Social norms and gender

Readers have various expectations when they approach a chapter on gender and personality. First, they can expect to find an investigation of the ways in which males and females differ universally: that is, of the nomothetic principles grounded in biology and evolutionary psychology that govern sex-differentiated human development. Second, however, as the term gender refers primarily to social and societal aspects of sex (Corsini, 1999) they can expect an exploration of the emic dimensions of gender-differentiated personality development, for different cultures assign different sex-appropriate roles and behaviors to those living within them. Third, even within any single culture, there is going to be wide variability in the gender-linked personality traits that are expressed by females and males. Idiographic principles will come into play, all the more so in that humans, more than other primates, are exceedingly plastic in their development. The degree of variability in this third instance will depend on how much freedom one society or another permits individuals within it to deviate from societal norms.