LATENT STRUCTURE OF BELIEFS ABOUT MEN’S AND WOMEN’S EMOTIONAL BEHAVIOUR IN A SAMPLE OF SERBIAN STUDENTS

Abstract

Rules regarding emotional display (and hence, regulation) are provided by society in order to guide gender-specific or gender appropriate behaviour of the individual. The purpose of this research was the adaptation of the Questionnaire of gender specific beliefs about emotional behaviour (Timmers, Fischer, & Manstead, 2003), supplemented with additional items, on a sample of 247 Serbian students. A large set of observed beliefs about actual or desired emotional conduct in the context of separate male and female gender roles was subjected to sequential-factors analysis (Goldberg’s “bass-ackwards” method). The aim was to elucidate specific homogenous clusters of beliefs (factors) and their larger contexts (higher-level factors), therefore providing information on the societal views of gender roles and also on the potentially differing cross-cultural manifestations of the constructs in question. Finally, two measurement instruments were evaluated and suggested for future research. The psychometric properties of these instruments, the Beliefs about men’s emotional behaviour (BEB-M) and the Beliefs about women’s emotional behaviour (BEB-W), were assessed. Based on interpretability, as well as on the results of a parallel analysis and the MAP procedure, we made the decision to use a four-factor solution for the BEB-M instrument, and a five-factor solution for the BEB-W instrument.