Negative and positive components of psychological masculinity and femininity and their relationships to self-reports of neurotic and acting out behaviors.

TLDR

The study introduced negatively valued masculinity (M‑) and femininity (F‑) scales to complement the existing positively valued M+ and F+ scales of the Personal Attributes Questionnaire, defining M‑ as agentic, undesirable traits typical of males. Researchers developed two F‑ scales—Fc‑ capturing communion‑like traits and FVA‑ capturing verbal passive‑aggressive qualities—both comprising stereotypically feminine, undesirable characteristics. Results revealed significant sex differences in all scales, low correlations between parallel positive and negative scales, strong negative cross‑scale correlations, evidence of multidimensionality, positive self‑esteem associations with M+ and F+, negative associations with F‑, and distinct patterns linking M+ to neuroticism and M‑ to acting‑out behaviors, with FVA‑ showing the next strongest correlations.

Abstract

Negatively valued masculinity (M-) and femininity (F-) personality scales were developed to supplement the positively valued Masculinity (M+) and Femininity (F+) scales of the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ; Spence & Helmreich). M- consisted of traits that had been judged to be (a) more typical of males than females, (b) undesirable in both sexes, and (c ) agentic or instrumental in content. Two F- scales were developed, both containing stereotypically feminine, undesirable traits, one set of traits referring to communionlike characteristics (Fc-) and the other to verbal passive-aggressive qualities (FVA-). Significant sex differences in the predicted direction were found on all scales. In both sexes, low and typically nonsignificant correlations were found between parallel positive and negative scales, but highly significant negative correlations were found between positive and negative cross-sex scales. These findings provide additional evidence for the multidimentionslity of masculinity and femininity. Scores on a self-esteem measure were positively correlated with M+ and F+, uncorrelated with M-, and negatively correlated with the F- scales. Different patterns of scores were associated with two types of problem behaviors. In both sexes, neuroticism was most highly correlated (in a negative direction) with M+, and acting out behavoir was most strongly correlated (in a positive direction) with M-. The next highest correlation in both instances was with FVA-.