Abstract
This study examined the extent to which an individual's overall experience with and personal commitment to athletic activities is constrained by the sex appropriateness of the sport, the sex of the individual, and the individual's classification on the Bem Sex Role Inventory. No sex differences were found for levels of participation for either measure of participation. For both measures, neutral sports were preferred, followed by sex-appropriate and then sex-inappropriate sports. Females' experience and commitment was greater than males' to feminine activities, whereas males' was greater than females' for masculine activities. Sex-typed males reported significantly less experience with and commitment to feminine sports than androgynous and undifferentiated males. When sex-typed females were compared with androgynous and cross-sex-typed females, they reported significantly less commitment to masculine sports.
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This article is based on a doctoral dissertation submitted to the Department of Psychology, Cornell University, 1984. The author would like to thank Sandra L. Bem for guidance throughout this research. Thomas Gilovich and James P. Fallon deserve thanks for statistical and computer programming assistance, as does Ann Wycoff for serving as experimenter. Thanks are also given to Ann O'Leary and an anonymous reviewer whose comments strengthened the manuscript considerably.
The research was supported by the Department of Psychology, Cornell University. The final manuscript was prepared while the author was a Visiting Assistant Professor in Psychology and Feminist Studies at Stanford University. An earlier version of this article was presented at the 1984 Meetings of the American Psychological Association.
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Matteo, S. The effect of sex and gender-schematic processing on sport participation. Sex Roles 15, 417–432 (1986). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00287981
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00287981