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Gender‐Role Differences in Susceptibility to the Influence of Support Availability on Depression
Author(s) -
Cheng Cecilia
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
journal of personality
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.082
H-Index - 144
eISSN - 1467-6494
pISSN - 0022-3506
DOI - 10.1111/1467-6494.00061
Subject(s) - femininity , psychology , masculinity , androgyny , depression (economics) , social support , developmental psychology , clinical psychology , gender role , longitudinal study , social psychology , medicine , psychoanalysis , economics , macroeconomics , pathology
Previous gender‐role research on depression has revealed a consistent inverse relationship between masculinity and depression, but a nonsignificant relationship between femininity and depression. In light of the stronger affiliative needs for feminine individuals, received social support was speculated to moderate the relationship between femininity and depression in the present research. In a longitudinal study of a sample of Hong Kong college students, the relationships among gender‐role orientation, received social support, and depression were examined. Consistent with previous findings, masculinity and androgyny were inversely related to depression. Moreover, the present study supplemented previous research by revealing that femininity was related to depression through its interaction with received social support. When the amount of received social support was increased, femininity was associated with a reduction in depression level over time. In contrast, when the amount of received social support was decreased, depression tended to increase with femininity over time. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for the gender‐role literature.