Gender self-perception � Fixed or fluid?

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Gender self-perception – Fixed or fluid? Arosha Dahanayake1*, Desiree Kozlowski1 and Stephen Provost1 1 Southern Cross University, Psychology, School of Health and Human Sciences, Australia Aims: Gender - one’s level of masculinity or femininity - forms part of a person’s identity, influences the way a person behaves in society, and plays a major role in interpersonal relationships. Gender is also linked to attractiveness and mate value. Perceived attractiveness of self can be shifted by manipulating the “market”. The market consists of all the competitors vying for a mate. Specifically, it has been found that self-perceived attractiveness can be shifted when exposed to same sex others who are more or less attractive than oneself. The aim of this experiment was to test whether or not self-perceived gender can be shifted by manipulating short-term social viewing history. Method: Social viewing was manipulated by pseudo randomly allocating 181 participants to either a high or low masculinity condition for 65 males and a high or low femininity condition for 116 females. Stimuli were point light walkers consisting of a sequence of dots to depict the body structure and movements of males and females. Participants’ explicit and visual self-perceived gender (SPG) were measured after exposure to the treatment condition. Results: An independent samples t test showed that there was no significant difference between the two female market value conditions on either explicit SPG (t(114)=-0.638, p=0.192) or visual SPG (t(114)=-1.73, p=0.84). Similarly, males showed no significant differences on either explicit (t(63)=-1.65,p=0.69) or visual SPG (t(63), 0.472, p=0.42). Conclusions: Self-perceived gender was not shifted by viewing high/low gendered same sex others in this case. Possible reasons for this result were proposed. Keywords: Gender perception, market value, Mate value Conference: 12th Annual Psychology Research Conference, 2015, Coffs Harbour, Australia, 25 Sep - 26 Sep, 2015. Presentation Type: Research Topic: Psychology Citation: Dahanayake A, Kozlowski D and Provost S (2015). Gender self-perception – Fixed or fluid?. Front. Psychol. Conference Abstract: 12th Annual Psychology Research Conference, 2015. doi: 10.3389/conf.fpsyg.2015.66.00019 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 23 Sep 2015; Published Online: 23 Sep 2015. * Correspondence: Ms. Arosha Dahanayake, Southern Cross University, Psychology, School of Health and Human Sciences, Coffs Harbour, NSW, 2450, Australia, a.dahanayake.10@student.scu.edu.au Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Arosha Dahanayake Desiree Kozlowski Stephen Provost Google Arosha Dahanayake Desiree Kozlowski Stephen Provost Google Scholar Arosha Dahanayake Desiree Kozlowski Stephen Provost PubMed Arosha Dahanayake Desiree Kozlowski Stephen Provost Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.