Relationship between Locus of Control and Sex-Role Stereotyping

Abstract

Research concerning the relationship between locus of control and sex-role stereotyping has produced differing results. Hochreic (2) instructed subjects to complete the Rotter Internal-External (I-E) Scale as if they were extremely male or extremely female. She reported that an external orientation is part of the female sex-role stereotype while an internal orientation is congruent with the male sex-role stereotype. Mennigerode (3), however, correlated scores on the I-E scale and the Bem Sex-role Inventory and noted that both male and female sex-role stereotyped individuals scored more external on the I-E scale than those not sex-role stereotyped. However, he did not analyze data separately for men and women. Perhaps the fact that he had more women than men (61 to 43) confounded the possible finding that highly sex-role stereotyped males score more internal. The present study ( 1) was designed to determine if analysis of the dam by sex of subject would yield findings similar to Hochreic's results. The sample of 192 volunteer undergraduates included equal numbers of men and women. Each student was administered the Bem Skx-role Inventory and the I-E scale. Men attained a mean score of 10.86 and SD of 5.24 for the I-E scale, while women's mean score was 10.89, with a SD of 3.9. A mean score of 10.88 and a SD of 4.6 was obtained for all subjects. The mean Bern score for males was 112.8 with a SD of 16.14, while the mean score for females was 112.71 with a SD of 24.97. The over-all Bem mean score was 112.75 with a SD of 20.97. Bem scores were calculated by the ratio method and then multiplied by 100. The Pearson product-moment correlation between scores on Bem's inventory and on the I-E scale was .207 for the women and -0.225 for the men. Both cortelations were significant (respective ps = .04 and .02). Women scoring high on the I-E scale (external) significantly tended to score high on Bem's scale (sex-role stereotyped). The reverse was true for men; internally oriented men seemed to score as sex-role stereotyped on Bem's scale. The above findings are consistent with Hochreic's results, but the magnitudes of the significant correlations account for very little of the variance.