Men and Women in Interaction: Reconsidering the Differences PDF
Preview Men and Women in Interaction: Reconsidering the Differences
Men and Women in Interaction This page intentionally left blank Men and Women in Interaction Reconsidering the Differences Elizabeth Aries New York Oxford OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1996 Oxford University Press Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bombay Calcutta Cape Town Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madras Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi Paris Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright (c) 1996 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Aries, Elizabeth. Men and women in interaction : reconsidering the differences / Elizabeth Aries. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-509469-7; ISBN 0-19-510358-0 (pbk.) 1. Interpersonal communication. 2. Sex differences (Psychology) 3. Stereotype (Psychology) 4. Feminist psychology. I. Title. BF637.C45A79 1996 95-9300 305.3—dc20 9 8 7 6 5 4 32 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper To my husband, Richard Berman, and my children, Joshua and Anna This page intentionally left blank Preface There are certain widely held beliefs about gender differences in the interaction styles of men and women: women are expressive, responsive, supportive, and concerned with intimacy and connec- tion, whereas men are task oriented, dominant, and concerned with status and independence. Many have drawn attention to the opposi- tion between male and female styles, and gender differences in inter- action have been portrayed as absolute differences. I've written this book because there is another story about men and women in inter- action inherent in the research literature that needs to be told, a story that calls into question these popular conceptions. We arrive at another understanding of gender differences in con- versational interaction by reorganizing our thinking around five questions. These are not new questions; feminists have posed them repeatedly over the past two decades. First, how different are the interaction styles of men and women—that is, what is the magni- tude of the difference between men and women we are talking about? There are many statistically significant gender differences in interaction style, but most are small in magnitude; gender generally accounts for less than 10% of the variance in social behavior. Thus, knowledge of a person's gender gives us little ability to predict behavior in many contexts. Men do not form a homogeneous group, nor do women. There is considerable variability in the interaction styles of members of the same sex because of differences in person- ality, age, race, class, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. By placing our focus on how men as a group differ from women as a group, we tend to overlook the variability of behavior between members of the same viii Preface sex, and we tend to portray small group differences as mutually exclusive differences. Can the differences we perceive between men and women be accounted for by other variables that co-vary with gender, like social roles or status? We have made many comparisons of the behavior of men and women, but too often we have mistakenly treated gender as the explanation for differences when other variables have not been properly controlled. We have a division of labor that allocates differ- ent work and responsibilities to men and women. Women tend to interact in more roles that elicit supportive, cooperative behavior, men in roles that elicit dominant, directive behavior. People who have power and status behave differently than subordinates. We are likely to perceive many gender differences in our daily lives because we observe men and women in different roles and statuses, and because we tend to underestimate the importance of social roles in shaping behavior. Only when we control variables like status or social role can we begin to untangle the influence of gender on behavior. When men and women are placed in the same role or are given the same legitimate authority, many gender differences in behavior are mitigated. To what extent do gender differences depend on the situational context of the interaction? Sex-related differences are variable in appearance; we find them in some situational contexts but not oth- ers. The characteristics of the participants in an interaction (e.g., their age, race, class), their task, their relationship to each other, the interaction setting, the topic of conversation, and the length of the encounter all influence the degree to which men and women display different styles of interaction. For example, men do not always assume leadership in groups; they are most likely to emerge as lead- ers when people meet as strangers in short encounters and when the task they must perform draws on skills or interests that are more typically associated with men. When women have been assigned to a leadership role and given equal power, competence, or legitimacy with men, there are few gender differences in leadership behavior. Have we correctly assigned meaning to the behaviors we study? In analyzing conversational interaction, researchers make assump- tions about the meanings of behaviors. For example, many have assumed that interruptions indicate dominance, and they have drawn conclusions about male dominance from the use of interrup- tions. Interruptions, however, may also be used to convey confirma- tion and rapport. Similarly, many researchers have taken tag ques- tions to convey hesitancy and uncertainty. Tag questions lie midway Preface ix between a statement and a question (e.g., "You're coming at noon, aren't you?). However, speakers may also use tag questions to express solidarity and facilitate interaction. Many researchers have con- cluded that men express dominance and women express tentative- ness in their speech. But they have based these conclusions on incorrect assumptions about the meaning of the behaviors under consideration. Finally, to what extent do stereotypes shape our perceptions and evaluations of speakers? We immediately recognize participants in interaction as male or female, and this knowledge leads us to form expectations about what participants are like and how they will behave based on their gender. We bend our perceptions in the dir- ection of stereotyped expectations, overlooking things that are not expected and seeing things that are not there. We perceive men and women who display identical behavior differently in accordance with gender stereotypes, and we respond to and evaluate them differently. My aim in writing this book is to make people more skeptical of the popularized beliefs about gender differences in the interaction styles of men and women. Also, I want to bring into focus the indi- vidual and situational variability in behavior that is revealed by research on gender and interaction. Men and women are capable of displaying both masculine and feminine styles of interaction, and the style they display depends on their status, role, gender identity, and interaction goals, as well as on a variety of other situational vari- ables. Stereotyped beliefs have the power to become self-fulfilling prophecies for behavior. The stronger our belief in gender differ- ences, the more firmly we will keep current gender arrangements in place, arrangements that afford greater opportunities and privileges to men. March 1995 E. A. Amherst, Massachusetts
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