Which of the following statements about social roles is correct?

2.1 Social Role Theory

Eagly's (1987) social role theory argues that widely shared gender stereotypes develop from the gender division of labor that characterizes a society. In western societies, men's greater participation in paid positions of higher power and status and the disproportionate assignment of nurturant roles to women have created stereotypes that associate agency with men and communion with women. In addition, the gendered division of labor gives men and women differentiated skills. When gender stereotypes are salient in a group because of a mixed sex membership or a task or context that is culturally associated with one gender, stereotypes shape behavior directly through the expectations members form for one another's behavior. When group members enact social roles that are more tightly linked to the context than gender, such as manager and employee in the workplace, these more proximate roles control their behavior rather than gender stereotypes. Even in situations where gender stereotypes do not control behavior, however, men and women may still act slightly differently due to their gender differentiated skills.

Social role theory has a broad scope that applies to interaction in all contexts and addresses assertive, power related behaviors as well as supportive or feeling related behaviors (called socioemotional behaviors). The explanations offered by the theory are not highly specific or detailed, however. The theory predicts that women will generally act more communally and less instrumentally than men in the same context, that these differences will be greatest when gender is highly salient in the situation, and that gender differences will be weak or absent when people enact formal, institutional roles.

Spillover

The concept of spillover links ecological theory and social role theory. Ecological theory addresses the potential impact of the exosystem, experiences within settings in which the developing person is not directly involved, but that have consequences for the person. In an effort to explore that idea Lawson et al. (2014) considered the daily positive spillover from mothers’ work to their adolescent children’s emotional mood and physical health symptoms. They used a daily diary measurement approach. On 8 consecutive days, study participants were interviewed at the workplace, and then parents and their adolescent children were interviewed that same evening by phone. At work, mothers were asked if they had a particularly positive or negative experience at work since the previous day. In the home interview, adolescents were asked to report on their mother’s mood upon returning from work (e.g., happy, tired, angry, stressed, sad), their own positive or negative emotions that day; their experience of six physical symptoms (e.g., headache, stomach ache); and their sleep quality. The measurement approach links experiences for the mother at her workplace to her child’s perceptions of the mother when she returns home as well as the child’s own emotional and physical well-being on that day. The daily report limits reliance on global memories and generalizations about perceptions of mothers’ moods or child’s moods. What is more, the daily diary approach captures fluctuations over days, providing an opportunity to determine how much variability there is in the mother’s workplace experiences and how that may impact the child’s emotional and physical health.

1.3 Sociocultural Theory

Sociocultural theory, also called social structural theory or social role theory, was proposed by Eagly and Wood (1999). According to this view, a society's division of labor by gender drives all other gender differences in behavior. That is, for example, women's greater nurturance is a result of, rather than the cause of, their assignment to caring for children. Psychological gender differences result from individuals’ adaptations to the particular roles to which they are assigned as well as the roles that are proscribed. Biological differences between males and females are important because they are magnified by culture. Men's greater size and strength, historically, led them to pursue activities such as warfare, which gave them greater status, power, and wealth than women. Once in those roles, men's behavior became more dominant and women's behavior accommodated by becoming more subordinate. Women's biological capacity for bearing children and breastfeeding led them to care for children, which in turn led them to develop nurturance and relationship skills.

This line of theorizing led Eagly and Wood to predict that the greater the gender difference in status and roles in a culture, the greater the psychological gender differences would be. That is, there should be a positive correlation between the amount of gender inequality in countries and the magnitude of psychological gender differences in those countries. Using cross-national data, Else-Quest, Hyde, and Linn (2010) tested these predictions for gender differences in math performance. Using two international data sets, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), they found that, across nations, the size of the gender gap in math performance of 15-year-olds was correlated with nations’ gender equity in school enrollment, women's share of research jobs, and women's representation in parliament. In short, nations with more gender equality have smaller gender gaps in math performance.

Sociocultural theory was proposed by social psychologists and has received little attention by developmentalists, with the exception of the study of adolescents and math performance described above. However, research reviewed by Leaper and Brown (2014) [Chapter 6 of this volume] has examined the development of some of the psychological constructs that are key to the theory, such as the development of children's understanding of sexism.

Social role and life course theories

Whereas ecological theories focus on the widening sphere of settings and contexts that may impact adolescent development, social role theory traces the process of socialization and personality development through the person’s participation in increasingly diverse and complex social roles. Social roles link individuals to their social environments insofar as they create socially shared patterns of expectations for behavior. Life course theories consider the integration and sequencing of key roles, especially family and work roles, across time, taking into account the historical context during which significant transitions take place. Taken together, these theories help explain similarities in adolescent behavior by offering insight into what are sometimes referred to as historical cohorts like Generation X, Millennials, and Generation Z.

The nature of adolescence as a life stage in any society will depend on the number and types of roles adolescents are expected to play, the changing demands associated with these roles, and patterns of role gain and role loss. The concept of role strain including role overload, role conflict, and spillover accounts for disruption or disequilibrium in development.

This chapter introduces social role theory, drawing on the theoretical work of Orville Brim and Talcott Parsons, expands to include concepts from the work of Bernice Neurgarten on the social clock, Glen Elder’s life course theory, and Phyllis Moen’s concepts of role boundaries, transitions, and role overload.

Social role theory and life course theory have numerous applications to the study of adolescent development and behavior. Those addressed in the chapter include: gender-role socialization and career choice; role gain as a teachable moment; role strain and health; and the cascading impact of social inequality over the life course.

Other Kinds of Theories of Need

We can contrast harm theories of need with four other kinds: autonomy theories, essential identity, minimal decent life, and social role theories.

Autonomy theories claim that when a person’s fundamental needs are not met this will necessarily damage the person’s autonomy or agency. The autonomy theory restricts fundamental needs to those needs related to the agent’s autonomy or status as an agent. Sometimes, such autonomy theories are presented as an explication of the relevant conception of serious harm. However, as asserted by Gewirth, it is probably clearer to contrast the autonomy view with a harm-based account of need. This is because a harm theory of need would include harms pertaining to autonomy, without being restricted to those.

The claim that need should be explicated in terms of a person’s autonomy might be justified on the basis of the conjunction of three statements. First, what a person needs, in the most fundamental sense of the term, is what she needs in order to be herself, or to be what she is essentially (i.e., what A needs is what she needs to be A). Second, a person is essentially a person. Third, a person is necessarily an autonomous agent. Therefore, if one is deprived of what one needs for one’s autonomy then one lacks what one needs to be oneself.

Soren Reader has argued that all fundamental needs pertain to the existence of the being in question. She calls these ‘essential needs’ because they constitute essential properties of the being and she argues that these extend beyond survival needs to include social identities, such as being a mother or a teacher.

Some writers claim that the antecedent of a fundamental need claim is living a minimally good or decent life. Needs are conditions necessary to live a minimally decent life in the society to which the person belongs.

David Braybrooke explains the idea of a basic need in terms of what a person or organism requires in order to live and function normally. This he explains in terms of four social roles that individuals have: citizen, worker, parent, and housekeeper. Baybrooke’s concern is to explain need in a way that will be useful for defining social policy. Policy makers can identify a list of what is needed minimally for persons to perform these four social roles; these minimum standards of provision can be fixed defeasibly in terms of a reference population. Policy decisions ought to meet such minimal standards of provision.

2.2 Helping Behavior and Altruism

Eagly and Crowley (1986) conducted a meta-analysis of studies of gender differences in helping behavior. They grounded their meta-analysis in social role theory and argued that it made no sense to examine an overall effect size for gender differences in helping behavior. Instead, whether males help more or females help more depends on whether the situation calls for helping that is consistent with the male role or the female role. The results are therefore highly dependent on the situations in which social psychologists have measured helping. Men, for example, are more likely to help in situations in which they know they are being observed (d=.74) whereas there is no gender difference (d=−0.02) when participants believe they are not being observed. Heroism is part of the male role and heroism requires onlookers. Helping in the private context of long-term relationships is part of the female role, for example, a mother helping a child. This type of helping has been neglected in social psychological research.

Eisenberg and Fabes (1998) conducted a meta-analysis of studies of gender differences in children's prosocial behavior. The overall effect size was d=−.18, indicating a small gender difference favoring girls. Girls scored higher on all types of prosocial behavior, including instrumental help and comforting; the largest gender difference was for being kind or considerate, d=−.42.

Cultural Factors

The relative division of labor and roles among women and men in a given society is an important cultural factor in adolescents' gender-related experiences. As articulated in social role theory, the gendered division of roles in a society shapes the kinds of expectations about gender roles that individuals formulate for themselves and about others. For example, men are still more likely than women to hold positions of power (e.g., US Presidents, corporate CEOs), whereas women are still more likely than men to be responsible for childcare and housework. These societal patterns can shape how adolescents think about the kinds of roles that they will adopt. Consistent with the social role theory, cross-cultural research suggests that gender socialization practices are less rigid in more gender-egalitarian societies.

The extent that a society organizes roles and behaviors according to gender affects the salience that gender will have as a social category organizing individuals' thinking. Being a member of one's gender group – that is, being a girl or a boy – is perhaps the most fundamental group identity that individuals experience during childhood and adolescence. The beliefs and knowledge that individuals form about gender are known as gender schemas. According to gender schema theory, individuals tend to pay more attention to information relevant to their own gender, and they store information in memory in ways to make it consistent with their existing gender schemas.

Perspectives

There are two prominent perspectives on why humans choose the mates they do. These perspectives are not mutually exclusive, but do have different foci. Some social psychologists focus on social role theory to explain mate preferences, while evolutionary psychologists focus on evolutionary adaptations. This article focuses on the evolutionary perspective, as most of the developments in mate selection have stemmed from predictions generated by this perspective. However, it briefly introduces both viewpoints here.

Social role theory argues that mate preferences are based on cultural expectations. That is, in each culture, there are generally held expectations for ideal male and female mates. Such expectations, or social roles, are shaped by the values of a society, which in turn are shaped by various constraints. For instance, from a sociocultural perspective, women in most societies have less power socially and economically than men do. To gain better access to economic resources and upward mobility, women need to select marriage partners who have social status and income potential. Thus, these traits are an important part of the male social role. In contrast, men are not excluded from economic participation. Rather, they are free to pursue what society deems pleasurable, such as a person's physical attributes. As such, physical appearance is a large part of the female social role.

Why do those traditional sex roles exist in the first place? Evolutionary psychologists argue that it is because they were adaptive in our ancestral environment. From this perspective, human brains consist of problem-solving devices (i.e., adaptive mechanisms) that have been shaped over millions of years of natural and sexual selection. That is, psychologies that somehow aided ancestral humans in reproducing more successfully are likely to have been passed down over evolutionary history to the present day. Because men and women have different reproductive capacities and constraints, the sexes may have evolved different psychologies relating to mating and reproduction. In the following paragraphs, this theory is explored in greater detail.

4.3 Actual change in gender stereotypes

In postindustrial societies, women continue to be perceived as more communal and men as more agentic, despite women's rising labor force participation (Lueptow, Garovich-Szabo, & Lueptow, 2001; Spence & Buckner, 2000). Social role theory might be taken to imply that increases in women's employment rates would yield increases in their stereotypic agency. So far, this change in the female stereotype has been demonstrated only in some cultural contexts (e.g., in Spain, López-Sáez, Morales, & Lisbona, 2008) and on the specific attribute of intelligence, on which women have exceeded men in U.S. national surveys (Newport, 2001; Pew Research Center, 2008). A more subtle shift is evident in the effects of employment on the perceived agency of women and men. At least in the United States, where women are increasingly employed full time, employment no longer conveys the higher levels of agency and lower levels of communion that it did in earlier decades when such employment was less typical of women (compare Bosak, Sczesny, & Eagly, 2012, to Eagly & Steffen, 1984). Thus, employed women and men are perceived as similar to men and women in general.

Even though the general content of stereotypes of women may not have changed, the breadth of stereotypes may have increased due to the diversity of women's roles. Although some women have entered into male-dominated managerial and professional jobs, most women continue to be concentrated in traditionally female dominated, communally demanding jobs. In fact, women's most common occupations in the United States are secretaries and administrative assistants; registered nurses; elementary and middle school teachers; cashiers; retail salespersons; and nursing, psychiatric, and home health aides (U.S. Department of Labor, 2011). Moreover, women's entry into management and the professions has not been accompanied by their commensurate entry into the upper-level leadership roles regarded as particularly demanding higher levels of agentic attributes (Eagly & Carli, 2007). Women are also more diverse than men in how much they are employed, with more women than men employed part time or not at all (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2011, Tables 6, 7, and 20). Thus, the change in many women's occupational and family roles, along with the continuity in other women's roles, likely promotes the breadth of stereotypes of women.

In evidence of the broader stereotypes about women than men, college students judged that stereotypic women could move more comfortably across diverse situations than stereotypic men (Eckes, 1996). Also, stereotypes about specific subtypes of women (e.g., housewife; Deaux, Winton, Crowley, & Lewis, 1985) were more heterogeneous than stereotypes about specific subtypes of men (e.g., jock). Furthermore, social perceivers ascribed masculine characteristics to women to a greater extent than they ascribed feminine characteristics to men (see present time conditions in Diekman & Eagly, 2000), and they approved of desirable counterstereotypical qualities in women more than in men (Diekman & Goodfriend, 2006; Prentice & Carranza, 2002).

In summary, as descriptive and prescriptive expectations, gender roles apply to all women and men in a society (Ridgeway, 2011). Given these consensual social expectations, in conjunction with socialization that prepares girls and boys to have attributes appropriate to their adult roles, people come to view the division of labor in their society as reflecting the genuine attributes of men and women. By inferring different essential attributes of women and men, people justify current social arrangements as following from these differing attributes. Such essentialist beliefs appear to have multiple components reflecting both nature and nurture. Nurture theories—that is, social essentialism—allow people to believe in change in the division of labor across cultures and time periods in response to changing circumstances. Nature theories—or biological essentialism—act as a conservative force by suggesting a more rigid division of labor.

8.3 Social Role Processes

In our effort to establish a common bond between different hierarchies, we want to be clear that we are not suggesting the most extreme version of argument that different behavioral outcomes that accompany power, social class, gender, and race can be reduced only to whether they lead an individual to experience a sense of advantage or disadvantage. For example, proponents of social role theory (Eagly & Wood, 1999; Eagly et al., 2000) argue that men and women are socialized to behave in particular ways, which requires no link to differences in perceived advantage or disadvantage. Our model does not displace social role theory or any other theory that tries to account for the effects that we have cataloged here. Rather, we suggest that individuals’ sense of advantage and disadvantage, in addition to the possible influence of social roles, may affect their behavior. Furthermore, even social role theory incorporates the importance of social hierarchy by highlighting that the respective roles played by men and women also tend to differ in the extent to which members of society value them. For example, some have argued that biological differences in strength and child-bearing constrain the opportunities available to women and men and place them into different roles with different demands (Buss & Kenrick, 1998). These roles, in turn, have been appraised as having different levels of value to society (e.g., Harris, 1993; Wood & Eagly, 2002). Thus, it would seem that no matter one's preferred mechanism for explaining gender differences, the ROAD of inequality plays an important role.