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SEX ROLES IN DIVERGENT THINKING
Author(s) -
HARGREAVES D. J.
Publication year - 1977
Publication title -
british journal of educational psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.557
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 2044-8279
pISSN - 0007-0998
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8279.1977.tb02997.x
Subject(s) - psychology , fluency , developmental psychology , test (biology) , verbal fluency test , social psychology , cognition , mathematics education , paleontology , neuroscience , neuropsychology , biology
S ummary . A content analysis of responses to the ’Circles’; test, designed to elicit information about sex‐typing, was developed on a pilot sample of 10‐ to 11‐year‐old school children. When this analysis was applied to the main sample, characteristic sex‐typed response patterns were broadly replicated, as was the finding that there was no sex difference in total Fluency scores. When instructed to adopt opposite‐sex response styles on a parallel form of the same test, boys and girls in the main study showed a remarkable ability to reverse their normal patterns of response. The hypothesis that children with high Fluency scores under normal conditions would be more capable of carrying out this reversal than those with low Fluency scores was not supported. It is argued that sex‐typed response styles are by no means unmodifiable psychological characteristics, and that investigations of individual differences in cognition need to emphasise styles, as well as levels, of test performance.