What makes Argentinian girls unhappy? A cross-cultural contribution to understanding gender differences in depressed mood during adolescence

Abstract

The aim of this work is to provide a cross-cultural contribution to the study of gender differences in adolescent mood by providing the results of a random sample of 165 Argentinian boys and girls studied longitudinally by means of a survey at 13–14, 15–16 and 17–18 years old. Using Rosenberg's Depressive Affect Scale, the gender difference, larger than that of many first-world samples, is significant at 15–16 and the gap increases at 17–18. It is already present at 13 in another sample in which Kovacs' Child Depression Inventory was applied. Girls reporting high family warmth, high self-esteem, low anxiety and who do not choose a friend as the most admired person at 13–14 have a better mood on average through adolescence while high self-esteem and weight satisfaction at 13–14 exerts this kind of effect in boys. A buffering effect of self-esteem on levels of girls' dysphoria was also demonstrated.