Bem 's study (1974)

Aims:

• Find out whether people have a combination of masculine and femanine traits within their personality.

Method: Part 1

• 100 participants (50 male and 50 female) asked to rate a list of 200 personality trait words in relation to how desirable they were for en and women. (This was to create gender stereotypes).

• From the list, 20 words were chosen which were seen to be desirable for women. The same was done for words rated desirable for men and a further 20 neutral traits were also selected.

• These 60 items made up Bem's Sex Role Inventory (BSRI).

Method: Part 2

• Students were asked to rate themselves on each of the 60 traits on a scale of 1-7, with 1 being almost never true of me, and 7 being almost always true of me.

• This produced a score out of 20 for each sub-scale (masculinity, femininity and neutrality), allowing Bem to divide people into one of four gender types...

• Masculine (sextyped) - high masculinity scores, low femininity scores.
• Femanine (sextyped) - high femininity scores, low masculinity scores.
• Androgynous - high scores on both masculinity and femininity.
• Undifferentiated - low scores on both masculinity and femininity.

Conclusion

• People combine aspects of masculinity and femininity within their personalities.

Evaluation: Methodological issues

•  Use of students as raters may have produced bias in the scale  -  students may have more equal views about gender than the general population.

Evaluation: Ethical issues

• Use of scale needs informed consent of participants. This may be difficult to control as published scales may appear on the internet for self-completion.
• Participants may need to be debriefed - again difficult to control for same reason as above.