Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of biological sex and masculinity/femininity on physiological (blink and heart rates), emotional (anxiety and mood), and behavioral responses (behavioral ratings of communication skills) during communication situations. Participants were 46 students in a Japanese university. They were categorized into 3 gender types—androgynous, stereotypical, and cross-gender on the Masculinity–Humanity–Femininity Scale (Ito, 1978) and the Social Skills Inventory (Riggio, 1986). The communication situations consisted of 2 experimental tasks (question-asking and self-introduction in front of a video camera). These two tasks were conducted in both Japanese and English. The results suggested that the cross-gender-type participants (feminine men and masculine women) showed increased blink and heart rates. For the behavioral ratings, the cross-gender type and the androgynous gender type were judged to have better communication skills than the stereotypical gender type. There was no significant difference in emotional responses among groups. The interaction of biological sex and masculinity/femininity may be associated with interpersonal adjustment and its stress responses.
references
Bem, S. L. (1981). Gender schema theory: A cognitive account of sex typing. Psychological Review, 88, 354-364.
Bruhn, J. G. (1990). Use of subjective information in scientific psychology: VI. The inability to speak a foreign language experienced as a disability. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 70, 1111-1122.
Cohen, S., Sherrod, D. R., & Clark, M. S. (1986). Social skills and the stress-protective role of social support. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 936-973.
Frable, D. E. S. (1989). Typing and gender ideology: Two facets of the individual's gender psychology that go togerther. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 95-108.
Frankenhaeuser, M. (1991). The psychophysiology of workload, stress, and health: Comparisons between the sexes. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 13, 197-204.
Frisch, M. B., & McCord, M. (1987). Sex role orientation and social skill: A naturalistic assessment of assertion and conversational skill. Sex Roles, 17, 437-448.
Ganschow, L., & Sparks, R. (1996). Anxiety about foreign language learning among High school women. Modern Language Journal, 80, 199-212.
Henry, J. P. (1983). Coronary heart disease and the arousal of the adrenal cortical axis. In T. M. Dembroski, T. H. Schmidt, & G. Blumchen (Eds.), Biobehavioral bases of coronary heart disease (pp. 365-381). New York: Karger.
Hirokawa, K., Dohi, I., Vannieuwenhuyse, B., & Miyata, Y. (2001). Comparison of French and Japanese individuals with reference to Hofstede's concepts of individualism and masculinity. Psychological Reports, 89, 243-251
Hirokawa, K., Dohi, I., Yamada, F., & Miyata, Y. (2000). The effects of sex, self gender-type, and partner's gender-type on interpersonal adjustment at an initial encounter: Focusing on androgynous and stereotypically gender typed couples. Japanese Psychological Research, 42, 102-111.
Hirokawa, K., Yagi, A., & Miyata, Y. (2000). An examination of effects of linguistic abilities on communication stress during a telephone situation measured by eye blinking and heart rate. Social Behavior and Personality, 28, 343-354.
Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture's consequences: International differences in work-related values. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Ickes, W., & Barnes, R. D. (1978). Boys and girls together—and alienated: On enacting strerotyped sex roles in mixed-sex dyads. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 669-683.
Ickes, W., Schermer, B., & Steeno, J. (1979). Sex and sex-role influences in same-sex dyads. Social Psychology Quarterly, 42, 373-385.
Ito, Y. (1978). Evaluation of sex-roles as a function of sex and role expectation. Japanese Journal of Educational Psychology, 26, 1-11. (In Japanese)
Ito, T. (1991). An examination of fundamental dimensions of expression of nonverbal behavior. Japanese Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 31, 1-11. (In Japanese)
Kayano, J. (1988). An integrated approach to social skills research (I)—Examination of consistency and validity of SSI. Human Science The Graduate Course of Kansai University, 31, 1-16. (In Japanese)
Kishimoto, Y., & Terasaki, M. (1986). The Japanese edition of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). Research Bulletin of the Faculity of General Education, Kinki University, 17, 1-14. (In Japanese)
Kohlberg, L. (1966). A cognitive–developmental analysis of children's sex-role concepts and attitudes. In E. E. Maccoby (Ed.), The development of sex differences (pp. 80-173). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Krantz, D. S., & Manuck, S. B. (1984). Acute psychophysiologic reactivity and risk of cardiovascular disease: A review and methodologic critique. Psychological Bulletin 96, 435-464.
Lacey, J. I., Kagan, J., Lacey, B. C., & Moss, H. A. (1963). The visceral level: Situational determinants and behavioral correlates of autonomic response patterns. In P. H. Knapp (Ed.), Expression of the emotions in man (pp. 161-196). New York: International Universities Press.
LaFrance, M., & Carmen, B. (1980). The nonverbal display of psychological androgyny. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 38, 36-49.
Lamke, L. K. (1982). The impact of sex-role orientation on self-esteem in early adolescence. Child Development, 53, 1530-1535.
Lamke, L. K., & Bell, N. J. (1982). Sex-role orientation and relationship development in same-sex dyads. Journal of Research in Personality, 16, 343-354.
Lash, S. J., Eisler, R. M., & Schulman, R. S. (1990). Cardiovascular reactivity to stress in men: Effects of masculine gender role stress appraisal and masculine performance challenge. Behavior Modification, 14, 3-20.
Lovallo, W. R., & Wilson, M. F. (1992). A biobehavioral model of hypertension development. In J. R. Turner, A. Sherwood, & K. C. Light (Eds.), Individual differences in cardiovascular response to stress (pp. 165-186). New York: Plenum.
Marsh, H. W., & Byrne, B. M. (1991). Differentiated additive androgyny model: Relations between masculinity, femininity, and multiple dimensions of self-concept. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 811-828.
Oka, K., Takenaka, K., & Sakata, N. (1994). Iceberg profile as a substitution for POMS. Research of Sports, Okayama University, 1, 21-30. (In Japanese)
Riggio, R. E. (1986). Assessment of basic social skills. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 649-660.
Seraganian, P., Szabo, A., & Brown, T. G. (1997). The effect of vocalization on the heart rate response to mental arithmetic. Psychology and Behavior, 62, 221-224.
Tada, H. (1986). Eyeblink rates as a function of the interest value of video stimuli. Tohoku Psychologica Folica, 45, 107-113. (In Japanese)
Tecce, J. J. (1989). Eyeblinks and psychological functions: A two-process model. Symposium “Eyeblinks in Psychophysiology and Medicine.” Psycholophysiology, 26, 4A (Suppl.), 5-6.
Wada, M. (1991). A study of interpersonal competence: Construction of nonverbal skill scale and social skill scale. Japanese Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 31, 49-59. (In Japanese)
Weidner, G., & Messina, C. R. (1995). Effects of gender-typed tasks and gender roles on cardiovascular reactivity. International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 2, 66-82.
Zuckerman, M., DeFrank, R. S., Spiegel, N. H., & Larrance, D. T. (1982). Masculinity–femininity and encoding of nonverbal cues. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42, 548-556.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Hirokawa, K., Yagi, A. & Miyata, Y. An Experimental Examination of the Effects of Sex and Masculinity/Femininity on Psychological, Physiological, and Behavioral Responses During Communication Situations. Sex Roles 51, 91–99 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:SERS.0000032317.18968.7e
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/B:SERS.0000032317.18968.7e