Gender Typing, Gender Stereotypes, and Cultural Stereotypes - Essay Example

1. Wheelock College is actively recruiting more male students than before. While the number of male students on campus is increasing, men (students, faculty and staff) are in the minority at Wheelock College. Based on your reading of social psychological research on gender (chapter 11 of our textbook), what are the likely effects of men’s minority status on male and female students’, staff and faculty members’ attitudes and behavior? What are the likely effects of recruiting more male students, staff and faculty? Gender typing, gender stereotypes and cultural stereotypes are the likely general effects on the attitudes and behaviors of men’s minority status on the number of male and female population in Wheelock College. Men having a token or solo status highlight their gender characteristics more in the social group they belong such as in Wheelock College hence enforcing gender stereotypes. The effect would be two way perceptions their roles from the perception of men and women in the College. The women who comprise majority of the population of the College would automatically relegate the men into their stereotype roles of father figures, assertive and strong, highly skilled in math and science, likely to be leaders or competitive; hence they will likely approach the men population with this perceptions in their minds. Men, who are belongs to the minority population, on the other hand, would expect themselves to either be treated as leaders in the community or be expected to be assertive members of the College. However, other likely effects of such stereotyping of the minority population of men could result to individual pressure towards them that might prompt some of them to handle such high expectations that would affect their psychological functioning like getting scared to disappoint the majority of the population in the event that they cannot fully function the stereotype roles expected of them. Also, such stereotypes would relegate some women members of the College to just accept the stereotype roles given to them by the college society while some women students might be challenged to show their competitive and leadership natures within the community. Gender typing is another possible outcome when stereotyping is applied in Wheelock College due to having men as minority members of the population. Men’s activities will easily be labeled as commonly masculine in contrast to feminine activities. Thus, expectations to do certain activities in a college environment would lead to gender typing to a certain point that some would even declare that there is shortage of men members of the population in the College to function certain roles or do certain activities commonly relegated to men such as sports activities or enrollment to certain college courses. Gender typing and gender stereotypes are direct outcomes of cultural stereotypes which leads members of the society to form social stereotypes of genders within a community. Cultural stereotypes are prevalently inherent when behaviors and attitudes of people show these two types of stereotyping about differences in the roles of men and women in the community. However, not all individual members of Wheelock College are expected to uniformly view the roles of men and women in a stereotype way. Thus, there will be individuals who will go outside of the box or the general concepts of how women and men should act or participate in certain activities within the College campus and will just do what they want to express themselves and become participant in various activities irregardless of whether majority labeled it as either male or female activities. 2. You are giving a presentation to a group of teachers about “group dynamics”, in particular about “social facilitation”. The teachers who represent a whole range of disciplines (such as physical education, biology, math, social students, geography and history) ask you for advice about when to assign group projects and when to assign individual projects to their students. What would you recommend? Draw on Chapter 10 to answer this question. Group projects should be assigned to students after discussion of the main topic for a particular project has been thoroughly discussed or immersed to the students in class by the teachers. Students should be trained well or made to understand concepts involved in group projects prior to separating them into groups. This process of showing or discussing to them the concepts where their assigned projects in groups evolved allows students to be thoroughly prepared to do the tasks involved in a group project; hence helping them to “well learned” the tasks at hand in a group project and giving them confidence to participate in group dynamics with their group mates without feeling left out due to lack of knowledge or understanding of the activities to be conducted. Thus, individual students will make use of their group members to enhance their ability to articulate, analyze and perform overall group tasks. Group facilitation work for the benefit of the individual as well as the group in helping them assess how well they are familiar with the activities within the group and to assess how well they can further their skills to perform well. Group projects are also good alternative for teachers to give to their classes when the outcome that they want from their students is to generate or expand ideas of the topics being discussed in class particularly if teachers want students to think critically by brainstorming on a given topic with other members of the class. Being in a group could motivate or influence a student to think more to enable to contribute to the discussion being done in class particularly for subjects related to History, Geography and Math wherein discussion within a group enhances one’s learning and understanding of the subject. Also, for subjects that requires improving a student’s physical competency such as physical education, being in a group or partnering with a fellow student would be beneficial to improve a student’s skills to do certain activities. Individual projects should be given to students if the main objective of the teacher is to let the students assimilate for himself a new topic to be discussed in class. In other words, individual project is a recommended option when a student is still in the process of learning or re-learning the concepts he learns from class to be able to confidently participate in class discussion or even confidently answer exam questions. Activities favorable for individual projects would include memorization of lines, solving of mathematical problem, writing a poem, writing an essay based from an article or even a solo dance performance. These projects or activities require a student to work by himself, familiarizing with the topics or assignments provided to him to be able to express it confidently in class. Providing these projects in a group would result to other members of the group not helping with the project and one or a few members of the groups doing the group work; hence doing a social compensation contribution which is quite unfair for such members since the grading system will benefit all members of the group without prejudice. 3. What are some of the characteristics of people you are attracted to? Do any of the concepts and research findings reported in Chapter 8 of your textbook help you understand your attraction(s)? Warm, smiling, has depth in making conversations, sincere, and not too self-focused are some of the characteristics of the people I am generally attracted to. The social exchange theory discussed in Chapter 8 explains part of the reason for my attractions towards these characteristics of people. I can tolerate a friends’ forgetfulness as long as being with him or her is rewarding in terms of making a good company for example a person I can always laugh with or a person I can talk sense with and does not bore me by talking about him or herself all the time. The latter is something that I construed as a personality who has lots of insecurity with his or her self. Similarity and personal qualities of the people I am having relationships with are other concepts in the Chapter that explains the parameters of my attraction towards the personalities or characteristics of people I am generally attracted to. Even though people am having relationships with are different in ways and behaviors from me most of the time, I still get along with them due to the fact that they have certain traits, perspectives, principles or views in life that are the same as mine which become an important factor for creating long lasting relationship with them. Thus, though we are physically or emotionally different such glimpse of similarity form a big factor on creating a strong bond between us. The difference in our outset personalities only provides diversity in our relationship making the process of knowing each other exciting and challenging. Also, it helps in making me see the differences in personalities and adjust accordingly if necessary contributing to developing patience and maturity within my personality. Thus, even if my friends and I are apart from each other by several distances we still try to communicate and set schedules to see each other and share each other’s burden in times of problems and even share celebrations in life. Also, I notice that over time one influences the other in terms of thinking and acting maturely making our personalities in the long run almost similar. Personal qualities are one of the factors why I get attracted to certain people that eventually become my friends, revered personalities or romantic relations. I am usually attracted to people who are warmth and intelligent but at the same time wacky and happy to be with. These are types of people that can bring out the best in me which form a major reason why I like their companies. They not only encourage me to be myself, they also encourage me to be more open, think logically and maturely at the same time become humorous with the things that I do. Such personalities tend to drive you to be like their personalities also which makes you an evolved persons. Maybe that forms part of the reason why you are attracted to such personalities because they help you to realize more of yourself and interact as normally as possible without any pretensions. On the other hand, these personal qualities also attracts me to these people because I find a similarity of such qualities within me; hence the reason that we clicked together. The discussion in the Chapter further relates to me that factors that attract you to other people are in a way related to each other. 4. The media confront us with many images of genocide in Darfur, suicide terrorist attacks in Iraq and Israel, and environmental disasters all over the planet. Try to explain our reluctance to help endangered environments and endangered citizens from other countries. Make use of Chapter 12 in your textbook. Reluctance to help endangered environments and endangered citizens from other countries can be attributed to factors like uncertainty, cost and benefits, level of personal responsibility towards the problem, unqualified to provide help, and diffusion of responsibility. A person is uncertain whether to help or not a certain situation, people or country particularly if he or she is not sure whether the situation that she is seeing, for example victims of illegal migration, necessitates the kind of help that he or she can give at that moment. Sometimes a person thinks that providing help at the moment is not the answer instead it is better referred to the right people or agencies than personally taking action. Weighing the cost that a person incurs in providing help versus the benefits that he or she can gain from it is also another factor why sometimes some people are reluctant to help others in problematic situations. It is part of the decision making ability of an individual to analyze whether she can benefit more in providing help or incur higher losses. Example of such situation is providing physical help in a war torn area where one’s life is at stake. A person would consider it thoroughly before deciding whether he or she should go forward and offer his or help like volunteering or just ignore the call for help of these areas. Thus, in extreme cases, offering help is a lifetime decision which affects not only the person volunteering also the people that loves him or her that will be emotionally affected if something happens to him or her while volunteering for his cause. Further, the decision to volunteer or not will sometimes is affected by the decision or opinions of those people closest to you particularly family and relatives. Consequently, the decision to help or not relies on the extent of personal responsibility one feels for such social problems. A person will be reluctant to offer help to an endangered species if he or she feels no responsibility towards it since responsibility towards any social problem is relative across individuals. It is actually a matter of providing importance to certain social problems that leads a person to be personally responsible to respond to such problems and offer help. Another factor why people are reluctant to offer help is due to common practice of others towards social issues or problems which they use as benchmark whether to help or not. If they see that majority of the people do not give importance to offering help towards these problems then they too are justified not to act towards these problems which is somewhat the same as the concept of bystander effect discussed in Chapter 12. Inverse of this situation is the concept of diffusion of responsibility wherein one feels less responsibility towards certain issues when they see that many people, particularly if these are high profile people, are already assume responsibility to respond to such problems. A clear example of this are fund raising drives usually spear headed by Hollywood superstars and high profile rich social philanthropist which can drive an ordinary person to think that these people can surely get enough funds to solve the problem; hence they are not compelled anymore to offer their share of help. Time pressure or the lack of time to help due to busy schedule is also another common reason why many people are reluctant to help resolve social problems. Read More