Essay Sample on Sex Role Inventory

Introduction

Gender differences have been an essential subject especially among psychology students and also for the general population. A renowned author and psychologists by the name Sandra Bem established a sex role inventory that could be used to measure the diverse features of hypothesized psychological sex traits.

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The measure has been criticized by many people, leaving the primary question of its use. However, it has been a renowned test and can be employed in individual student projects. Many have pointed out its essentialness today, although some are still reluctant about its use (Ahmed, Vafaei, Belanger, Phillips, & Zunzunegui, 2016). Sandra in her discovery established that a person could express both feminine and masculine features. The scale was focused on two distinctive scales of the culturally described masculinity and femininity. In her development, she compiled a list of 200 personality's features that were primarily valued and stereotypically masculine and feminine. She also composed another 200 people that were gender neutral. Of the gender-neutral features, half of them were mainly assessed, and the other half were negatively valued (Vafaei, Alvarado, Tomas, Muro, Martinez & Zunzunegui, 2014). Bem categorically distributed the listings of 400 items in some two samples of the undergraduate students to the University of Stanford. In a single sample, the subject that was there rated sex features in the form of sex-form social desirability for a male persona, while the different one was about subjects rated the features in regards to desirability for a female.

The rate was ranged at "not desirable" and "extremely desirable" Personality features that were weighed as more desirable for a male individual that for a female or that which is more desirable to a female than for a male was considered for masculinity and femininity measures (Baker, 2016). For the items that qualified, there were some 20 chosen for the measure. For example, "aggressive" and "analytical" were mainly categorized as masculinity, and the "moody" and "happy" were categorized as femininity. Personality features which proved to be relying on one sex over the other were considered and included in the social desirability measure.

Bem noted that some of the people are exclusively feminine and masculine; she also came to note that there are people with a balanced level of traits from the two measures. The individuals were described as being androgynous. Bem described as a person with an equal level of masculinity and femininity when measured with the scale (Donnelly & Twenge, 2017). Even if the scale is primarily accepted as the standard gauge for sex-forms personalities instrument is assessed, many have leveled a lot of critics based on a technical and theoretical ground. For instance, Janet Spence an American psychologist purported that associating the scale with terms of masculinity and femininity is not correct since they are perceived to asses only the instrumentality and expressiveness (Auster, 2016). She said that masculinity and femininity entail much more in concept form and have a lot of components that might not be measured with the BSRI, which points to the actual attitudes towards women and men and their behaviors.

The Bem sex inventory has varied uses as scholars have employed it as a predictor for instance for the mental health, marital intimacy and marital satisfaction. The measure was included in the research modeling where people have continually involved in the stereotypically feminine and masculine manners. Bem also used the measure in the building of the gender schema theory that entails that sex typing consequences in the adaptation of a person self-concept to gender schema.

References

Ahmed, T., Vafaei, A., Belanger, E., Phillips, S. P., & Zunzunegui, M. V. (2016). Bem sex role inventory validation in the International Mobility In Aging Study. Canadian Journal on Aging/La Revue Canadienne du vieillissement, 35(3), 348-360.

Auster, C. J. (2016). Bem Sex-Role Inventory. Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences, 1-4.

Baker, D. R. (2016). The influence of role-specific self-concept and sex-role conflict on career choices in science. In Understanding Girls (pp. 23-49). SensePublishers, Rotterdam.

Donnelly, K., & Twenge, J. M. (2017). Masculine and feminine traits on the Bem Sex-Role Inventory, 1993-2012: a cross-temporal meta-analysis. Sex Roles, 76(9-10), 556-565.

Vafaei, A., Alvarado, B., Tomas, C., Muro, C., Martinez, B., & Zunzunegui, M. V. (2014). The validity of the 12-item Bem Sex Role Inventory in an older Spanish population: An examination of the androgyny model. Archives of gerontology and geriatrics, 59(2), 257-263.