Patterns of environmental adjustments underlying measured cognitive complexity and field independence in men and women.

Abstract

73 male and 72 female college students completed several measures delineating aspects of the relationships they perceived between themselves and their social and physical environment, as well as cognitive complexity and field-independence measures. Correlational and cluster analysis showed complexity and field independence occurred within differing patterns of self-environment relations for men and women. Differing implications for the simultaneous development of verbal and non-verbal analytic cognitive styles in men and women were suggested by the findings. Results emphasized an ecological approach to cognitive styles as necessary for understanding the information processes underlying the styles themselves as well as their adjustive implications for men and women.