Encyclopedia of SociologyVol._4

when its reliability depends on the trust that is placed in bodies of supervision and control. In contrast, distrust feeds conflict and social atomization, therefore becoming a powerful destructive force.

Once distrust has been initiated, it soon becomes impossible to know if it was justified, since it has the ability to fulfill itself, to generate a reality that is coherent with it. Observing events that refute past fiduciary relations, for example, finding out that certain scientific data have been counterfeited so that one can publish spectacular results, can cause an unexpected loss of trust. The absence of trust involves an excessive increase in vigilance and the creation of more complex systems of control.

The slump in institutional trust is reflected in a generalized loss of trust in monetary means of exchange, the authorities’ legitimacy, the credibility of the political system, and the effectiveness of specialized spheres such as scholastic and religious institutions. A similar collapse of institutional trust can lead to a loss of trust in individuals.

In the postcommunist societies of eastern Europe, there is a widespread lack of trust that leads to a spreading syndrome of diffidence. The Polish sociologist Sztompka has cited some indicators. The strongest behavioral indicator of generalized distrust in the society to which one belongs is choosing to emigrate. This is the obvious form of escape people choose when living conditions become unbearable and signs of improvement cannot be seen. Another form of escape is withdrawing from public life and taking refuge in primary groups. Here there is a horizontal trust that compensates for the lack of vertical trust in institutions. Another indicator of public distrust is the number of protest demonstrations. Yet another is reluctance to think about the long-term future. In the economic field, an indicator of distrust is neglecting investment forms and spending a lot on consumer goods, especially foreign-made goods. The opening and dissemination of casino chains are also important indicators of distrust. Finally, in the postcommunist societies of eastern Europe, trust is undermined because of normative disorganization and the high level of expectations after the ‘‘glorious’’ revolution of 1989.

Some sentiments may derive from the social order, such as loneliness and historical contingen-

cies that generate fear. Some demographic transformations, such as the lengthening of life, and other social changes, such as breaking the bond of marriage or choosing to remain single, amplify the sentiment of loneliness. Feeling lonely has two sides: It is a sad sentiment connected with loss, refusal, and isolation, but it is also a source of serenity, as it means staying with oneself. This develops the inner world and fosters creativity and the birth of the new.

A large amount of the research on loneliness has established only simple correlations between loneliness and other variables. On the whole, it seems that loneliness is more common among women than men, poor people than rich, and adolescents than elderly people. Data on attitudes and sentiments generally indicate that a person who feels lonely also feels distrust and hostility, is rarely attracted by other people, and expects to be rejected. A large number of studies have found positive correlations between loneliness and feelings of impotence and inadequacy, a tendency to self-devaluation, and self-deprecation. A gap can be found in research on loneliness concerning the etiology of the phenomenon. Sociologists are not in a position to establish which factors cause loneliness and which are facilitating conditions. Sociologists do not know, for example, the relationship between objective causes (mournings, transfers, separations) and subjective causes (introversion, shyness, low self-esteem).

In regard to fear, it is necessary to assume that in the past, some events connected to the adversities of nature generated emotional reactions that were stronger than those of today. The historian Delumeau showed how in past centuries, primary concrete fears (of war, scarcity, plague, tyranny, and earthquake) were grafted onto secondary fears that resulted from cultural processes and movements that singled out dangers and adversaries (the heretic, the Hebrew, the witch, the demon, the vampire, the plague spreader) on which it was easier to unload the anguish caused by real but frightening and unmanageable phenomena.

In modern society, fear of machines has sometimes developed. In England at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Luddites were organized bands of laborers who destroyed textile machines, which caused layoffs of many craftsmen.

Fear of the dominion of the machine is found in many science fiction, utopian, and dystopian novels in this century. In Erehwon by Samuel Butler, there are no machines; in Spengler, the machine is devilish and is seen as the dissolver of Western civilization. In the Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and 1984 by George Orwell, pervasive technology supplantes people’s individuality. Similarly dark scenes are accompanying the current computer science phase that features the presence of apocalyptic Cassandras afraid of the effect of computers on the human brain.

In the second half of the 1980s, after the Chernobyl accident, a strong fear of nuclear energy developed, while the 1990s were characterized by the fear of ecological catastrophes tied to the greenhouse effect or the perforation of the ozone layer. The modern age has brought new threats in the form of drugs and the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Sometimes a social fear may be born, the perception, that is, of a ‘‘barbarization’’ of social life, of a progressive loss of freedom, the feeling of being a pawn in the mosaic of daily life, impotent before the great bureaucratic and occult powers. Another source of fear is food, which in Europe was manifested after the Chernobyl accident and during the mad cow crisis. Today a great fear is that of being killed by someone whom one does not know and who has no reason to direct his anger against an individual. Bodyguards represent a new defense against this fear, while the fear of burglars, especially in cities and urban areas, is causing a rush to purchase electronic systems for defense for the home. In Europe, the fear of a demographic decline accompanies the fear of immigration and of being submerged by other ethnic groups.

EMOTIONS AND CULTURE

A common question among those who study sentiments and emotions is whether these affective states are culturally universal or vary from culture to culture. There are two schools of thought. According to the universalistic school, emotions are always the same in all cultures, while for the relativistic school, they vary in time and among different cultures. Cross-cultural studies have shown differences among cultures concerning the language, the meaning, the objects, and the appraisal

of emotions: One therefore would have to speak of ethnotheories of emotions.

One of the distinctions made by anthropologists is based on the prevalence of sentiments of shame versus guilt. In regard to the fact that a certain culture attributes a preponderant importance to the former or the latter emotion, one speaks of ‘‘cultures of shame’’ and ‘‘cultures of guilt’’: cultures of shame regulate individual behavior through external sanctions, while cultures of guilt are based on interiorized sanctions; that is, guilt is caused by the knowledge of having transgressed important moral or social norms. The cultures of guilt would therefore be those of Western societies, characterized by the Judeo-Christian tradition or the Protestant ethic.

In cultures that systematically resort to humiliation as an educational method, the sentiment of shame is present in massive doses. This happens, for example, in the Japanese culture, which is defined by anthropologists as ‘‘the culture of shame.’’ Anthropological data on some cultures of New Guinea show that shame may have a paralyzing effect. In New Guinea, people who have not made a good impression shelter under the porch of the house, cover their faces in chalk powder and wait for the others members to come and playfully reproach them. After a few days, such a person washes his or her face and reenters the group.

The geography of jealousy also shows some variation. In fact, anthropological research shows that jealousy is more widespread and accepted in cultures that are based on private property, authorize sex only within marriage, and grant the status of a responsible adult only to married persons.

In some cultures there are social classes in which a quarrel is unthinkable and an accusation of another person makes clear one’s own victimized state. Examples are ritual sounds among the Australian aboriginals, accusing the object of one’s anger of witchcraft, and the icy silence of the English bourgeois. In some cultures, such as the Korean, a person who offends is treated with intensified respectful manners, that is, with an increased formality of words and intonation. It is said that the Tasaday did not have in their language a word to express anger. Among the Ibo in Nigeria, anger also seems to be completely absent. A culture, such as the Tahitian, in which social life

is little differentiated, produces few emotions; in this case, one speaks of hypocognition or underidentification.

EMOTION NORMS

Emotion norms indicate the expected range, intensity, duration, and target of a specific emotion in specific situations. The principles that govern emotion are of four types:

1.Rules of appraisal that define how a situation is perceived and evaluated

2.Rules of behavior that establish how an emotion has to be expressed

3.Prognostic rules that indicate the correct duration of an emotion

4.Rules of attribution that legitimate an emotion in regard to the social system

The rules of expression defined by a given culture and subgroup influence how much the emotional state is expressed in self-description, behavior and bodily expression. Emotion rules prescribe the depth and duration of feelings and provide a measure of how much a certain feeling is unusual, crazy, unsuitable, or normal in a certain social context.

Feeling and expression rules are an integral part of what has been called ‘‘emotion culture.’’ Moreover, emotion culture includes beliefs concerning sentiments as well as concepts regarding the way in which one should lend attention, codify, evaluate, control, and express feelings. Emotion culture is reflected in films, religion, psychiatric theories, and the law. Many systems of law mention, for example, two sentiments, widespread among the population, that are worth of being safeguarded: decency and honor.

Decency. The sentiment of decency concerns the intimate sphere of one’s personality, the area a person thinks should be private and confidential. Analyses carried out in the social sciences reveal extreme variability in the sphere of decency: In different epochs and cultures, different actions and behaviors are considered as damaging this feeling, whereas in other contexts they appear totally legitimate. However, the sentiment of decency is present in all ages and cultures, and

through it, a peculiar relationship occurs between subjective perceptions and objective images of confidentiality, especially in the sexual sphere. Reflecting on the characteristics of the sentiment of decency in a society makes it possible to individuate the prevailing values of a social group concerning the protection of confidentiality but also to explore in depth the reasons for behaviors that do not fall within the sphere of the individual. For example, the meticulous and detailed Starr report on President Clinton disseminated by electronic mail all over the world is an example of the absence of decency in the American judicial system.

Honor. Honor is the pretension and the right to be proud, but it also means that society acknowledges this individual pretension. The sentiment of honor spurs honored behavior. Honor is the social acknowledgment of those who fulfill the duties of their status.

In contemporary society, there are a great number of ritual situations in which specific persons are given, while alive, special honors or special offices, degrees, or prizes. After death, these persons are honored with symbolic actions: A recent example was the garlands of flowers that were laid on Mother Teresa’s coffin.

A call to honor is made when a citizen sees his or her name and respect wounded by his or her fellow citizens. Civil and penal laws protect honor legally. There are professional groups that supervise the observance of specific norms by means of a code of honor. In this epoch, honor brings to mind retrograde and fragmented elements. In past societies, honor was not only a particular type of sentiment linked to occasional events and one that operated as a cultural superstructure: The conceptions of honor were more than simple accessories of life; they went beyond abstract values one referred to only occasionally. For centuries, they determined the style of life of wide layers of people in premodern societies, orienting their social and private conduct.

Through honor, the individual identifies as member of a group, which in turn confers a status, that is, a dignity and a value in the social relations occurring within and outside the group to which one belongs. The functional cost an individual has to face consists of control of morals through endorsement mechanisms whose most qualifying phase is the formation and application of honor

codes. Acts of violence in defense of the honor of one’s family were widely tolerated by the law until relatively recent times.

The Mediterranean culture of honor has been characterized as a phenomenon of archaic societies that have not reached a high level of civilization. With modernization, it was maintained, this dark phase would disappear. Instead, the culture of honor has succeeded in preserving its importance among immigrants in the industrialized metropolis.

The fact that the code of honor has not lost its valence, at least in the Mediterranean area, makes one question whether the linear concept of modernization is truly valid or whether a concept based on a permanent dialectic between persistence and change is more valid.

The regulation of emotion comes largely from social sources that consist partly in the interests that others have and in the norms of social interaction and partly in the expression and feelings rules of society: Boys should not cry, and mourning should not be shown too much, at least in the Nordic countries. Expression rules are specific to a given culture or social role: English people, for example, are little inclined to express how they feel, and the clergy behave with dignity. In some cultures, jealousy cannot be felt, while in others, it must be; in some cultures, an offense to honor is strongly felt, while in others, the honor concept is almost nonexistent. The rules are often explicit to the point of being codified in books of ethics and good manners. In the Western culture, the ethic of control of emotional impulses prevails.

Anger also is subject to social rules. For every class, there are prescriptive rules that indicate the choices that have to be made and proscriptive rules that indicate those to avoid. For example, one can show anger for a behavior that attacks one’s honor, freedom, or property (prescriptive rule), but anger cannot exceed the limits of what is necessary to correct the situation (proscriptive rule).

SENTIMENTS IN THE POSTMODERN AGE

In the contemporary world, several indications seem to point to a situation in which the consumer society is increasingly inviting people to be passionate but people are distanced from passion. The threshold of emotional involvement has be-

come high to protect people from a useless daily mobilitation: In post-modern culture, emotions and social action seem more and more separated.

The process of ‘‘blaseization’’ that Simmel saw at the beginning of the century thus has accelerated. However, certain episodes occur, like Princess Diana’s death, that are experienced with a sentiment of pain that is almost cosmic, so that Pareto’s residuo of ‘‘displaying sentiments with exterior acts’’ seems still present, although only latently.

The relevance of the affective dimension also is evidenced within the religious and family domain. In religion, several scholars maintain that once people get rid of ritualistic and pretentious display and once reciprocal aggressiveness has disappeared, the prevalent function of religion is to provide affective support of people against the uncertainties of the world. The family which has lost some of its fundamental functions, such as economic and socialization, has maintained and perhaps strengthened its function of affective support both horizontal and vertical.

Within the job world concerns about feelings of alienation during the assembly line period, have been replaced by concerns about the burnout phenomenon, which is a feeling of powerlessness and indifference, which affects especially the health, helping, and education professions.

According to some management scholars, in the next decades a resource to contrast these negative phenomena could be the development of emotional intelligence, which is the ability to effectively perceive, realize, and apply the strength and perspicacity that emotions—meant as sources of energy, information, relations and influence—pro- vide human beings with.

In the 1990s, different authors tried to individuate the prevalence of some sentiments in society or in parts of it. At the beginning of the twentyfirst century a sentiment that seems widespread is narcissism, understood as self-complacency and desire to be admired. Some indicators of this feeling are the cult of the body, abandoning every emotional involvement, the proliferation of interpersonal relationships governed by appearance, and a flight from the social. Post-modern society thus seems to be pervaded with a dominant passion: love for the self, which is translated into

vanity and desire for power, wish to control anxiety over self-approval, self-interest, and egoism. Such syndrome, however, seems to co-exist with an altruistic dimension, normally rather latent but that grows in emergencies. The prevailing sentiments seem however to be linked to the spreading of post-materialistic values, such as love and friendship. Along the continuum localism—cosmopoli- tan, following Huntington, it seems that we are moving towards an attachment for intermediate cultural areas, essentially configurated according to the religious tradition.

Contrary to the expectations raised by the fall of the Berlin wall, in various parts of the world (Burundi, Algeria, Bosnia, Kosovo) during the 90s there were carnages caused also by feelings of interethnic hatred.

Another sentiment, felt especially by younger generations, is a worry about the future that generates anxiety and is capable of determining behaviors that are aggressive and antisocial.

Lately mass media scholars complain about the spreading, especially in television and movies, of a certain provocative impudence, together with the weakening of feelings of shame. Moreover, some psychologists have noticed an increase in interpersonal aggressiveness that parallels the increase in the time devoted to city mobility.

In a time of increasing globalization of markets the McDonaldization of tastes, the process of conforming seems to proceed also in the affective sphere, with the consequent weakening of passions and the misting over of the ability to suffer but also to feel joy, indignation, and pity. All these worries had been expressed by the antiutopians, by Riesman, and by the supporters of the critical theory of society. Leading to the valorization of sentiments as bulwark against any attempt of hegemonic oppression. In postmodernity, it thus seems appropriate to place Homo sentiens near

Homo faber and Homo sapiens.

REFERENCES

Alberoni, Francesco 1991 Gli Invidiosi. Milan: Garzanti.

Cooper, Robert K., and Ayman Sawaf 1999 II Fattore Emozione. Milano: Sperling and Kupfer.

D’Urso, Valentina, and Rosanna Trentin 1998 Introduzione alla Psicologia delle Emozioni. Bari: Laterza.

Elias, Norbert 1978 The Civilizing Process: The History of Manners. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell.

Gambetta, Diego 1988 Trust: Making and Breaking Cooperative Relations. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell.

Goffman, Erving 1967 Interaction Ritual. Garden City,

N.Y.: Doubleday.

Hancock, Barry W. 1986 Loneliness: Symtoms and Social Causes. Lanhah: University Press of America.

Hochschild, Arlie Russel 1985 The Managed Hearth. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Lewis, Michael 1992 Shame: The Exposed Self. New York:

Free Press.

Misztal, Barbara 1996 Trust in Modern Societies. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Turnaturi, Gabriella 1995 La Sociologia delle Emozioni. Milan: Anabasi.

Van Sommers, Peter 1988 Jealousy. London: Penguin Books.

Zingerle, Arnold ed. 1991 ‘‘Sociologia dell’Onore.’’

Annali di Sociologia 7.

BERNARDO CATTARINUSSI

SEX DIFFERENCES

‘‘Sex differences’’ is the label used in describing variations between women and men. The term ‘‘sex’’ reflects the division of women and men into two groups on the basis of their unique biological features; the term ‘‘differences’’ derives from the tradition of differential psychology, in which distinct groups of people (defined by natural categories such as sex or constructed categories such as socioeconomic class) are compared in terms of an outcome.

Both terms have been criticized. To many people, references to sex differences imply a biological determinism that ignores the role of socialization and context. The more contemporary term ‘‘gender’’ directs attention to the social meanings assigned to the categories of male and female. With either term, however, it is not necessary to assume a particular causal factor for an observed pattern of variation. A problem with the term ‘‘differences’’ is that it suggests that dissimilarities are the norm and similarities are the exception. More appropriately, one makes comparisons between groups to see whether there are similarities or differences.

Regardless of the rubric used to characterize the investigation, comparisons between women and men pervade social science literature. Thousands of studies have analyzed sex-related patterns in physical performance, cognitive abilities, personality traits, moral reasoning, social interaction, occupational choice, sexual behavior, attitudes, aggression, depression, self-esteem, leadership, nonverbal behavior, self-disclosure, intelligence, life satisfaction, workplace achievement, and almost every other domain of human activity. To learn how these behaviors emerge, developmental psychologists explore the ways in which specific socialization practices contribute to observed differences between girls and boys and, by extension, women and men. Sociologists study structural features that shape the roles of women and men in organizational settings, family units, and labor markets. All these analyses contribute to the understanding of gender.

Not all of these topics can be discussed in this entry, and this review will not deal with sexual behavior or the biological basis of sex-related differences. Instead, this article will examine some of the main theoretical accounts of sex differences and then turn to 1) sex differences in four domains that were highlighted in early reviews (verbal, quantitative, and spatial ability and aggression), 2) differences in mathematics and science achievement, 3) other analyses of sex differences, and 4) contextual influences on sex-related patterns of behavior.

THEORETICAL ACCOUNTS OF

SEX DIFFERENCES

Two predominant and contrasting theoretical accounts of sex differences are evolutionary approaches and a variety of social roles, expectations, and/or status perspectives (Eagly and Wood 1999). Evolutionary theory predicts that ‘‘the sexes will differ in precisely those domains in which women and men have faced different sorts of adaptive problems’’ in evolutionary history (Buss 1995, p. 164). These domains primarily are those relevant to reproduction, such as mate selection and sexual behavior (Feingold 1992), but also may include physical skills, the commission of violent crimes (Daly and Wilson 1988), and thresholds for physical risk taking (Wilson and Daly 1985). The evolutionary perspective suggests that in domains

irrelevant to sexual selection, the sexes should and do tend to be psychologically similar.

The social roles and/or expectations perspective focuses on the relationship between male gender and high status in American and other societies. Sex differences in behavior may emerge because men are expected to be more competent and authoritative than women, and many social situations are structured to support this outcome (Foschi 1998; Geis 1993; Ridgeway and Diekema 1992). Eagly’s (1987) social role theory further suggests that the unequal distribution of men and women in social roles (e.g., homemaker versus paid employee) contributes to both biased perceptions of the sexes and the development of skills and behavior that fit those roles.

The literature on self-fulfilling prophecy (Geis 1993; Rosenthal and Jacobson 1968) is consistent with this perspective. Expectations lead people to behave in ways that make the expected outcome more likely to occur. Gender-stereotyped beliefs of parents, for example, predict students’ performance in mathematics courses: Parents who believe that girls are inferior in mathematical ability are more likely to have daughters who do poorly in mathematics (Eccles 1985). Deaux and Major’s (1987) interactionist perspective further details how contextual factors determine whether and how gender-related expectations are translated into gendered behavior.

Other accounts of sex differences exist, including biological approaches (emphasizing hormones, brain structure, and genetics), developmental and/or learning approaches (e.g., social learning theory and gender schema theory) ( Jacklin and Reynolds 1993), and constructionist perspectives (which describe ‘‘doing gender’’ rather than ‘‘having gender’’) (West and Zimmerman 1987). The basic theme of ‘‘biology or environment’’ pervades these perspectives. As is discussed below, any theoretical account faces the challenge of accounting for the size and pattern of sex differences across domains and the susceptibility of those differences to contextual moderation.

WELL-ESTABLISHED SEX DIFFERENCES?

In discussing sex differences, one can begin with Maccoby and Jacklin’s (1974) landmark book The Psychology of Sex Differences. In this volume, the

authors review the literature on sex differences and highlight several that are ‘‘fairly well established’’ (p. 351): Females tend to have greater verbal ability than males, and males tend to surpass females in quantitative ability, spatial ability, and aggression.

After the appearance of this narrative review, the statistical technique of ‘‘meta-analysis’’ was developed, enabling researchers to quantitatively combine results across many studies. Rather than rely on subjective impressions of the literature or a ‘‘count’’ of significant and nonsignificant effects, meta-analysis is based on calculation of an effect size (d) that reflects the mean sex difference in pooled standard deviation units in a given study. D’s are combined across studies to compute an average effect size. As a rough guide, Cohen (1977) suggests that d’s of .20 are small, those of .50 are medium, and those of .80 are large in magnitude. (To take a familiar example of a physical sex difference, the effect size for U.S. male–female differences in height is very large at d = 1.93.)

Meta-analyses of the four ‘‘established’’ sex differences have reached somewhat different conclusions than did Maccoby and Jacklin’s (1974) narrative review. For example, females and males appear to be comparable in verbal ability in general and in most specific types of verbal ability, such as vocabulary, verbal analogies, and reading comprehension (overall d = .11) (Hyde and Linn 1988); positive d’s indicate a relative female advantage. This effect was fairly stable across age despite Maccoby and Jacklin’s (1974) conclusion that the onset of sex differences in verbal ability occurs at around age 11. A possible exception to the smallness of sex differences is verbal fluency (e.g., speed and accuracy of speech production and the production of sentences meeting meaning requirements), where females more clearly outperform males (d = .33) (Hyde and Linn 1988). It is also the case that males are more prevalent at the low end of the verbal abilities distribution. For example, there are three to four times as many male stutterers as female stutterers (Skinner and Shelton 1985), and severe dyslexia is about 10 times more common in males than in females (Sutaria 1985; see also Halpern 1992).

In regard to quantitative ability, some metaanalyses have reported modest differences between males and females in performance on tests of

mathematical skill (d = −.36 and −.43) (Feingold 1988; Hyde 1981). A more recent study, however, found a very small overall effect in the direction of female superiority (d = .05), although differences favoring men emerged in high school (d = −.29) and college samples (d = −.32) (Hyde et al. 1990). Sex differences also tend to be greater among selected samples of mathematically talented youth tested on the mathematics section of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (Benbow 1988). Overall, the average scores of 12and 13-year-old boys are higher than those of girls of the same age in these samples; the variability in the boys’ scores is also greater. As a result, in the upper 3 percent of the distribution defined as mathematically precocious, boys outnumber girls in ratios that sometimes are dramatic (Benbow and Lubinski 1993).

Spatial ability has a possible (though still unclear) link to mathematical aptitude and scientific and engineering achievement. Meta-analyses of sex differences in visual-spatial ability have shown a variety of effect sizes, depending on the specific type of task or skill assessed. For example, on tasks of mental rotation, in which one is asked to visualize the rotation of a three-dimensional object, large sex differences favoring males have been found on one specific type of test (the ShepardMetzler test; d = −.94) but not on others (d = −.26) (Linn and Peterson 1986). Tasks involving spatial perception (e.g., determining the true vertical plane when one is seated in a tilted chair) also indicate relatively smaller sex effects (d = −.44), and those involving spatial visualization (e.g., finding a simple shape in a complex pattern of shapes) show virtually no sex difference (d = −.13) (Linn and Peterson 1986; see also Masters and Sanders 1993; Voyer et al. 1995). Thus, sex differences in this domain are quite task-specific.

The only social behavior highlighted in Maccoby and Jacklin (1974) was aggression. Two metaanalyses of sex differences in aggression that were published a decade apart produced comparable, small effect sizes that indicated less evidence of aggression among females than among males (d = −.24 and d = −.29 in Eagly and Steffen 1986 and Bettencourt and Miller 1996, respectively). Bettencourt and Miller (1996) also identified an important moderating condition of this sex effect: Unprovoked men tend to be more aggressive than are unprovoked women (d = −.33), but under conditions of provocation, this sex effect is much

smaller (d = −.17). A sense of the relatively small size of these effects can be gleaned by comparing them to the effect of provocation on aggression (d = .76). Although sex differences in aggression emerge, they do not seem to be as strong or straightforward as previously was thought.

MATHEMATICS AND SCIENCE

ACHIEVEMENT

Although meta-analyses indicate relatively small sex differences in quantitative ability, an important related question is whether females and males differ in real-world achievements in quantitative domains such as mathematics, science, and engineering.

A report on women’s representation in science and engineering by the National Science Foundation (1999) describes several significant findings. First, with regard to secondary education, male and female students are similar in their completion of high school mathematics and science courses (about 17 percent of both sexes have taken trigonometry, and about 25 percent have taken physics). Furthermore, average mathematics scores for females and males in the eighth and twelveth grades are not significantly different, although science scores among twelveth-graders are slightly higher for males than for females (based on the 1996 National Assessment of Educational Progress mathematics and science assessment).

On the mathematics portion of the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT), men tend to score about 35 points higher than do women, a gap that remains even for students who reported having taken calculus and physics courses in high school. However, this difference appears to be due in part to the fact that a larger number of women than men who take the SAT are from lower-income families. Because parental income is related to SAT scores, the greater proportion of low-income women may reduce the overall female average (National Science Foundation 1999). It is unclear whether this income factor also accounts for findings regarding men’s and women’s performance on the 1996 College Board Advanced Placement (AP) tests. These data indicated a male advantage over females on AP tests in physics, computer science, chemistry, and calculus (d from −.26 to −.52) as well as an overrepresentation of males in the upper tail and an underrepresentation in the lower

tail of the distribution of test scores (Stumpf and Stanley 1998). Interestingly, across twenty-nine different AP tests, the size of the effect favoring males was highly correlated with the percentage of males taking a given test (r = .71). That is, the greater proportion of male to female high school students who choose to take a given AP test, the greater the male advantage in performance. Students taking AP tests are college-bound and selfselect test subjects on the basis of their levels of preparation and expertise. Thus, this finding demonstrates that males feel more competent than females in the domains where they outperform females and that sex differences are apparent even among this highly self-selected group of ‘‘prepared’’ male and female students.

The National Science Foundation report (1999) details larger differences in female versus male achievement in regard to the attainment of advanced degrees and employment. Although women received 46 percent of science and engineering bachelor’s degrees in 1995, they earned only 31 percent of the total science and engineering doctoral degrees in that year (up from 26 percent in 1985). The only science field in which women received the majority of doctoral degrees (64 percent) was psychology.

With regard to employment, women represent 46 percent of the total U.S. labor force but only 22 percent of scientists and engineers. Representation differs dramatically across fields: More than half of psychologists and 47 percent of sociologists are women, but women account for only 12 percent of physicists and 9 percent of engineers (National Science Foundation 1999). Among those with academic employment, women with science training are more likely than are men to work in elementary or secondary schools and two-year colleges. In four-year colleges, women are less likely than men to be tenured (35 percent versus 59 percent) or full professors (24 percent versus 49 percent). Men also are more likely than women to be managers, and across fields, full-time male scientists and engineers earn more than do females (overall median salary of $52,000 versus $42,000). Some, but not all, of these differences in employment placement may be due to differences in age, and women in science and engineering tend to be younger than men. Similarly, salary differences are due in part to age and field differences, since men are more likely than women to enter the high-

paying fields of computer science and engineering. Nonetheless, differences in academic rank remain after one controls for age, and with increasing age, the gap in salaries between female and male scientists and engineers widens (National Science Foundation 1999)

OTHER SEX DIFFERENCES AND

SIMILARITIES

It is impossible to provide a thorough overview of other research on sex differences in this brief article. In addition to the thousands of original empirical studies, over 180 meta-analyses have been published since Hall’s (1978) initial metaanalytic study of sex differences in the decoding of nonverbal cues (where d = .40).

In a review of the ‘‘science and politics of comparing women and men,’’ Eagly (1995) summarizes meta-analytic research by suggesting that the sizes of sex differences vary considerably across domains. The largest differences (d > .80) tend to be found for (1) some physical abilities (e.g., throwing distance, speed, and accuracy), (2) the ShepardMetzler mental rotation task described above, (3) social behaviors such as facial expressiveness, (4) sexual behaviors such as the frequency of masturbation and attitudes toward casual sex, and (5) nurturant personality traits (tender-mindedness) (Feingold 1994). Most other examined attributes, however, tend to support sex differences that are small to moderate (or negligible) in size. For example, the mean effect size is −.14 for studies of sex differences in self-esteem (Major et al. 1999), .21 for fine eye-motor coordination (Thomas and French 1985), .02 for perceived leadership effectiveness (Eagly et al. 1995), .26 for negative attitudes toward homosexuality (Whitley and Kite 1995), and .07 for competitiveness in negotiation (Walters et al. 1998). Ashmore (1990) summarizes his review of the meta-analytic sex differences literature by noting that ‘‘relatively large sex differences are demonstrated for physical abilities and for body use and positioning; more modest differences are shown in abilities and social behaviors; and many negligible sex differences are sprinkled across all domains’’ (p. 500).

Whether one views observed sex differences as ‘‘meaningful’’ depends on one’s opinion and perspective. On the one hand, as Eagly (1995) points out, even a large effect size translates into

substantial overlap between the sexes: A d of around

.80 indicates about a 53 percent overlap in female– male distributions. In this manner, findings of difference may mask substantial similarity between the sexes. Furthermore, many sex differences are quite small in magnitude compared with other important psychological phenomena (e.g., the provocation–aggression link of .76 described above and the effect of group pressure on conformity of d = 1.06) (Bond and Smith 1996).

On the other hand, a number of other sex differences are comparable in magnitude to psychological effects that typically are interpreted as both theoretically and socially meaningful. For example, the effect of exposure to media violence on aggression is d = .27 (Wood et al. 1991), and the effect of having a type A personality style on systolic blood pressure is d = .33 (Lyness 1993). It is also the case that sex differences based on general population samples may be smaller than the differences that appear when one looks at selected populations or those in the ‘‘tails’’ of frequency distributions. The greater representation of males among the mathematically precocious, the verbally challenged, and the most violently criminal, for example, suggests that for some highly salient important outcomes, sex differences may be more striking than one might assume based on observations of ‘‘average’’ people encountered in everyday experience.

Some have questioned the wisdom of overreliance on meta-analysis, as this quantitative approach cannot overcome the shortcomings or biases in the original set of studies on which the data summary is based. For example, in Eagly and Crowley’s (1986) meta-analysis of sex differences in helping behavior, the authors note that their findings are based primarily on studies that involve short-term helping of strangers (‘‘heroic helping’’), a type of helping that is more consistent with the male role than the female role. Any finding of sex differences must be taken in light of this fact and not generalized across all helping situations.

Others have illustrated the limitations of me- ta-analysis for making causal inferences (Knight et al. 1996). For example, a number of meta-analyses of sex differences have indicated a ‘‘year of publication’’ effect: Studies published relatively recently suggest smaller sex differences in domains such as

aggression; verbal, cognitive, and mathematical abilities; helping behavior; influenceability; leadership; and sexuality. Although some have interpreted these findings to mean that sex differences are disappearing (an interpretation more supportive of an environmental than a biological account), changes in research methodology over time may provide an alternative explanation. Indeed, in revisiting a meta-analysis of sex differences in aggression, Knight et al. (1996) found that statistically controlling for method characteristics (e.g., experimental or not, observational or selfreport measures, physical or verbal aggression) removed the year of publication effect; small sex differences in aggression appear to have remained stable over time.

The entire enterprise of studying sex differences has its critics, and a number of relevant issues have been questioned and debated in several recent venues (American Psychologist 1995; Feminism and Psychology 1994; Journal of Social Issues

1997). Criticisms center on the tendency in this work to treat females and males as belonging to polar, global categories that ignore the other social characteristics of individuals (race, class, age, sexual orientation), invoke unsophisticated nature versus nurture explanations, ignore social context, and imply that a difference means a deficit. Despite these criticisms, the research literature continues to grow, and there appears to be a trend ‘‘toward a more contextualized version of genderrelated behavior’’ (Deaux and LaFrance 1998, p. 816).

CONTEXTUAL INFLUENCES ON

SEX-RELATED PATTERNS

As is indicated in many of the patterns of sex difference described above, researchers often find important moderators of the sex differences that emerge. For example, experimental work has demonstrated that the way in which a task is framed can affect performance outcomes. Thus, when the ‘‘spatial nature’’ of a spatial reasoning task was emphasized, men outperformed women, but when this aspect of the task was ignored, no sex difference emerged (Sharps et al. 1993). Similar findings have appeared with regard to mathematics performance, as predicted by Steele’s (1997) theory of ‘‘stereotype threat.’’ This perspective suggests that women’s (and minorities) weaker mathe-

matics performance may be based in part on the threat of being judged consistently with negative group stereotypes. When that threat is lifted, performance differences should disappear. In one study, when a mathematics test was described as producing sex differences, women performed worse than did similarly qualified men; when the test was described as not producing sex differences, women and men did not differ in performance (Spencer et al. 1999). Other testing characteristics also may affect the size of sex differences. For example, structured tests that use a free-response format tend to produce smaller sex differences than do those which use a multiple-choice format (Kimball 1989).

The contextual setting also can play a role in the size of sex differences. A case in point is the analysis of leadership effectiveness, where military settings promote sex differences of moderate size (d = −.42) but other organizational contexts produce effect sizes of a much smaller magnitude or reversed direction, ranging from −.07 to .15 (Eagly et al. 1995). An analysis of gender and self-esteem indicated the importance of considering age and ethnicity in discussions of sex differences (Major et al. 1999). No sex difference in self-esteem was apparent before adolescence (d = −.01), but very modest differences began to emerge around ages 11 through 13 (d = −.12). Similarly, sex differences in self-esteem are apparent among whites (d = −.20) but virtually nonexistent among North American minority groups, especially African-Americans (d = .03). Finally, many abilities addressed in studies of sex differences are easily modified by experience. For example, spatial skills improve with exposure, and specific training programs designed to improve spatial skills are equally effective for women and men (Baenninger and Newcombe 1989).

Thus, task characteristics, familiarity, and social context can create sex differences or make them disappear. As Deaux and Major (1987) suggest, the basic behavioral repertoires of women and men are quite similar (e.g., both women and men know how to be aggressive, how to be helpful, how to smile). What men and women actually do is determined less by differential abilities than by the context in which they act. Norms, expectations, the actions of others, and the actor’s goals and objectives may all combine to produce sex differences in behavior in some circumstances.