Gender Differences in Interdependent Self-construals: It's Not the Type of Group, It's the Way You See It

Abstract

The self-construal literature suggests that there is a gender difference in interdependence, with women placing more value on relational groups and men placing more value on collective groups. However, the evidence for such differences is inconsistent. We hypothesized that gender differences are due to differential cognitive representations of groups rather than differential value placed on those groups. In three studies we found that women were more likely than men to think of their groups as dyadic bonds, whereas men were more likely than women to think of their groups as categorical affiliations. Additionally, men's cognitive representations tended to be categorical regardless of the type of group, whereas women's representations tended to match the type of group. We discuss how gender socialization may teach differential cognitive representations of the same social groups.