Approaches to Gender Role Development: Biological and Psychodynamic Essay

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Differences in gender roles and gender presentation have always had a significant influence on every person’s life. In most countries and societies, women and men are perceived by the stereotypes surrounding their gender, and are expected to comply with those stereotypes: “Men are more apt to be viewed as having traits involving competence, such as independence, objectivity, and competitiveness. In contrast, women tend to be seen as having traits involving warmth and expressiveness, such as gentleness and awareness of others’ feelings” (Feldman, 2011, p. 343). According to Feldman (2011), gender stereotyping itself can have a substantial impact on a person’s gender role formation process (p. 343). However, adherents of some psychological approaches have a different opinion on the factors influencing gender role development. This paper intends to discuss and compare theories regarding gender formation in biological psychology and psychodynamics, as well as to evaluate the two approaches concerning their application to modern society and recent trends in research.

Biological Approach

For most people, approaching gender development from a biological perspective is reasonable, due to “the indisputable fact that sex is a biological variable” (Feldman, 2011, p. 350). Thus, for biological psychologists, all behavioural differences between men and women can be explained in terms of physiological variables, for instance, hormone levels. Feldman (2011) provides a useful overview of the studies of hormones that affect male and female behaviour and outlines the key findings. For example, it was discovered that androgen has a strong influence on the choice of toys among children: “girls who were exposed before birth to unusually high levels of androgen, a male hormone, because their mothers accidentally took a drug containing that hormone while pregnant preferred different toys from those preferred by girls not exposed to androgens. Specifically, they were more likely to play with toys that boys stereotypically prefer (such as cars) and less likely to play with toys girls stereotypically prefer (such as dolls)” (p. 351). Some studies also suggest that hormones can impact one’s cognitive abilities. Gleitman, Gross, and Reisberg (2011) note that men have better visuospatial abilities than women, and do better at navigating three-dimensional computer environments, whereas females tend to have more advanced verbal and language skills (p. 452).

Feldman (2011) states that these features can be attributed to hormonal influences: “some evidence suggests that women perform better on tasks involving verbal skill and muscular coordination during periods when their production of the female sex hormone estrogen is relatively high compared with periods when it is low. In contrast, they perform better on tasks involving spatial relationships when the estrogen level is relatively low” (p. 351). Testosterone is another male hormone that accounts for some behavioural differences, as it promotes aggressive behaviour in men. However, the relationship between testosterone levels and aggression is not as straightforward as in cases with other hormone-dependent behaviour: “high testosterone levels can be both a cause and an effect of aggressive behavior […] testosterone administered externally can increase subsequent aggressiveness, but successful, aggressive encounters can also cause increased secretion of testosterone” (Gleitman et al., 2011, p. 476).

Other biological influences on gendered behaviour include evolutionary forces. For example, some scholars argue that the patterns of jealousy in men and women differ a lot: where females pay more attention to emotional infidelity than to the sexual act of cheating, males feel more threatened when they experience sexual infidelity, due to the fact that they are programmed by evolution to ensure the passing of their genes to their children (Feldman, 2011, p. 351). Another interesting study of the effect of hormones is the study of differences in the portrayal of emotion by men and women. According to the biological approach, hormone levels influence the intensity of emotion and the reaction to certain stimuli that trigger the emotion: “In line with a biological view, women tend to report more fear in threatening situations, […] whereas men report more emotional arousal than do women in the presence of erotic stimuli” (Fiorentini, 2013, p. 31).

Despite the results discussed above, most researchers agree that the influence of biological factors on gender role development is limited: “Biological factors and evolutionary factors alone do not explain the complete range of differences between male and female behavior” (Feldman, 2011, p. 353). Fiorentini (2013) agrees that, despite the fact that “men and women responded differently to different types of emotional stimuli […] evidence of sex differences in the physiological component of emotion is quite elusive” (p. 27), whereas Gleitman et al. (2011) add, “several studies have failed to confirm these hormonal effects on visuospatial performance, so any conclusions about this point must be tentative” (p. 453). Nevertheless, a biological approach remains one of the bases of research in the field of gender role development: “the whole perspective of starting with biological differences between men and women and using those as the scaffolding on which to build theories of individual differences was coming into vogue at that time and persists to the present” (Tate, 2014, p. 3).

Psychodynamic Approach

Similarly, the psychodynamic approach is still addressed in many studies across various fields of psychology: for instance, “Freud’s ideas about gender identity development […] appear to have infiltrated both developmental psychology and psychiatry” (Tate, 2014, p. 4). According to the founder of this approach, Sigmund Freud, the development of gender roles takes place from early childhood (phallic stage), and follows a similar pattern in boys and girls. For boys, gender role development begins at the age of 3-4 years, when “he becomes increasingly interested in his penis, and he seeks an external object for his sexual urges” (Gleitman et al., 2011, p. 610). According to Freud, the choice ultimately falls to the boy’s mother, and therefore the boy sees his father as a rival and secretly wishes for him to die; this stage is called the Oedipus stage, after a Greek hero who killed his father to marry his mother (Gleitman et al., 2011, p. 610). However, as the father represents a strong, authoritative figure, the boy develops castration anxiety, fearing that his father “may retaliate drastically by removing the source of the threat: the son’s penis” (Feldman, 2011, p. 442).

This fear forces the boy to give up his desire for his mother and leads to the process of identification with the father figure, through which the boy adopts his gender role and behaviour standards from his father (Feldman, 2011, p. 442). The equivalent of the Oedipus complex in boys is the Electra complex in girls, named after a Greek heroine, who facilitated her mother’s murder. At the same phallic stage of development, a girl starts feeling inferior to boys due to her lack of penis (Freud calls this ‘penis envy’), and “she withdraws her love from the mother, whom she regards as equally unworthy [and] turns to her father, who has the desirable organ and who she believes can help her obtain a penis substitute—a child” (Gleitman et al., 2011, p. 910). The internal conflict is resolved through the process of identification, and the girl forms the image of her ideal gender role according to her mother’s behaviour (Feldman, 2011, p. 442). After the identification has taken place, children of both sexes enter into “the latency period, which lasts until puberty” (Feldman, 2011, p. 442).

Unsurprisingly, Freud’s concept of gender development met a lot of criticism, particularly in the feminist community, due to the implied inferiority of women (Feldman, 2011, p. 442). Flax (2011), on the other hand, argues that “psychoanalysis’ gender bias is insufficient reason to reject its entire discourse” (para. 3). The more significant limitation of Freud’s theory, on the other hand, is the bias of supporting evidence: “Psychoanalysts use ‘clinical evidence’ (material derived from sessions with patients) to test the validity of hypotheses, including ones about sexual difference and gender, regarding the nature of humans. If their clinical observations are tainted by gender bias, then the conclusions about gender difference drawn from them will be inaccurate” (Flax, 2011, para. 2).

Conclusion

Despite the initial popularity of the two approaches and the scientific grounds behind them, most contemporary scholars consider both biological and psychodynamic approaches insufficient in exploring gender role development: for instance, Johnson and Repta (2012) argue, “The combined influence of internal feelings and social pressures guides gender identity development, impacting how individuals feel as gendered persons and constraining their behavior based on what they think and experience as acceptable for their given gender” (p. 25). In this light, gender role identity is perceived as a complex, multi-dimensional structure that cannot be studied effectively through a single approach: “neither alone can provide a full explanation for gender differences. Some combination of the two, interacting with each other, will ultimately provide us with an understanding of why men and women may behave differently” (Feldman, 2011, p. 351). Fiorentini (2013) agrees with that view, stating, “the majority of the current theories about sex differences in emotionality share the idea that both biological and socio-cultural factors contribute to differential emotional experience and expression” (p. 31). All in all, it is clear that both psychodynamic and biological approaches have already had a massive influence on the studies of gender development. However, current research trends suggest that even more useful studies could be conducted on the basis of these two approaches.

References

Feldman, R. (2011). Understanding psychology (10th Ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Fiorentini, C. (2013). In P. Lang (Ed.), Gender and emotion: An interdisciplinary perspective (pp. 15-42). Web.

Flax, J. (2012). Can it come undone? Treating gender troubles in psychoanalytic discourses. Sex Roles, 66(7), 558-561. doi:10.1007/s11199-011-0086-2

Gleitman, H., Gross, J., & Reisberg, D. (2011). Psychology (8th Ed.). New York, NY: Norton.

Johnson, J. L., & Repta, R. (2012). Sex and gender: Beyond the binaries. In J. L. Oliffe & L. J. Greaves (Eds.), Designing and conducting gender, sex, and health research (pp. 17-37). Web.

Tate, C. (2014). Gender identity as a personality process. In B. L. Miller (Ed.), Gender identity: Disorders, developmental perspectives and social implications (pp. 1-22). Web.

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