

Last Friday we completed our look at cognitive explanations of gender development with gender schema theory. This is the most recent of the theories we have looked at, and an influential one with plenty of common-sense appeal.

 Like Kohlberg's cognitive developmental theory it broadly agrees with the social learning explanation, but stresses that early in childhood children learn their gender schema from their parents, peers, the media etc. This mental framework then affects what they learn from their models in the future. Information which doesn't fit with their schema is likely to be forgotten or distorted. This makes gender identity / behaviour less flexible than SLT suggests.

This approach disagrees with Kohlberg in that it claims that children's gender schemas are developed early - as soon as they have gender identity aged around two.

Here is the presentation.

And the video illustrating how young children have fairly fixed, stereotypical views relating to gender role and behaviour - their gender schema:

Sleep resources

The powerpoint on lifespan changes in sleep is here.

Today we looked at explanations for insomnia. We discussed different ways of diagnosing and describing the disorder, most notably predisposing, precipitating and perpetuating components, and also methods of treatments. The ppt is here and the patient accounts are here. 

With regard to narcolepsy, the NHS video of the young narcolepsy sufferer is here, it contains some good background info. My powerpoint is here.

The next essay that I would like you to write is:

'Discuss evolutionary explanations of the function of sleep' (8 + 24 marks)

Due Monday 26th November

Do PLAN your essay before diving in. 

Cognitive Developmental explanations of gender - Kohlberg's Gender Constancy Theory

We're back to the 'nurture' side of the gender debate here, but whereas the Social Learning approach assumes that behaviours are learned in the same way regardless of age, this one emphasises changes in the way ideas about gender are acquired. Children are also seen more as active seekers of gender information, rather than being passively taught / reinforced.

Kohlberg's theory of Gender Constancy basically argues that children don't start to deliberately acquire gender roles until they understand that their gender is fixed and won't (naturally) change. An important related idea is 'conservation' - the ability to understand that some fundamental property of a thing stays the same when in changes in a superficial way.

Here is the presentation from the lesson.

Here is Ernie Lawrence aged three and a bit, not showing much in the way of conservation:

Here he is last week, now four and a bit, capable of conservation in the simpler situation:

Edith Lawrence, aged two and four months, doesn't seem to have achieved Kohlberg's first stage, gender identity, at first, but her later answers are probably more valid, but she clearly isn't a gender expert:

Ernie aged three and a bit - gender identity, and signs of gender stability.

Aged four and a bit - gender stability more-or-less evident but gender consistency still some way off: