1. Evolutionary Psychology and Gender Development

2. Review: What is gender? Evolutionary speaking, why is this?
What is natural selection?

3. What determines biological sex?

4. Prenatal development 4th and 5th prenatal month Brain Modules
Male’s greater testosterone and female’s ovarian hormones impact brain wiring
Brain Modules
Gender Development and Social Influence

5. Research linked to male/female differences in brain areas with abundant sex hormone receptors during development
Ex: adulthood: frontal lobes involved in verbal fluency are thicker in ___________ and part of parietal cortex involved in space perception is thicker in ______________

6. Gender roles in development
Biopsychosocial approach
gender is a social construct
Culture shapes our roles
Role is a cluster of prescribed actions

7. So what is a gender role?
Our expectations about the way men and women behave

8. What gender roles do you see?

9. How did we get here? Hunter/gatherers Little division of labor by sex
Boys and girls receive same or different upbringing?

10. Agricultural Societies
Women stayed close to home
Men often roam more freely

11. Conclusions?
Over time, societies typically socialize children into more distinct gender roles

12. Social learning theory
Assumes that children are gender linked by OBSERVING and IMITATING significant others
Rewarded and punished – What does the father say to his son who was in a fight? What does the father say to his daughter who was in a fight?

13. Society assigns each of us to a category of male and female
Gender identity: sense of being male or female
Gender typed: acquiring a traditional male or female role
Gender schema: What it MEANS to be male or female
Humans adjust their behavior accordingly
Princess Boy
Sexual Identity Goes Awry