Sex and Temperament

Anthropologist Margaret Mead addressed the differences in temperament found between men and women in her book Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935). In this study she concluded that sex has no bearing on social traits and the temperament of an individual. Her research looked at whether masculine or feminine traits are innate or learned. She also questioned whether men and women differ because of nature (heredity) or nurture (socialization). She concludes that cultural conditioning is more important than biology in shaping the behavior of women and men. The observed differences in temperament between men and women are not a function of their biological differences. Rather, they result from differences in the socialization and the cultural expectations held for each sex within a society. However, Meade makes a point about the role of deviance in the societies. Deviance is defined as any behavior that violates social norms. When women are naturally gifted or better than men in their own field of expertise, this causes the men to doubt their own manhood. This is one of the reasons why men who conform most closely to accepted “temperament for males in their society are most suspicious and hostile towards deviating women who in spite of a contrary training, show the same temperament traits” (306). It is certainly possible for one to be female and identity themselves as masculine or to be a male and identity themselves as feminine. For example, gender roles might include women investing in domestic life and men investing in the worker role. The concept of gender identity is also different from gender stereotypes, which are shared views of personality traits often tied to one's gender such as instrumentality in men and expressiveness in women. In western culture, stereotypically, men are aggressive, competitive and instrumentally oriented while women are passive, cooperative and expressive. Early thinking often assumed that this division was based on

Cited: Mead, Margaret. 1935. Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies. New York: Dell. 3-322.