The impact of gender schematic processing on the Self Directed Search responses of gifted and talented female adolescents

Abstract

According to gender schema theory ( S. L. Bem, Gender schema theory: A cognitive account of sex typing. Psychological Review, 1981 , 88, 354–364), gender schematic processing not only restricts assimilation of information into the self-concept to that which is congruent with the gender schema but also restricts the individual's response patterns in that responses are based on gender schema congruence or incongruence rather than upon a complete memory search. As a result of such gender schematic processing, the response patterns of gifted and talented female adolescents on Holland's (1977) Self Directed Search (SDS) should vary as a function of their gender schema. Multivariate and univariate analyses of variance were conducted on the SDS responses of 284 gifted and talented female adolescents to test whether sex-typed female adolescents would score significantly higher on the gender congruent Social, Artistic, and Conventional dimensions while scoring significantly lower on the gender incongruent Investigative, Enterprising, and Realistic dimensions than did their cross sex-typed counterparts. The results indicated that while SDS total scores did vary significantly as a function of gender group, the direction of noted group differences failed to provide consistent support for predictions derived from gender schema theory. An alternative interpretation based on a generalization of Gottfredson's theory is discussed.