Gender
Gender refers to the socialized roles of being male or female. Conformity refers to the urge people have to try and conform to social behaviors that are generally accepted by their gender peers. Various scholars have focused on finding out how gender affects people’s alignment of attitudes about issues and behavior. Skinner et al. investigated whether gender typicality affected the self-esteem of 203 African American students towards conformity. Male and female participants ranging from 16 to 19 years were selected for the study. Issues such as racial centrality, self-efficacy, and social pressure were used as measurements in the study. The results depicted that male participants were more gender-typical of their other males when compared to females. The study also revealed that male participants felt more pressure from their social environment to conform to traditional male roles than females. The study, however, noted that girls gave in more than boys to conform to gender roles than boys despite the pressure being even. The study also showed that youth who were more aligned with their racial groups had lower self-esteem in both males and females. The study made a significant contribution towards understanding how African American teenagers’ and adolescent’s self-efficacy was affected by their gender groups.
Gender affects how people behave in the instant of a second or in an emergency situation. Zhou, Horrey, and Yu investigated the effects of gender on the intention to conform to crossing the road in dangerous circumstances on a group of 426 respondents, with 50% being male and the other 50% being female. The survey relied on the use of a questionnaire that captured the demographic details of the participants and then used a scale that gauged the conformity of participants. Moreover, a questionnaire was filled to measure the intention of people to cross the road in two circumstances, their thoughts and how they generally perceived the risk. The study used two scenarios; in the first one, the participants perceived crossing the road consistently with other pedestrians. In the second one, participants inconsistently crossed with other pedestrians to show nonconformity. The results showed that male people trusted their fellow males more than females when it came to taking decisive action. On the other hand, females showed a greater likelihood of crossing if males crossed than if fellow females did. The investigation revealed that conformity in events of emergency was more aligned towards male leadership behavior than females.
In online settings, most people were predicted to be more likely to go with the crowd with the reasoning that the majority of people were always right than the minority. Wijenayake et al. explored how gender affected online behavior in the virtual community. The researcher aimed to understand better the urge of individuals to adapt to common behavior. In this research, an online quiz was administered to a group of 544 male and female participants. In the study, participants were required to answer, share with peers, then answer the same quiz the second time before delivering their answers. The results indicated that the majority of views were more cemented when male shared their online quiz answers than before they submitted their quiz. The research showed that males’ views were aligned with dominant male views, while majority-female views were aligned with common female perspectives. The study showed that gender had a significant effect on the ability of the students to conform in line with what was the common perspective in order to fit in.
Carter et al., designed and performed an experiment to find out how gender affected the adaptation behavior of people so that they fit in. The researchers conducted a series of studies to test who between men and women adapted more to the gender aligned behavior. The study participants were told to follow the men and women bathroom signs in the exit doors of a café in a New York Institution. Carter et al. then observed how many males and females accurately chose the right gender signs when exiting the cafe. The findings indicated that the majority of men adapted better to gender roles than their female participants. This study depicts that conformity to certain roles and behavior is influenced by gender. The conclusion from the researcher was that males conformed more to male aligned behavior so that they are not perceived as females or people without masculine power.
Gender also affects the way we perceive our bodies. Murray et al. investigated the relationship between common masculinity and femininity approval and the self-efficacy of individuals in terms of how they perceived their bodies. The study involved 21 male and female participants with the condition of muscle dysmorphia, 24 males and females with anorexia nervosa, and 30 normal males and females who regularly attended gym sessions. The results of the study showed that people with muscle dysmorphia were extremely adherent to measures that would portray them as very masculine. On the other hand, participants with anorexia nervosa were more aligned to femininity when compared to normal men who regularly visited the gym. The study showed proved that, indeed, gender affected how they perceived their bodies in a quest to appear more masculine and more thin or feminine.
References
Carter, M. F., Franz, T. M., Gruschow, J. L., & VanRyne, A. M. (2019). The gender conformity conundrum: The effects of irrelevant gender norms on public conformity. The Journal of Social Psychology, 159(6), 761-765. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2019.1586636
Freson, T. S., & Parks, C. (2012). Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory As a Predictor of Body Image Issues Among Men. PsycEXTRA Dataset. https://doi.org/10.1037/e666872012-001
Murray, S. B., Rieger, E., Karlov, L., & Touyz, S. W. (2013). Masculinity and femininity in the divergence of male body image concerns. Journal of Eating Disorders, 1(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/2050-2974-1-11
Skinner, O. D., Kurtz-Costes, B., Wood, D., & Rowley, S. J. (2018). Gender Typicality, Felt Pressure for Gender Conformity, Racial Centrality, and Self-Esteem in African American Adolescents. Journal of Black Psychology, 44(3), 195-218. https://doi.org/10.1177/0095798418764244
Wijenayake, S., Van Berkel, N., Kostakos, V., & Goncalves, J. (2019). Measuring the Effects of Gender on Online Social Conformity. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 3(CSCW), 1-24. https://doi.org/10.1145/3359247
Zhou, R., Horrey, W. J., & Yu, R. (2009). The effect of conformity tendency on pedestrians’ road-crossing intentions in China: An application of the theory of planned behavior. Accident Analysis & Prevention, 41(3), 491-497. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2009.01.007