Transcript Evolutionary Psychology and Gender Development

Evolutionary Psychology and
Gender Development
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
9sORv1odSyQ
Review:
• What is gender?
• Evolutionary speaking, why is this?
• What is natural selection?
What determines biological sex?
Prenatal development
• 4th and 5th prenatal month
– Male’s greater testosterone and female’s ovarian
hormones impact brain wiring
• Brain Modules
• http://www.learner.org/resources/series142.html
?pop=yes&pid=1571#
Gender Development and Social Influence
• Research linked to male/female
differences in brain areas with abundant
sex hormone receptors during
development
– Ex: adulthood: frontal lobes involved in verbal
fluency are thicker in ___________ and part
of parietal cortex involved in space perception
is thicker in ______________
Gender roles in development
• Biopsychosocial approach
– gender is a social construct
• Culture shapes our roles
– Role is a cluster of prescribed actions
So what is a gender role?
• Our expectations about the way men
and women behave
What
gender
roles do
you see?
How did we
get here?
• Hunter/gatherers
– Little division of
labor by sex
– Boys and girls
receive same or
different
upbringing?
Agricultural Societies
• Women stayed close to home
• Men often roam more freely
Conclusions?
• Over time, societies typically socialize
children into more distinct gender roles
Social learning theory
• Assumes that children are gender
linked by OBSERVING and IMITATING
significant others
– Rewarded and punished – What does the
father say to his son who was in a fight? What
does the father say to his daughter who was
in a fight?
• Society assigns each of us to a category of male and
female
– Gender identity: sense of being male or female
– Gender typed: acquiring a traditional male or female role
– Gender schema: What it MEANS to be male or female
• Humans adjust their behavior accordingly
• Princess Boy
• http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/video/princess-boytransgender-kids-primetime-nightline-14425305
• Sexual Identity Goes Awry
• http://phptube.hutchcc.edu/videos/1099/sexual-identitygoes-awry