Role performance always matches role expectations

Gender Roles

Gender role expectations may have an impact on underachievement and creativity. Creative individuals seem to diverge from sex norms because both sensitivity, which is traditionally a feminine virtue, and independence, which is considered to be a masculine virtue, are essential for creativity. Torrance indicated in 2004 that some students may sacrifice their creativity in order to maintain their masculinity or their femininity, which can lead to emotional issues and other problems for highly creative students. Teachers who are sensitive to gender issues among their students are in a position to soften the negative impact of sex-role stereotyping.

Gender Role Expectations, from the Education System to Work

Gender role expectations affect how males or females perform in educational settings. “Test performance depends on the test taker's characteristics, as well as the test taker's interpretation of the testing situation” (Massa et al., 2005: p. 109). It has been found that for an embedded test on spatial ability, when men's performance was not affected by their gender role, females who held feminine role performed better when the same embedded test was framed as measuring empathy; on the other hand, when the test is framed as measuring spatial ability, females who held masculine role performed better (Massa et al., 2005). This suggested that gender role is highly relevant to how students view themselves, which may then affect how confident (or well) they perform on cognitive tests in certain ways to make their performance consistent with their assigned gender roles. Stereotype threat may hinder one's educational performances. When women are presented with stereotype threat that women did worse compared with men on a test on math ability, they tended to perform less well (Spencer et al., 1999).The internalized stereotype threat may not only hinder one's performance in schools but also influence the choices males and females make in education.

Despite the fact that differences in actual test scores in math or science tests between male and female students are small, female students tend not to be as confident as male students in their performance in math or science. Pressley and McCormick (2007) summarized a number of findings and suggested that parents and teachers tend to ‘cooperate’ in decreasing girls' confidence in math or science subjects. For instance, parents tend to offer less help to their daughters than sons; they tend to undermine their daughters' abilities in math and science subjects but care about and encourage their sons' performance in math or science subjects more. Teachers also tend to give less help to girls in class and are more responsive to boys' questions. Boys on average received more interactions with teachers for science or math classes.

For a long period, people held strong stereotypes toward educations for males and females. Compared with boys, more girls are illiterate, do not have access to education, or have narrower choices of education (Silberstang, 2011). This may be related to gender stereotype, cultural ideology, or religious practice. More women are doing lower paid jobs or earning less than men. In less than 100 years ago, women were expected to take ‘woman subjects’, such as home economics only. In developed countries where gender equality is emphasized, females were gradually encouraged to take up more professional jobs such as social work and teaching (Silberstang, 2011). In 2010, although females graduated with bachelor degrees in the United States outnumbered males (954 891 women vs 713 336 men), ‘sex tendencies’ in professionals are still present. In the United States, men graduated with the more traditionally ‘male’ subjects, such as degrees in computer and engineering, outnumbering women for 4 to 5 times, while women graduated with the more traditionally ‘female’ subjects, such as psychology and outnumbered men for 3 to 4 times (National Science Foundation, 2010).

Women working in traditionally ‘male-dominated’ settings, such as engineering, may also face more difficulties as stereotypes on women being less competent in these professionals are still held. If women do not perform exceptionally well in ‘male-dominated’ industries or professionals, they would be viewed as incompetent; however, if they excel, they would be viewed as selfish, cold, and not being welcomed by colleagues (Dean, 2006). Despite the fact that more females than males are awarded with bachelor degrees, fewer females become faculty in academia or take up senior executives post (Silberstang, 2011). For instance, the most ‘productive’ time for junior faculty members to accumulate publications for attaining tenure collides with the most ‘reproductive’ time of female faculty members. Rhoads (2010) argued that when both males and females are entitled to maternity leave, male faculty members can make use of the leave to produce papers, while female faculty members cannot as they have to carry out duties as mothers. The worst label to a woman is ‘being a bad mother’ (Chrisler, 2013). Both the gender role stereotypes on women's abilities and the biological limitations that females have shorter reproductive period compared with men may result in a glass ceiling effect in workplace. Women are more often to face with challenges in work–life–family balance as they are expected to be nurturing, kind, and less motivated to earn money but be more interested in family life. Such widely held beliefs strengthen the preexisting gender inequality from schools to workplace. The biological limitations, gender stereotypes, and cultural expectations for women to devote more time and energy on the ‘mother track’ would ultimately affect women's upward mobility.

Abstract

It is increasingly being recognized that just as the demands of female gender-role expectations impact negatively on the health of women, so too do the demands of male gender-role expectations on men. It is widely recognized that life expectancy for men is, in most developed countries, lower than that of women, and such discrepancies can be linked, at least in part, to behaviors associated with ‘being a man.’ Morbidity, too, is affected by conformity to the expectations of hegemonic masculinity, with men differing markedly from women across a range of dimensions including emotional expression, body-image expectations, sexual behavior, and help-seeking. Ironically, stepping outside traditional male norms may also have adverse effects on health as such men become to a greater or lesser extent excluded from mainstream society. The suggestion, therefore, is that rather than seeking solutions at an individual level, there is a need for a wider societal revision of the specific expectations place upon both men and women.

The Life Course and Its Paradigmatic Principles

The life course refers to sequential patterns of age-graded events, societal roles, expectations, and social structures bounded by historical time and location. Intersecting trajectories, including marriage, work, education (see Mortimer and Shanahan, 2003) form the backdrop for the contemporary life course. Trajectories involve expected sequences of roles and states (e.g., employed), with some following strongly patterned routes and others involving turning points, redirections of one's life based on circumstances, beliefs, or behaviors. Fundamental to the perspective is that such trajectories are shaped and interpreted by people and institutions within historical eras; the perspective tends toward skepticism about ‘timeless’ rules of human organization in favor of contextualized understanding of developmental processes and socially structured institutional and cultural influences.

Since its inception a half century ago, the study of the life course has cohered around five general principles that focus less on cohorts and more on individual choices made within historical and social contexts (see Elder et al., 2003): (1) life span development, (2) agency, (3) time and place, (4) timing, and (5) linked lives. We briefly discuss each of these in turn, with an extended discussion of agency later in the article.

The principle of life span development extends the typical focus on childhood development and socialization across the life course. Major changes in individual orientations, physical and mental health capacities, role occupancy, and geography occur throughout one's life. For example, McLeod and Kaiser (2004) demonstrate how early behavioral and emotional problems in children lessen the likelihood of receiving a high school degree and enrolling in college, thus contributing to the reproduction of socioeconomic disparities.

Individual lives are embedded within particular historical eras and locations. While this may appear to be a banal observation, it is often ignored within social science theory and research. The meaning attached to particular transitions or historical events shifts based on era or location; the founding of America means something different depending on one's ancestral history.

Experiences differentially affect individuals based on when they occur within their life course (George, 1993), or the age of an individual experiences a more global event. Elder (1974[1999]) demonstrates how life course timing informs understanding of how different age cohorts experienced the Great Depression. Younger children experienced more family disruption and difficulty than children who were slightly older, influencing developmental and life course pathways.

Finally, the principle of linked lives explicates the notion that people's lives are lived interdependently through important pairings and social networks. While many statistical models focus exclusively on the individual, in practice, people's life choices are fundamentally shaped by social ties, relationships that can even serve as turning points away from criminal careers (e.g., Sampson and Laub, 1993).

6 Future Directions

Several scholars, as we have noted, feel that age structure has or should become less salient in shaping roles and role expectations over the life course. Moreover, some have argued ‘the measurement of age, age structuring, and the life course has become more problematic as the study of human lives has moved away from global images and theoretical categories toward more detailed analyses and explanation’ (Settersten and Mayer 1997, p. 234). While heterogeneity, discontinuity, and contingency always exist in considering age structures, it is important to note that age structures are but snapshots of ever-changing distributions. From a societal perspective, however, the continuing extension of life and the concomitant rectangularization and stretching of age distributions suggest that attention to age structures will persist as a major force shaping future sociological research of social structures, the life course, and individual roles and status.

The “Sick Role”

The “sick role” relates to structural constraints that define the expected behavior of a sick person, transcending personalities and attitudes. Role expectations are at the heart of what was once the most influential schema in the sociology of medicine, that of Talcott Parsons. According to Parsons, the social structure of medical practice can be defined by the shared expectations about the “sick role” and the role of the doctor. On the one hand, the sick are exempt from normal obligations, they are not held responsible for their illness, they must try to get well, and they must seek competent help. On the other hand, the physician is expected to be “universalistic,” “functionally specific,” “affectively neutral,” and “collectivity oriented.” These complementary normative rules have a functional relation to the therapeutic process and the larger society. Critics of Parsons rejected his narrow formulation regarding the sick role and the doctor–patient relationship, as well as his assumptions of body and society as perfectly balanced harmonic systems. Parsons' sick role formulation seems to be an ideal type construct, which does not necessarily match the empirical variations of illness behaviors and doctor–patient interactions. Most sociologists have developed a more systematic and neutral typology of doctor–patient relationship based on the degree of the correspondence between the doctor's and the patient's assertion of illness. Parsons' sick role refers to only one of the many possible situations when there is an agreement between the patient's and the doctor's perception of the illness. Another major criticism of Parsons' model states that going to see the doctor is not the only component in the complex system of help-seeking behavior, so a distinction should be made between the sick role and the patient role. A large body of sociological research has demonstrated that actual doctor–patient relations can vary and do not always match the Parsonian model. Most sociologists see Parsons' model as much too oriented by the ideological claims and viewpoints of the profession. Yet, probably precisely for that reason, the concept has become bound up in the medical discourse.

Conclusions

Transgender, transsexual, and gender-variant individuals may struggle with gender dysphoria, including discomfort with sex assigned at birth, the associated gender role expectations, their primary and/or secondary sex characteristics, and their body image. To alleviate this discomfort, they may make changes in gender role and/or feminize or masculinize their body and appearance through hormone therapy, surgery, hair removal or additions, dress, or style or with the help of other accessories. While gender dysphoria poses an added challenge to maintaining a positive body image, professional assistance is available that can alleviate dysphoria and facilitate a coming-out process toward an integrated identity, affirming diversity in gender identities and expression. Unfortunately, the social stigma attached to gender-variant identities and expressions, as well as limited access to competent transgender-specific health care, may hinder this process. Despite these challenges, many transgender, transsexual, and gender-variant individuals are able to achieve a positive body image, especially as they embrace their authentic self (Figure 8).

5.2 Biological processes

Gender roles also create sex differences in behavior tailored to individuals’ own cultural contexts through the hormones and associated neural structures that guide male and female behavior. Research has only recently begun to identify the effects of role expectations and performances on hormonal fluctuations—that is, the downstream effects of roles on hormones and neural responses. Such effects, which can be considered aspects of the activational effects of hormones on behavior, were anticipated by the classic model of testosterone effects, which allowed for behavior to influence hormones as well as for hormones to influence behavior (Mazur & Booth, 1998). These downstream behavior-to-hormones effects are critical to understanding human behavior, especially sex differences and similarities.

The relations between hormones and behaviors were shaped in part through ancient selection pressures associated with perceptual, sensory, and motivational processes that humans share with other animals. In humans, these relations are also shaped by neural systems that evolved within complex social groups. Living in such contexts required understanding the self in relation to others, along with detecting and regulating actions to avoid social exclusion (Heatherton, 2011). With the evolution of sophisticated neural and hormonal systems, men and women are motivated and able to understand gender-typical expectations, form gender identities, and regulate their behavior accordingly. Complex neurohormonal systems enable people to tailor masculine and feminine behaviors to the demands of the societies in which they live.

The hormone, testosterone, is associated with agentic behaviors that involve gaining or maintaining status, including competition, risk taking, and aggression (Booth, Granger, Mazur, & Kivlighan, 2006). Also relevant to dominant, competitive behaviors are heightened levels of cortisol as well as arginine vasopressin for men and estrogen for women (Craig & Halton, 2009; Stanton & Edelstein, 2009). In addition, communal behaviors of social bonding, nurturance, and intimacy are associated with oxytocin and estrogen (Campbell, 2008; Taylor, 2002, 2012). Although a review of research on hormonal influences is beyond the scope of this chapter, we report relevant findings concerning testosterone, the most widely studied of these hormones, to illustrate interactions between sociocultural and biological mediation.

In the classic model, testosterone and behavior are linked in reciprocal influence. In socially challenging situations, dominant, aggressive behaviors might activate testosterone and activation of testosterone might promote dominant, aggressive behaviors (Mazur & Booth, 1998), but the hormone might also lead to increased sociality if a more moderated response is appropriate (Bos, Panksepp, Bluthé, & van Honk, 2012). Given the first, behavior-to-testosterone link, the hormone is activated by and presumably enables performance of assertive, dominant behavior. Archer's (2006b) meta-analysis demonstrated that the anticipation of athletic and other competitive behavior (although not contrived laboratory competitions) caused men's testosterone to increase, apparently to energize and direct physical and cognitive performance. Also, women's anticipated and actual participation in rugby, wrestling, soccer, tennis, and volleyball matches increased their testosterone (Edwards & Kurlander, 2010; Hamilton, van Anders, Cox, & Watson, 2009; Oliveira, Gouveia, & Oliveira, 2009). Thus, the behavior-to-testosterone effect has been found to hold for both sexes, despite men having up to 10 times the circulating levels of testosterone as women.

These downstream effects of competition differ for victors and losers. In Archer's (2006b) meta-analysis, competition winners increased in testosterone more than losers, presumably enabling winners to engage in future defense of their status gains and enabling losers to act submissively and thereby reduce future costs. Winners and losers who experience these fluctuations in testosterone are especially likely to show the predicted downstream behavioral consequences. That is, those who show a competition-induced increase in testosterone are more likely to engage in subsequent competition (Carré, McCormick, & Hariri, 2011; see also Mehta & Josephs, 2011).

Relevant to the second, testosterone-to-behavior link in the classic model, a meta-analysis of 11 studies that experimentally injected men with testosterone or related synthetic androgens found no systematic rise in anger, aggression, or hostility (Archer, 2006b; see also McAndrew, 2009). In one explanation of these null findings, hormones affect people's underlying motivations and reactions to environmental conditions but do not ordinarily instigate specific behaviors such as directed aggression (Bos et al., 2012). In general, studies correlating basal testosterone and aggression (yielding mean r = .08, k = 42, in meta-analysis by Archer, Graham-Kevan, & Davies, 2005) are causally ambiguous and require additional investigation of the factors that underlie such relations.

Although less is known about the mediating role of hormones in behaviors other than aggression and dominance, some evidence suggests that hormone levels are affected by nurturing and competition in close relationships. For example, facilitating performance of caring roles, men and women in close relationships have lower testosterone levels (Booth et al., 2006; van Anders & Watson, 2007). Also, fathers’ anticipation and vicarious experience of childbirth produce a fall in testosterone as well as other hormonal changes that mimic the changes that occurred in mothers (Berg & Wynne-Edwards, 2001, 2002; Gettler, McDade, Feranil, & Kuzawa, 2011). Testosterone decreases with nurturing activity and not simply with becoming a parent (Gettler et al., 2011). Thus, fatherhood lowered testosterone among Tanzanian foraging and pastoralist groups who practiced high levels of paternal care but not ones who provided minimal direct paternal care (Muller, Marlowe, Bugumba, & Ellison, 2009). Nurturing also influences women's hormones, with testosterone levels especially low among mothers of younger children (Kuzawa, Gettler, Huang, & McDade, 2010). Despite this trend for relationships to be associated with lowered testosterone, men and women seeking relationships show high testosterone levels, presumably because of the competition they experience (Gettler et al., 2011; van Anders & Goldey, 2010).

Research is thus consistent with the claim that hormonal mechanisms mediate the sexes’ contingent responding to their social relationships. Also relevant are the hormonal and neural systems that enable social learning, especially the learning of specific preferences and desires as people experience rewarding or punishing events within their society. Such learning is represented in neural systems involving dopamine and opioids (Montague & Lohrenz, 2007; Schultz, 2006). Depending on their environments, men and women may find similar or different types of experiences rewarding. In general, these various neural systems enable learning that supplements or even supplants the influences of testosterone and other hormones that underlie specific responding (e.g., oxytocin). For example, through reward learning, humans can develop parental attachments without the hormones of pregnancy, parturition, and lactation (Depue & Morrone-Strupinsky, 2005). Such bonding is triggered by rewards inherent in infants’ vulnerability and need, physical sensations of tactile contact and smell, and societies’ high valuing of children. According to Kendrick (2004), these learned rewards can account for much of the positive affect arising from human maternal behavior. The resulting plasticity of infant-caregiver attachment enables cooperative breeding, as fathers and other caretakers bond with infants.

Neural structures also are activated to support the performance of male and female behavior. These structures accommodate and support the continued or frequent activation of certain types of behaviors. Research has demonstrated changes in neural organization and activation as people engage in various specific activities, including singing, juggling, driving a taxicab, professional dancing, and meditating (e.g., Taubert et al., 2010). The experience of caring for young also may generate systematic changes in parents’ neural structures, although evidence for such changes at this point comes largely from nonhuman mammals (Kinsley et al., 2008). Thus, much like competitive, dominant behavior activates testosterone, life experience modifies neural structures to promote the sexes’ skilled performance at tasks that meet their personal goals, which are, in turn, influenced by social expectations. In this way, research observations of sex differences in adult brain structures may reflect, not intrinsic, inborn differences, but the sexes’ training in certain social roles as they respond to the gender role expectations within their society.

In summary, agentic and communal behaviors are enacted flexibly through the mediation of hormonal and neural processes. Although testosterone and other hormones are associated with specific classes of behaviors, neurochemical processes that undergird social learning, along with associated neural structures, can promote a wide range of behaviors, depending on individual responses to gender role expectations within their society. These multiple biological processes guiding human behavior reflect the interaction between ancient biochemical systems that humans share with other animals and more recently evolved, cultural learning mechanisms that enable people to understand gender-typical expectations, form gender identities, and regulate their behavior accordingly. At an individual level, these processes undergird the societal-level variation in typical male and female behavior that we presented earlier in this chapter as well as the large individual differences that occur within societies.

Material Content or Formal Competence

Traditional approaches deal with the establishment of identity and make content the basis for individuals’ sense of unity and continuity: identity is socially determined by positions held and is experienced as unquestionable inasmuch as individuals have developed “need dispositions toward the fulfillment of role expectations” (Parsons, 1964: 32). This role identity is prevalent in societies in which positions are ascribed and social expectations internalized from early on.

For Erikson, ego-identity encompasses content and competences. Content consists in lifelong substantive commitments (e.g., to a partner, occupation, or worldview) incurred at the successful resolution of the adolescence crisis. Formal competences are then required for maintaining identity. The core is “accumulated trust that the unity and continuity one enjoys in the eyes of others corresponds to a competence to uphold inner unity and continuity” (1973: 107). Nowadays, however, people keep experiencing ever new crises (e.g., midlife crises and retirement crises) in which former commitments are revoked (e.g., by divorce, religious or ideological conversions, or loss of employment). Giddens takes this into account. He no longer speaks of commitments entered once and for all but of a multiplicity of choices: “Each of the small decisions a person makes every day – what to wear, what to eat, how to conduct himself at work, whom to meet with later in the evening … all such choices (as well as the larger and more consequential ones) are decisions not only about how to act but who to be … Lifestyle concerns the very core of self-identity in making and remaking” (1991: 81). Nevertheless, a formal competence – narrative competence – is required as well (discussed below). The model ‘identity qua autonomous commitment’ (Nunner-Winkler, 2002), too, integrates content and competence. Commitment needs an object (i.e., content is required). And autonomous commitments presuppose competences (e.g., self-distancing and reasoning powers).

Krappmann defines identity exclusively on formal terms, debunking any substantive commitments as signs of rigidity, alienation, and reification. Identity is created in situated processes of balancing divergent expectations of different interaction partners and one’s own strivings for “uniqueness and irreplaceability” (1969: 48). This involves “the efforts of an artist constantly juggling and balancing” (p. 56) and presupposes formal ego resources such as tolerance of ambiguity, role distance, and empathy.

Summary

Social psychological work on the relationship between roles and status not only has had a long and rich history, but also continues to thrive. Although work on the relationship between roles and status is often characterized as falling into two oppositional camps, it is clear that the functionalist and the symbolic interactionist approaches also complement one another in their understandings of how social status affects social roles and vice versa. Contemporary structural-functional approach has moved away from considering social status as static and currently focuses on the process of status differentiation and its impact on subsequent role expectations (Rashotte and Webster, 2005; Ridgeway, 2006). There has also been large growth in structural-functional research examining the impact of status hierarchies, status position, and status strivings on people's expectations and enactment of role behaviors (Anderson and Kilduff, 2009; Anderson et al., 2012a,b; Bendersky and Hays, 2012). However, the structural functionalist perspective is still weak at explaining the wide variation in how certain behaviors come to gain shared meaning or describing the processes by which individuals choose to engage in the roles that they do. On the other hand, the symbolic interactionist approach focuses heavily on enactment of role expectations as a process. Both traditional and contemporary symbolic interactionist research has emphasized individual agency in engaging in role behavior. Current work has delved even deeper into the factors that impact the process by which individuals engage in different role behaviors in the process of identity verification and has closely examined how resources, including those that stem from different social positions can impact individuals' ability to successfully achieve their desired identities by manipulating perceptions created in interaction (Cast, 2003; Stets and Cast, 2007; Burke, 2006). However, unlike structural-functional work on the emergence and outcomes that result from the creation of status hierarchies, the symbolic interactionist approach is not strong in explaining how such inequalities between resources and status positions may arise in the first place. In all, research in both traditions complement each other highly. As work continues to progress along both paradigms, it seems quite promising that these paradigms' differing definitions and emphasis on roles and status will develop an even fuller picture of complex relationship among all the different social psychological processes that connect roles to status and back again.