Explain how evolutionary psychology, social role theory, and biosocial constructionist theory each account for the origins of gender stereotypes. Describe why the specific content of stereotypes applied to men and women (e.g., men as relatively high on agency and women relatively high on warmth) emerged according to each theory.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Evolutionary psychology argues that stereotypes derived from genetically inherited traits and behaviors that women and men exhibit. Women and men evolved to have different personality and behavioral tendencies because they face different adaptive problems during humans’ ancestry. Since women must invest more in parenting, they evolved higher levels of traits that facilitate child-rearing such as empathy and sensitivity toward others. Men evolved higher traits of aggressiveness and strength because these increased their chances of winning intrasexual competitions. These evolved differences are ultimately the source of gender stereotypes.
Social role theory views gender stereotypes as arising from the types of social rules that women and men typically occupy. Stereotypes describing women as more nurturing exist because women have typically been assigned to domestic and child-rearing duties. Men are stereotyped as more agentic because they more typically occupy physically demanding and risky social roles. Biosocial constructionist theory extends social role theory by arguing that human societies divided labor activities in a manner that maximizes efficiency. This produced sex-based divisions of labor based on physical differences between males and females, which in turn produced social roles associated with each gender.