Psychological androgyny, sex-typing, and sex-role ideology as predictors of male-female interpersonal attraction

Abstract

Two studies examined the degree of sex-typing or androgyny college students desired in their ideal dating partners/potential spouses. In Study I, 140 males and 95 females classified according to psychological sex type rated their ideal partners on the items of the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI). Consistent with the general tenor of predictions, sex-typed subjects endorsed a greater discrepancy between their own and their ideal dating partners' sex-role characteristics than did androgynous subjects. However, predictions that sex-typed subjects would describe complementarily sex-typed ideal partners, while androgynous subjects would describe similarly androgynous ideals, were only partially supported. Actually, all subjects (with the exception of masculine-typed women) tended to describe ideals who manifested a relative complementarity in sex-role traits, such that the male is somewhat more masculine and less feminine than his partner and the female somewhat more feminine and less masculine than her partner. In Study II, 63 males and 71 females classified as egalitarian or traditional in their sex-role attitudes also rated ideal dating partners/spouses on the BSRI. Nearly all traditional males described feminine-typed ideals, while egalitarian males exhibited an equal preference for androgynous and feminine-typed partners. The female attitude groups did not differ in partner descriptions; both described androgynous partners. The results suggest that (1) societal norms and stereotypes and individuals' own sex-role attitudes must be considered in addition to individual differences in psychological sex-typing in predicting individuals' heterosexual attraction patterns; and (2) psychological androgyny, as presently defined, does not have as much generality regarding individuals' life-styles as has been attributed to it.