The Psychology of Gender

Fourth Edition

Chapter 7
Communication

Psychology of Gender, Fourth Edition

Vicki S. Helgeson
Leadership and Influenceability

• In general, research shows men more

influential and more likely to emerge as
leaders than women
 Who Is Influenced?

• Situational factors more important than

dispositional characteristics
 Women more easily influenced than men
because people are nicer and more
agreeable with women and agreement
leads to influence; disagreement does not
TABLE 7.3 Sample Interaction Styles
FIGURE 7.6 Model of influence process.
 Who Emerges as the Leader?

• Both sexes see leadership in

organizations as desirable
• Men more likely to be leaders than
women, especially when
 Task leadership needed
 Nature of task not specified
 Length of interaction shorter
• Women more likely when social
leadership needed
 Leadership Styles

• Three broad categories of leadership

styles
• Women leaders more likely to use the
effective transformational style
TABLE 7.4 Contemporary Leadership Styles
 Perception of Female
and Male Leaders
• Behavior of male and female leaders
perceived differently by others
• Women who use agentic styles viewed
negatively, especially by men
• Women more influential and viewed
more positively as leaders when show
agentic and communal qualities
• Preference for male boss declining over
time
FIGURE 7.8 Women were viewed as less desirable than men as a boss in the control condition and
the positive noncommunal information condition but there was no sex difference in desirability when
communal information was provided. Source: Adapted from Heilman and Okimoto (2007).
FIGURE 7.9 Preference for a male boss has substantially declined over time and having no preference
has substantially increased over time—especially for men. Preference for a female boss has slightly
increased, more so for women. Source: Adapted from Carroll (2006).
 Emotion

• Stereotype that women more emotional

but research findings are not consistent
• Three sources of information
 Experience of emotions
 Noverbal expression of emotions
 Physiological responses to emotion stimuli
 The Experience of Emotion

• Some claim universal set of emotional

experiences (Ekman,1992)
• Retrospective measures show women
report more emotion than men
 Could reflect women encoding more detail
and complexity in emotional events
• Online measures tend to show no
difference
FIGURE 7.10 Men and women report similar frequencies of both positive and negative emotions
throughout the day. Source: Larson and Pleck (1999).
 The Experience of
Emotion (cont’d)
• Cross-cultural data
 No sex difference in powerful emotions
 Women report more powerless emotions
 The Expression of Emotion

• Sex differences depend on specific

emotion
• Women more likely than men to
experience the majority of emotions
 Exception: anger (men more)
• Femininity, communion, androgyny
associated with more emotional
expression
Physiological Measures of Emotion

• Findings indicate either men more

reactive than women or no sex
differences (Brody & Hall, 2008)
• Physiological indicators of emotionality
are controversial
 Within a study, findings inconsistent across
measures
 Physiological Measures
of Emotion (cont’d)
• Perhaps women are more outwardly
expressive of emotions and men are
more internally reactive to emotional
stimuli
 Attributions for Emotion

• Women’s emotions attributed to

internal causes
 Being emotional seen as part of female
gender role
• Men’s emotions attributed to external
causes
• Attributions influence how men and
women are viewed when expressing an
emotion like anger
 FIGURE 7.11 Male job candidates who were angry were granted higher status and more money than
male candidates who were sad. Female job candidates who were angry received lower status and a
lower salary compared to female candidates who were sad. Source: Adapted from Brescoll and Uhlmann
(2008).
 Explanations for Sex
Differences in Communication
• Two major explanations:
 Status theory
 Social role theory
 Status Theory

• Sex differences in communication due

to status differences between men and
women
• Most useful for explaining sex
differences in interaction styles and
language
 Status Theory (cont’d)

• Interaction styles
 Expectations states theory: group
members form expectations about own
and others’ abilities, which influence nature
of interactions
• Language
 Relevant features include tentative
language, duration of talking
 Status Theory (cont’d)

• Nonverbal behavior
 Results of laboratory assignment to high-
and low-status positions indicate that
status alone does not account for sex
differences in nonverbal behavior
 Meta-analytic review confirmed little
association between status and nonverbal
behavior
 Social Role Theory

• States that differences in men’s and

women’s communication styles due to
different social roles that men and
women occupy in society
• Men’s communication styles seen as a
function of their instrumental
orientation
 Social Role Theory (cont’d)

• Women’s communication styles seen as

a function of their expressive
orientation
• Most useful for explaining sex
differences in nonverbal behaviors that
persist across situations
 Social Role Theory (cont’d)

• Interaction styles
 Men’s task behavior and women’s positive
social behavior fit their social roles
 Difference greater when same-sex dyads
rather than mixed-sex dyads
 Social Role Theory (cont’d)

• Language
 Some aspects (e.g., directives) fit men’s
goal of control over interaction
 Some aspects (e.g., emotion talk) fit
women’s goal of encouraging
communication
 Social Role Theory (cont’d)

• Nonverbal behavior
 Women’s greater smiling, touching,
decoding, emotional expression fit goal of
fostering relationships
• Emotion
 Affiliation and dominance can explain in
part sex differences in displays of emotion
 Social Role Theory (cont’d)

• Women’s greater use of indirect

influence strategies may be explained
by higher levels of nurturing behaviors
and lower levels of dominance