Gendered Self-Views Across 62 Countries: A Test of Competing Models

Social role theory posits that binary gender gaps in agency and communion should be larger in less egalitarian countries, reflecting these countries’ more pronounced sex-based power divisions. Conversely, evolutionary and self-construal theorists suggest that gender gaps in agency and communion should be larger in more egalitarian countries, reflecting the greater autonomy support and flexible self-construction processes present in these countries. Using data from 62 countries ( N = 28,640), we examine binary gender gaps in agentic and communal self-views as a function of country-level objective gender equality (the Global Gender Gap Index) and subjective distributions of social power (the Power Distance Index). Findings show that in more egalitarian countries, gender gaps in agency are smaller and gender gaps in communality are larger. These patterns are driven primarily by cross-country differences in men’s self-views and by the Power Distance Index (PDI) more robustly than the Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI). We consider possible causes and implications of these findings.

Psychometric Properties and Correlates of Precarious Manhood Beliefs in 62 Nations

Precarious manhood beliefs portray manhood, relative to womanhood, as a social status that is hard to earn, easy to lose, and proven via public action. Here, we present cross-cultural data on a brief measure of precarious manhood beliefs (the Precarious Manhood Beliefs scale [PMB]) that covaries meaningfully with other cross-culturally validated gender ideologies and with country-level indices of gender equality and human development. Using data from university samples in 62 countries across 13 world regions ( N = 33,417), we demonstrate: (1) the psychometric isomorphism of the PMB (i.e., its comparability in meaning and statistical properties across the individual and country levels); (2) the PMB’s distinctness from, and associations with, ambivalent sexism and ambivalence toward men; and (3) associations of the PMB with nation-level gender equality and human development. Findings are discussed in terms of their statistical and theoretical implications for understanding widely-held beliefs about the precariousness of the male gender role.

Effects of congenital blindness on the subcortical representation of speech cues

Human modalities play a vital role in the way the brain produces mental representations of the world around us. Although congenital blindness limits the understanding of the environment in some aspects, blind individuals may have other superior capabilities from long-term experience and neural plasticity. This study investigated the effects of congenital blindness on temporal and spectral neural encoding of speech at the subcortical level. The study included 26 congenitally blind individuals and 24 normal-sighted individuals with normal hearing. Auditory brainstem response (ABR) was recorded with both click and speech synthetic 40-ms /da/ stimuli. No significant difference was observed between the two groups in wave latencies or amplitudes of click ABR. Latencies of speech ABR D (p=0.012) and O (p=0.014) waves were significantly shorter in blind individuals than in normal-sighted individuals. Amplitudes of the A (p<0.001) and E (p=0.001) speech ABR (sABR) waves were also significantly higher in blind subjects. Blind individuals had significantly better results for duration (p<0.001) amplitude (p=0.015) and slope of the V-A complex (p=0.004), signal-to-noise ratio (p<0.001), and amplitude of the stimulus fundamental frequency (F0) (p=0.009), first formant (F1) (p<0.001) and higher-frequency region (HF) (p<0.001) ranges. Results indicate that congenitally blind subjects have improved hearing function in response to the /da/ syllable in both source and filter classes of sABR. It is possible that these subjects have enhanced neural representation of vocal cord vibrations and improved neural synchronization in temporal encoding of the onset and offset parts of speech stimuli at the brainstem level. This may result from the compensatory mechanism of neural reorganization in blind subjects influenced from top-down corticofugal connections with the auditory cortex.