Gender and Personality

Abstract

Personality is the study of individual differences and thus holds promise for a better understanding of how our gendered society shapes and reinforces differences in women’s and men’s attitudes, emotions, and behaviors. Two strengths of present-day personality research are particularly relevant for the study of gender. First, personality researchers gather data from large samples of normally functioning individuals and emphasize the importance of accurate generalizations of their findings to other normal samples. This methodology allows for the veridical assessment of similarity and difference trends in women’s and men’s personality characteristics. Second, is the attention personality researchers typically give to the careful measurement of constructs through adequate sampling of concept domains, empirical validation, and reliability checks.