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Social role theory

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Social Role Theory
Alice H. Eagly and Wendy Wood
ABSTRACT
What causes sex differences and similarities in
behavior? At the core of our account are societal
stereotypes about gender. These stereotypes,
or gender role beliefs, form as people observe
male and female behavior and infer that the sexes
possess corresponding dispositions. For example,
in industrialized societies, women are more likely
to fill caretaking roles in employment and at
home. People make the correspondent inference
that women are communal, caring individuals.
The origins of men’s and women’s social roles lie
primarily in humans’ evolved physical sex differ-
ences, specifically men’s size and strength and
women’s reproductive activities of gestating and
nursing children, which interact with a society’s
circumstances and culture to make certain activi-
ties more efficiently performed by one sex or the
other. People carry out gender roles as they enact
specific social roles (e.g., parent, employee).
Socialization facilitates these sex-typical role per-
formances by enabling men and women to develop
appropriate personality traits and skills. Addition-
ally, gender roles influence behavior through a
biosocial set of processes: hormonal fluctuations
that regulate role performance, self-regulation
to gender role standards, and social regulation to
others’ expectations about women and men.
Biology thus works with psychology to facilitate
role performance.
49
SOCIAL ROLE THEORY OF SEX
DIFFERENCES AND SIMILARITIES
A profound question about human life is why
men and women, and boys and girls, behave
differently in many circumstances but simi-
larly in others. There is no one discipline that
provides a sovereign, overarching answer,
but each discipline favors certain types of
causes. For biologists, sex differences reflect
gonadal or other sex-differentiated hormones.
For sociologists, the differences reflect the
position of men and women in broader
social hierarchies. For economists, the differ-
ences reflect the human capital of women
and men. For developmental researchers,
they arise from sex-linked temperament and
socialization experiences. Evolutionary psy-
chologists usually favor sex-differentiated
selection pressures on human ancestors.
Our theory begins from a uniquely social
psychological vantage point that highlights
social roles and interweaves role-related
processes with these other perspectives to
produce a powerful analysis of sex differ-
ences and similarities.
 SOCIAL ROLE THEORY
In brief, we argue that sex differences and
similarities in behavior reflect gender role
beliefs that in turn represent people’s percep-
tions of men’s and women’s social roles in
the society in which they live. In postindus-
trial societies, for example, men are more
likely than women to be employed, espe-
cially in authority positions, and women are
more likely than men to fill caretaking roles
at home as well as in employment settings.
Men and women are differently distributed
into social roles because of humans’ evolved
physical sex differences in which men are
larger, faster, and have greater upper-body
strength, and women gestate and nurse chil-
dren. Given these physical differences, certain
activities are more efficiently accomplished
by one sex or the other, depending on a soci-
ety’s circumstances and culture. This task
specialization produces an alliance between
women and men as they engage in a division
of labor. Although these alliances take some-
what different forms across cultures, task
specialization furthers the interests of the
community as a whole.
Gender role beliefs arise because people
observe female and male behavior and infer
that the sexes possess corresponding disposi-
tions. Thus, men and women are thought to
possess attributes that equip them for sex-
typical roles. These attributes are evident in
consensually-shared beliefs, or gender stere-
otypes. In daily life, people carry out these
gender roles as they enact specific social roles
such as parent or employee. Because gender
roles seem to reflect innate attributes of the
sexes, they appear natural and inevitable. With
these beliefs, people construct gender roles
that are responsive to cultural and environ-
mental conditions yet appear, for individuals
within a society, to be stable, inherent proper-
ties of men and women.
To equip men and women for their usual
family and employment roles, societies
undertake extensive socialization to promote
personality traits and skills that facilitate
role performance. Additionally, gender
roles influence behavior through a trio of
biological and psychological processes.
459
Biological processes include hormonal fluc-
tuations that act as chemical signals that
regulate role performance. Psychological
processes include individuals’ internalization
of gender roles as self standards against
which they regulate their own behavior as
well as their experience of other people’s
expectations that provide social regulatory
mechanisms. Biology thus works with psy-
chology to facilitate role performance.
The broad scope of our theory enables it
to tackle the various causes of female and
male behavior that are of interest across the
human sciences. But the theory was not
developed all in one piece. As we explain,
Alice initially developed its core components
in the 1980s, drawing largely on work in
psychology and sociology. We have since
worked together to elaborate the model so
that it addresses causation at several levels
of analysis. That is, we have placed the
theory in a broader nomological net, or
series of connected theoretical concepts
and observable properties that give the
constructs particular meaning (Cronbach
and Meehl, 1955). By looking upward in the
net toward the distal, fundamental causes of
sex differences and similarities, we can
answer big-picture questions about the evo-
lutionary origins of male and female roles.
We also can look downward to understand
how men and women enact behavior through
proximal psychological and biological
processes.
In its scope, our analysis is broader than
the more focused theories typical in social
and personality psychology, which are
suited to explain more fine-grained issues
of cognition, affect, and social interaction.
Our approach thus explains the ultimate ori-
gins of sex differences in behavior. It also
shows how the position of women and men
in the social structure determines the particu-
lar content of the cognitions (i.e., gender role
beliefs) that influence female and male
behavior. In addition, the theory identifies
the psychological and biological processes
that act as proximal determinants of sex dif-
ferences and similarities.
460 HANDBOOK OF THEORIES OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
PERSONAL NARRATIVE AND
INTELLECTUAL CONTEXT
When Alice began work on the psychology
of gender in the late 1970s, social psycholo-
gists had paid very little attention to this
topic. This fundamental aspect of human life
had gone virtually unanalyzed. On those few
occasions when social psychologists sepa-
rated their data according to the sex of their
research participants, the differences that
sometimes emerged were puzzling and awk-
ward. From a contemporary perspective, this
lack of attention to gender is an amazing
blind spot in the subdiscipline of psychology
most concerned with understanding social life.
Yet, the important historical developments in
the field were essentially gender blind.
Gordon Allport (1954), in his influential
book on prejudice, did not consider gender
prejudice and instead focused his analytical
powers on ethnic and racial prejudice. In
Heider’s (1958) classic book on social inter-
action, the terms sex and gender do not even
appear in the index. As social psychologists
turned to cognitive consistency theories in
the 1960s and to attribution and social cogni-
tion in the 1970s, their work still did not
broach the topic of gender.
In contrast with the lack of academic
attention, the second-wave feminist move-
ment in the 1960s and 1970s (e.g., Friedan,
1963) made gender a major theme of public
discourse in the US. The field of social
psychology could not long remain on the
sidelines of such an engaging conversation.
Gender was emerging as a significant politi-
cal, social, and psychological issue. None-
theless, there were risks in initiating research
in such a neglected area of study. Alice
already had attained a tenured university
position and established expertise in attitudes,
one of social psychology’s mainstream
research areas. So, hedging her bets and
joined by a few other soon-to-be-distinguished
scholars (e.g., Bem, 1974; Deaux, 1976), she
decided that the potential for contributing to
an important set of social and scientific issues
outweighed any career risk. In fact, her first
major journal article on gender (Eagly, 1978)
broke new ground, as confirmed by its win-
ning of two prizes (1976 Gordon Allport
Award of Society for the Psychological Study
of Social Issues; 1978 Distinguished Pub-
lication Award of Association for Women in
Psychology). This response was encouraging.
Psychology had produced some significant
scholarship on sex and gender in earlier dec-
ades, primarily within mental skills testing
(Hollingworth, 1916), developmental psy-
chology (Maccoby, 1966), and psychoanaly-
sis (e.g., Horney, 1967).Yet, these perspectives
did not incorporate the core message of
social psychology – the power of the situa-
tion in its interactions with the attributes and
processes of individuals. In this void, Alice
developed social role theory, which was ini-
tially published in a book based on lectures
that that she gave at the University of Alberta
in 1985 (Eagly, 1987). Wendy Wood was a
graduate student with Alice during this
period, allowing a productive collaboration
on gender to begin.
Core gender role theory
The role concept was crucial to Alice’s initial
thinking about gender. This reflected her
educational background in Harvard and
University of Michigan programs that inte-
grated psychological and sociological tradi-
tions of social psychology. Alice had studied
role theorists in sociology extending back to
the writers such as Georg Simmel, George
Herbert Mead, Ralph Linton, and Jacob
Moreno (see Biddle, 1979) and including
then-contemporary writers such as Irving
Goffman (1959). As reflected in this tradi-
tion, role is a central integrative concept in
the social sciences that is important because
of the analytical bridge it provides between
the individual and the social environment.
Role expectations thus exist in the minds of
individuals and also are shared with other
people, producing the social consensus from
which social structure and culture emerge.
The role concept thus facilitated a theory of
 SOCIAL ROLE THEORY
gender that analyzes not only the proximal
determinants of male and female behavior
but also the more distal influences of culture
and social structure that contribute to varia-
bility in this behavior.
Within the traditions of role theory, Parsons
and Bales (1955) had provided an explicit
analysis of female and male roles. These
theorists described the division of labor
between husbands and wives as a specializa-
tion of men in task-oriented (or instrumental)
behavior and of women in socioemotional
(or expressive) behavior. Allied researchers
observed that in mixed-sex groups, men, more
than women, specialized in instrumental
behaviors related to task accomplishment,
and women, more than men, in socioemo-
tional behaviors related to group maintenance
and other distinctively social concerns
(Strodtbeck and Mann, 1956). Reasoning that
role differentiation along these lines is func-
tionally necessary to harmonious social inter-
action, Parsons and his collaborators viewed
these complementary male and female
roles as inherent in a smoothly functioning
society. As an undergraduate student in one
of Parsons’ courses, Alice was struck by the
power of this analysis, but she also came to
realize that it was incomplete. What was
missing is an appreciation of the malleability
of role structures. Gender roles – that is,
expectations for female and male behavior –
are not stuck inevitably in the 1950s American
form that Parsons and Bales observed. Instead,
these expectations change, depending on the
typical work and family roles of the sexes.
Parsons and Bales had captured a moment in
time in a particular cultural context. Change
in the work and family roles of men and
women follows from the exigencies of the
economy, technology, and broader social
structure in which these roles are embedded.
Another early catalyst of our theory of
gender was a methodological innovation – the
late 1970s development of quantitative meth-
ods for systematically integrating research
findings (e.g., Glass et al., 1981; Rosenthal,
1978). Application of these methods allowed
researchers to make more definitive statements
461
concerning female and male behavior. Com-
paring women and men was an easy applica-
tion of meta-analytic methods, requiring only
a relatively simple two-group, between-
subjects comparison. Alice was an early
adopter of meta-analysis, initially producing
an integration of studies that had compared
the influenceability of women and men in
conformity and persuasion paradigms (Eagly
and Carli, 1981). After Wendy landed her first
job at a university without a strong under-
graduate research participant pool, a condi-
tion that limited her access to participants,
she also became impressed with the power of
meta-analysis. We each published a number
of meta-analytic projects, including ones
comparing women and men on aggressive
behavior (Eagly and Steffen, 1986), helping
behavior (Eagly and Crowley, 1986), group
performance (Wood, 1987), and happiness
and life satisfaction (Wood et al., 1989).
The sex differences documented in these
early meta-analytic investigations required
explanation. Although the differences typi-
cally were not large when averaged across
studies, they were relatively large in some set-
tings, with some interaction partners, and with
some forms of the behavior under investiga-
tion. Even the average differences were often
large enough to be consequential, in view of
the substantial cumulative impact that small
differences can have if repeatedly enacted
over a period of time (Abelson, 1985). Despite
being sympathetic to the prevailing view
among many psychologists that most sex dif-
ferences are small, we found the aggregated
sex differences and their variability across
studies in our meta-analyses to be anything
but trivial. Instead, such data posed puzzles to
be solved with the aid of relevant theory.
Another input into the beginnings of social
role theory was the emergence of psycho-
logical research on cultural stereotypes about
women and men. Although such work began
in the 1950s (McKee and Sherriffs, 1957), it
intensified and gained visibility in the 1970s
(e.g., Broverman et al., 1972; Spence and
Helmreich, 1978). This research identified
people’s consensual beliefs concerning men
462 HANDBOOK OF THEORIES OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
and women. Most of these beliefs can be sum-
marized in two dimensions, which are often
labeled agentic and communal (Bakan, 1966).
Men, more than women, are thought to be
agentic – that is, masterful, assertive, com-
petitive, and dominant. Women, more than
men, are thought to be communal – that is,
friendly, unselfish, concerned with others, and
emotionally expressive. These qualities are
similar to those that Parsons and Bales (1955)
had labeled as instrumental and expressive (or
task-oriented and socioemotional). As abstract,
general beliefs about men and women, these
stereotypes constitute gender roles.
Our emerging realization that these stereo-
types are neither arbitrary nor essentially
inaccurate was buttressed by social psycho-
logical research showing that social perceiv-
ers usually assume that people’s behaviors
reflect their intrinsic characteristics. This cog-
nitive process of inferring traits from observed
behavior is known as correspondent inference
or correspondence bias (Gilbert and Malone,
1995; Ross, 1977). This process is wide-
spread (Gawronski, 2003) and largely sponta-
neous (Uleman et al., 2008). For example,
upon observing an act of kindness, perceivers
automatically identify the behavior in trait
terms and characterize the actor by the trait
that is implied – as a nice, caring person.
Consistent with correspondent inference,
we recognized that in various ways the new
meta-analytic findings pertaining to male and
female behavior matched gender stereotypic
findings reflecting people’s beliefs about
men and women. The behavioral differences
thus resembled the beliefs that people hold
about differences (Eagly and Wood, 1991).
Confirmation of this informal observation
followed in research by Swim (1994) and
Hall and Carter (1999) that found substantial
correlations between participants’ beliefs
about sex differences and the differences
established in meta-analytic reviews. This
similarity between gender stereotypes and
male and female behavior challenged social
psychologists’ traditional depiction of stere-
otypes as inaccurate portrayals of groups
(Allport, 1954).
Our understanding of how gender stereo-
typic beliefs can in turn guide behavior was
aided by research in psychology and sociol-
ogy. Psychological research outlined the
power of expectancies to produce behavior
that confirms them (e.g., Rosenthal and Rubin,
1978; see review by Olson et al., 1996). That
is, stereotypes can act as self-fulfilling proph-
ecies. Sociological research featured expecta-
tion states theory (Berger et al., 1980), which
also linked beliefs about social groups (e.g.,
sex, race) to the behavior of individual group
members. Cecilia Ridgeway, a sociologist
working within this tradition and Wendy’s
colleague for a few years, demonstrated how
beliefs about men’s greater worth and value,
which are based on men’s greater access
to societal resources and power, produce
sex differences in influence in small task-
performing groups (Ridgeway, 1981, 1984).
These psychological and sociological ideas,
although very different in form, provided
frameworks to understand how cultural
beliefs about gender guide individuals’ behav-
ior to yield confirmatory evidence of sex dif-
ferences in the context of social interaction.
During the years in which we developed
our theory, vivid experimental demonstrations
of the power of gender roles cumulated in the
research literature. For example, Zanna and
Pack’s (1975) experiment showed that female
students shaped their self-presentations to fit
the preferences of a highly eligible male inter-
action partner. When this man reported pre-
ferring women who were traditional (versus
nontraditional), these young women presented
themselves as conforming to his preferences
and furthermore scored worse on a test of
intellectual aptitude given that these scores
were to be shared with this male partner. In an
experiment by Skrypnek and Snyder (1982),
task partners negotiated a more traditional
division of labor when they believed that their
(unseen) partner was of the other sex, regard-
less of their partner’s actual sex.
Yet another catalyst of social role theory
was research showing that people’s self-
concepts tend to have gender-stereotypic
content (e.g., Bem, 1974; Spence and
 SOCIAL ROLE THEORY
Helmreich, 1978). Researchers had turned to
gender stereotypes to choose items for meas-
uring instruments that assess the ascription of
agentic and communal attributes to the self. It
thus appeared that, to varying extents, people
internalize gender roles as personal gender
identities. Wendy later pursued these ideas,
evaluating whether gender identities could
serve as personal standards for behavior. Her
empirical studies showed that, as with other
self-regulatory standards (e.g., Carver and
Scheier, 1981), men and women regulate their
own behavior to correspond to these identities
(see Witt and Wood, 2010; Wood et al., 1997).
In summary, Alice built the core concepts
of social role theory in the 1980s from a vari-
ety of theoretical perspectives and empirical
traditions: sociological role theory; research
on gender stereotypes; ideas about corre-
spondent inference, behavioral confirmation,
and status construction; studies of gender
identity and self-regulatory processes; and the
methodological innovation of meta-analysis.
Indicating the success of this approach, it
effectively explained variability in sex differ-
ences observed in meta-analyses in the 1980s
(Eagly and Crowley, 1986; Eagly and Steffen,
1986; Wood, 1987; Wood et al., 1989). Also,
a number of key experimental demonstrations
in our own research programs showed the
power of these principles to account for vari-
ability in perceived and actual sex differences
(Eagly and Steffen, 1984; Eagly and Wood,
1982; Eagly et al., 1981; Grossman and
Wood, 1993; Wood and Karten, 1986).
The invitation that Alice received to deliver
a series of lectures in the fall of 1985 at the
University of Alberta included the agreement
that the lectures would be turned into a book.
The result was a book presenting social role
theory along with supportive evidence from
meta-analyses and primary research (Eagly,
1987). This invitation was very helpful because
the lectures and associated book required a
systematic theoretical presentation. This book
turned out to be influential as a substantial
theoretical statement, as indicated by its 1058
citations recorded in Web of Science and
1943 in Google Scholar.
463
Biosocial mechanisms
More recently, we enlarged the scope of
social role theory to address the origins of the
male/female division of labor. A key devel-
opment in psychology that spurred this
growth was the emergence of evolutionary
psychology, which provided an essentialist
explanation of many sex differences in social
behavior (e.g., Buss and Schmitt, 1993).
Rather than leave the question of ultimate
origins to evolutionary psychology, Wendy
and Alice collaborated in challenging its pro-
ponents by providing an alternative origin
theory that treated female and male behavior
as emergent from interacting social and bio-
logical causes. This work expanded our
theory by considering the distal, evolutionary
causes of gender roles.
Our initial foray into the origins question
was spurred by Wendy’s discussions with her
running partner, colleague, and evolutionary
psychologist, Jeff Simpson. During their
eight-mile Sunday morning runs – which, to
Jeff’s credit, rarely involved arguments –
Wendy was inspired to take up the question
of the evolutionary origins of gender roles. At
that same time, Alice gave an invited address
to the Midwestern Psychological Association
that considered the origins of sex differences
in social behavior. Eager for some empirical
support for our developing ideas about cul-
tural influences on mate preferences, Alice
asked David Buss to share data from his
well-known 37 cultures study (Buss, 1989).
Alice’s 1997 talk featured an initial reanaly-
sis of these data, a small foray that then was
considerably enlarged and refined in our sub-
sequent article (Eagly and Wood, 1999).
In reanalyzing the 37 cultures data, we
found that in societies with a strong division
of labor between male providers and female
homemakers (i.e., less gender equality),
women were more likely to prefer a mate
with resources who could be a good provider,
and men were more likely to prefer a mate
who was a skilled homemaker and child care-
taker. This marital system of a good provider
paired with a domestic worker also generated
464 HANDBOOK OF THEORIES OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
a spousal age difference, given that older men
were more likely to have acquired resources,
and younger women without resources were
more likely to value marriage and older part-
ners with resources. This project thus demon-
strated that sex differences in mate preferences,
assumed by evolutionary psychologists to
stem from sexual selection pressures acting
on the human species, reflected the position
of women and men in the social structure.
This initial foray into cross-cultural analy-
ses merely whetted our appetite for developing
a biosocial evolutionary theory that included
as a central component the idea of variability
across cultures in men’s and women’s roles.
To expand our analysis and gain additional
empirical support, we turned to the anthropo-
logical literature on cross-cultural uniformity
and variability in female and male behavior.
We found rich data and theorizing about the
origins of sex differences, much of it compat-
ible with our emerging biosocial perspective.
The resulting article presented social role
theory as a core set of ideas within the larger
biosocial theoretical framework (Wood and
Eagly, 2002).
Alice took social role theory in yet another
new direction by considering the behavior of
men and women in organizational environ-
ments, where they act under the influence of
specific occupational roles along with gender
roles. Although analysis of male and behav-
ior in complex natural settings offers many
possibilities, Alice narrowed her focus to
consider the conflux of gender roles and
managerial roles. A key insight was that for
men, managerial (or leader) roles and their
own gender role are similar in content but for
women, these roles are dissimilar. Female
leaders’ resulting role incongruity has varied
consequences, including prejudice toward
them as potential leaders and actual leaders
(Eagly and Karau, 2002).
Our most recent collaboration further
developed the biosocial roots of gender roles
by elaborating the proximal biological and
social processes that yield female and male
behavior. Wendy spent a year at the Radcliffe
Institute for Advanced Study and, listening to
other Institute Fellows talk about their work,
she was challenged by the variety of ways
that human sciences treat the biology of sex
and the sociality and psychology of gender.
This experience inspired us to scrutinize the
ways in which gender roles influence behav-
ior. Given the growth of science pertaining to
the hormonal regulation of female and male
behavior (e.g., Archer, 2006; Hines, 2009;
Taylor et al., 2000), any theory of the proxi-
mal determinants of sex differences that
relied only on social psychological mecha-
nisms is incomplete. Therefore, to enhance
the biological side of our biosocial frame-
work, we drew on this new science to docu-
ment how hormones are recruited to facilitate
the performance of social roles (Wood and
Eagly, 2010).
In summary, the 1980s version of social
role theory (Eagly, 1987) has remained intact
within a larger biosocial theoretical structure
(see Figure 49.1). By reaching upward in the
nomological net, we expanded the theory to
include the evolutionary origins of the male/
female division of labor. By reaching down-
ward, we incorporated the emerging science
on the hormonal regulation of social behav-
ior. In addition, the analysis of leadership has
provided a model of how the theory could
take into account the interaction between
gender roles and specific social roles in natu-
ral settings. In the next section of this chap-
ter, we offer a summary of the current theory
and a brief acknowledgement of some of the
relevant empirical literatures.
SOCIAL ROLE THEORY OF SEX
DIFFERENCES AND SIMILARITIES:
A BIOSOCIAL APPROACH
As indicated by the intellectual history pre-
sented in the prior section, our biosocial theory
consists of a series of interconnected causes of
sex differences and similarities. These causes
range from more proximal (or immediate), to
more distal (or ultimate). In Figure 49.1, the
more distal causes are positioned above the
 SOCIAL ROLE THEORY 465

Physical specialization of the sexes Local economy,

Women’s reproductive abilities social structure,
Men’s size and strength ecology

Division of labor

Socialization

Gender role beliefs

Hormonal regulation × Social

regulation × Self-regulation

Sex-differentiated affect, cognition, and behavior

Figure 49.1 Gender roles guide sex differences and similarities through biosocial processes

division of labor, which is the outcome of Women’s reproductive activities of preg-

interaction between the physical specializa-
tion of the sexes and local conditions. The
division of labor yields gender role beliefs,
which then facilitate this division through
socialization processes. Gender role beliefs
act on behavior through a trio of processes
involving regulation by hormonal changes,
others’ expectations, and self standards. In
this section, we begin our presentation of this
theory with the ultimate determinants of
female and male behavior and move to the
more proximal determinants.
Origins of the division of labor
The ultimate origins of male and female
behavior derive from evolved physical differ-
ences between the sexes, especially women’s
reproductive activities and men’s greater size
and strength, as these factors interact with
the demands of people’s social and economic
environment (Wood and Eagly, 2002). This
interaction yields constraints whereby one
sex performs certain tasks more efficiently
than the other sex in a given environment.
nancy and lactation act as powerful con-
straints because they cede to women the
energy-intensive and time-consuming activi-
ties of gestating, nursing, and caring for
infants (Huber, 2007). These activities make
it difficult for women to participate as fully
as men in tasks that require speed of locomo-
tion, uninterrupted activity, extended train-
ing, or long distance travel away from home.
Therefore, in foraging, horticultural, and
agricultural societies, women generally par-
ticipate relatively little in tasks such as hunt-
ing large animals, conducting warfare, and
plowing. Instead, women favor activities
more compatible with childcare (see Murdock
and Provost, 1973).
Also, men’s greater size and strength
equip them to execute tasks that benefit from
these qualities, including hunting large ani-
mals, plowing, and warfare. Therefore, the
division of labor between women and men
reflects the specialization of each sex in
activities for which they are physically better
suited under the circumstances presented by
their society. Because these circumstances
are variable, the particular activities allocated
466 HANDBOOK OF THEORIES OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
to women and men differ across cultures
(Wood and Eagly, 2002).
In addition to dividing tasks between
women and men, societies often, but not
always, cede greater power or status to men.
In decentralized, nonhierarchical foraging or
pastoral societies with limited technology,
egalitarian relations between the sexes are
common (Hayden et al., 1986; Salzman,
1999). Patriarchy arises when the physical
attributes of men and women interact with
economic and technological developments to
give men the roles that yield decision-making
authority (e.g., in warfare) and access to
resources (e.g., through intensive agriculture
and trade). Under such circumstances, men
garner most of the social and economic capi-
tal that derives from these activities.
In recent history, both the division of labor
and gender hierarchy, especially in industrial-
ized societies, have become weaker. These
shifts reflect the declining importance of
physical sex differences due to (a) lower
birthrates and much less reliance on lactation
for feeding infants and young children, and
(b) decreased reliance on strength and size as
prerequisites for carrying out economically
productive activities. These fundamental
changes have set in motion far-reaching polit-
ical, social, and psychological changes that
have given women access to a greater range
of social roles, including increased access to
roles that yield authority and resources.
Despite the less extreme division of labor
in contemporary industrialized societies,
many sex differences remain. Women per-
form more domestic work than men and
spend fewer hours in paid employment (US
Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2008a). Although
most women in the US are employed, they
have lower wages than men, are concentrated
in different occupations, and are rare at the
highest levels of corporations and govern-
ments (Blau et al., 2006a; US Bureau of
Labor Statistics, 20010). This division of
activity yields less overall power, status, and
resources for women than men (Valian,
1998), thereby retaining some degree of
gender hierarchy or patriarchy. In our theory,
these features of social structure – the divi-
sion of labor and gender hierarchy – are the
middle-level causes of sex-differentiated
behavior (see Figure 49.1).
Gender roles
Gender roles derive from the specific family
and employment roles commonly held by
women versus men in a society. Consistent
with the correspondent inference principle
(Gilbert and Malone, 1995), people infer the
traits of men and women from observations
of their behavior. Given a homemaker–
provider division of labor, people dispropor-
tionately observe women and girls engaging
in domestic behaviors such as childcare,
cooking, and sewing, and men and boys
engaging in activities that are marketable in
the paid economy. Furthermore, perceivers
tend to essentialize gender by viewing the
different behaviors of the sexes as due to
inherent differences in the natures of men
and women. Thus, even though the division
of labor is tailored to local conditions, it
tends to be viewed by the members of a soci-
ety as inevitable and natural.
The social behaviors that typify the home-
maker–provider division of labor differ in
their emphasis on communion versus agency
(Eagly, 1987; Eagly and Steffen, 1984). Thus,
women’s accommodation to the domestic role
fosters a pattern of interpersonally facilitative
and friendly behaviors that can be termed
communal. Women’s communal activities
encompass child-rearing, a responsibility that
requires nurturant behaviors. The importance
of close relationships to women’s nurturing
role favors the acquisition of superior rela-
tional skills and the ability to communicate
nonverbally. In contrast, men’s accommoda-
tion to the employment role, especially to
male-dominated occupations, favors a pattern
of relatively assertive behaviors that can be
termed agentic (Eagly and Steffen, 1984).
The distribution of the sexes into occupa-
tions is another important source of observa-
tions of women and men. Given the moderately
 SOCIAL ROLE THEORY
strong sex segregation of the labor force
(Tomaskovic-Devey et al., 2006), perceivers
infer the typical qualities of the sexes in part
from observations of the type of paid work
that they commonly undertake. Research has
shown that occupational success is perceived
to follow from agentic personal qualities to the
extent that occupations are male-dominated
and from communal personal qualities to the
extent that they are female-dominated (Cejka
and Eagly, 1999; Glick, 1991). Also, men have
greater access to employment roles yielding
higher levels of authority and income, and
their adjustment to this aspect of their roles
may foster relatively dominant behavior
(Ridgeway and Bourg, 2004; Wood and Karten,
1986). Women’s lesser access to such roles
may favor more supportive behavior (e.g.,
Conway et al., 1996).
Gender roles are an important part of the
culture and social structure of every society.
Their power to influence behavior derives
from their essential quality, appearing to
reflect inherent attributes of women and men
and from the related tendency to be relatively
consensual and for people to be aware of this
consensus (Wood and Eagly, 2010). Because
gender roles are shared, people correctly
believe that others are likely to react more
approvingly to behavior that is consistent
rather than inconsistent with these roles.
Therefore, the most likely route to a smoothly
functioning social interaction is to behave
consistently with one’s gender role or at least
to avoid strongly deviating from it.
In summary, gender roles are emergent
from the activities carried out by individuals
of each sex in their typical occupational and
family roles. To the extent that women more
than men occupy roles that are facilitated by
predominantly communal behaviors, domes-
tic behaviors, or subordinate behaviors, cor-
responding attributes become stereotypic of
women and part of the female gender role. To
the extent that men more than women occupy
roles that require predominantly agentic
behaviors, resource acquisition behaviors, or
dominant behaviors, the corresponding
attributes become stereotypic of men and
467
part of the male gender role. These gender
roles, which are an important focus of social-
ization, begin to be acquired early in child-
hood and are elaborated throughout childhood
and adolescence (e.g., Bussey and Bandura,
1999; Miller et al., 2006).
Gender roles influence behavior
How do gender roles influence behavior? As
Wood and Eagly (2010) argued, gender roles
work through a trio of biosocial mechanisms
to influence behavior in role-appropriate
directions. These proximal causes of male
and female behavior include biological proc-
esses involving hormonal changes and socio-
cultural factors of gender identity and others’
stereotypic expectations. These three factors
interact to yield both gender differences and
similarities.
Influence of hormonal processes
Gender roles and specific social roles guide
behavior in part through the activation of
hormonal changes, especially in testosterone
and oxytocin (Wood and Eagly, 2010).
Hormones and related neural structures were
shaped in part through ancient selection pres-
sures associated with the basic perceptual,
sensory, and motivational processes that
humans share with other animals. In the
standard interpretation, such inherited bio-
logical factors constrain sociocultural influ-
ences on men and women. More impressive
is the recently emerging evidence that humans
activate biological processes to support the
sociocultural factors that guide masculine and
feminine behaviors within cultures (Wood &
Eagly, 2010). As these processes occur, sub-
cortical structures interact with more recently
evolved, general-purpose, higher brain func-
tions associated with the neocortex (Panksepp
& Panksepp, 2000). Especially important to
social interaction are processes located in the
medial prefrontal cortex and the ventral ante-
rior cingulate, which allow people to respond
flexibly to others’ expectations and self-
regulate in response to their own identities
468 HANDBOOK OF THEORIES OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
(Heatherington, 2011). The evolution of
the brain is thus a crucial component of our
evolutionary theory, which stresses the
importance of higher-level mechanisms for
learning and innovation that are centered in
the neocortex.
Biological processes include the activation
of hormones that support culturally mascu-
line or feminine behaviors. With culturally
masculine roles, higher levels of testosterone
are associated with dominance behaviors
designed to gain or maintain status. In humans,
such behaviors frequently entail competition,
risk-taking, and aggression that may harm or
injure others (Booth et al., 2006). In contrast,
with culturally feminine roles, higher levels
of oxytocin (as well as reduced cortisol and
testosterone) are associated with behaviors
that produce parental bonding, nurturance,
and intimacy (Campbell, 2008).
Men and women selectively recruit hor-
mones and other neurochemical processes
for appropriate roles, in the context of their
gender identities and others’ expectations for
role performance. Testosterone is especially
relevant when, due to personal identities and
social expectancies, people experience social
interactions as dominance contests. Oxytocin
is relevant when, due to personal identities
and social expectancies, people define social
interactions as involving bonding and affilia-
tion with close others. Also important to
bonding and affiliation are the neurochemi-
cal processes associated with rewards and
learning of affiliation, which supplement or
even supplant influences of oxytocin.
Influence of gender identities
Gender roles influence people’s self-concepts
and thereby become gender identities – indi-
viduals’ sense of themselves as female or
male. These identities arise because most
people accept, or internalize, at least some
aspects of cultural meanings associated with
their sex (see Wood and Eagly, 2009, 2010).
People differ in the extent to which they
incorporate gender roles into their self-
concepts. Also, people differ in the aspects of
gender roles that they adopt. For example,
women who regard themselves as feminine
could be invested in culturally feminine traits
such as warmth and niceness or in feminine
interests such as sewing or home decoration.
People raised in culturally atypical environ-
ments may not internalize conventional gen-
der-role norms. Consistent with research
showing substantial relationships between
sex-differentiated behaviors and self-reported
agency and communion (Taylor and Hall,
1982), people who have self-concepts that
differ from those that are typical of their sex
are less likely to show gender-stereotypic
behavior.
Gender identities motivate responding
through self-regulatory processes. That is,
people use their gender identity as a standard
against which to regulate their behavior (Witt
and Wood, 2010; Wood et al., 1997). People
who have a masculine self-concept involving
traits of dominance and assertiveness might
regulate their behavior by, for example, seek-
ing opportunities for leadership. Self-
regulation proceeds in stages, beginning with
testing the extent to which current behavior
matches self-standards (e.g., Carver and
Scheier, 2008). Closer matches produce posi-
tive emotions and increased self-esteem,
whereas mismatches produce negative emo-
tions and decreased esteem. When signaled
by negative feelings, people operate on their
behavior to bring it more in line with their
desired standard. In this way, esteem and
emotions constitute feedback about whether
adjustments are necessary to meet standards.
Influence of others’ expectations
A key assumption of our analysis is that both
women and men typically are rewarded by
other people for conforming to gender roles
and penalized for deviating. Behavior con-
sistent with gender role beliefs garners
approval and continued interaction. In con-
trast, behavior inconsistent with gender roles
is often negatively sanctioned and tends to
disrupt social interaction. The sanctions for
role-inconsistent behavior may be overt (e.g.,
losing a job) or subtle (e.g., being ignored,
receiving disapproving looks).
 SOCIAL ROLE THEORY
Research has produced abundant evidence
of negative reactions to deviations from
gender roles. For example, in a meta-analysis
of 61 experiments on evaluations of male and
female leaders, Eagly et al. (1992) showed
that women who adopted a male-stereotypic
assertive and directive leadership style were
evaluated more negatively than men who
adopted the exact same style, whereas women
and men who adopted more democratic and
participative styles were evaluated equiva-
lently. In small-group interaction, women
who behave in a dominant or extremely com-
petent manner tend to lose likability and
influence (Carli, 2001; Shackelford et al.,
1996). Women in supervisory roles may be
penalized for not attending to others’ emo-
tions or for expressing angry emotions (Byron,
2007; Brescoll and Uhlmann, 2008) as well
as for performing at extremely well in stere-
otypically masculine roles (Heilman et al.,
2004). In contrast, men may be penalized for
behaving passively and unassertively (e.g.,
Anderson et al., 2001). People thus elicit con-
formity to gender-role norms by dispensing
rewards such as liking and cooperation in
return for conformity to these norms and dis-
pensing social punishments such as rejection
and neglect in return for nonconformity.
Because people often sanction behavior
that is inconsistent with gender roles, these
roles have a conservative impact by exacting
costs from men and women who deviate
from the norm. Given that men and women
are aware of these costs, they are not likely to
deviate from their gender role unless the
behavior produced benefits that would out-
weigh the costs. Part of these perceived ben-
efits for women, as members of a subordinate
group in society, may be having a chance to
gain access to rewards and opportunities usu-
ally reserved for men.
Behavior influenced by
gender roles and specific roles
Gender roles, as shared beliefs about men’s
and women’s attributes, coexist with specific
469
roles defined by factors such as family rela-
tionships (e.g., mother, son) and occupation
(e.g., secretary, firefighter). In workplace set-
tings, for example, a manager or lawyer
occupies a role defined by occupation but is
simultaneously a man or women and thus to
some extent subjected to the constraints of
his or her gender role. Similarly, in a com-
munity organization, an individual who has
the role of volunteer simultaneously is cate-
gorized as a woman or man and is thus per-
ceived in terms of the expectations that are
applied to people of that sex.
Because specific roles have direct implica-
tions for task performance in many natural
settings, they can be more important than
gender roles. This conclusion was foreshad-
owed by experimental demonstrations that
stereotypic sex differences can be eliminated
by providing information that specifically
counters gender-based expectations. For
example, Wood and Karten (1986) manipu-
lated perceptions of agency in mixed-sex
groups through false feedback that described
participants as relatively agentic or not agen-
tic. Controlling agency in this manner elimi-
nated the usual sex differences in interaction
style by which men, compared with women,
showed more active task behavior and less
positive social interactive behavior.
A field study by Moskowitz et al. (1994)
used behavioral measures to examine the
simultaneous influence of gender roles and
organizational roles with a sample of adults
who held a wide range of jobs in a variety of
organizational settings. Implementing an
experience-sampling method, this study
found that agentic behavior was controlled
by the relative status of the interaction part-
ners, with participants behaving most agen-
tically with a supervisee and least agentically
with a boss. Yet, communal behaviors were
influenced by the sex of participants, with
women behaving more communally, espe-
cially in interactions with other women.
Similarly, research on physicians demon-
strated women’s more communal behavior,
even in the presence of a constraining occu-
pational role. Female physicians, compared
470 HANDBOOK OF THEORIES OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
with male physicians, thus engaged in more
partnership building with the patient, asked
more questions, referenced more emotional
and positive concerns, and offered more psy-
chosocial information (e.g., concerning per-
sonal habits, impact on family; Roter et al.,
2002).
It appears that employment roles provide
relatively clear-cut rules about the perform-
ance of particular tasks. For example, regard-
less of whether a physician is male or female,
he or she must obtain information about
symptoms from a patient, provide a diagnosis,
and design treatments to alleviate the patient’s
symptoms. Within the task rules that regulate
physician–patient interactions, there is still
room for some variation in behavioral styles.
Physicians may behave in a warm, caring
manner that focuses on producing a positive
relationship or in a less personally responsive
style that focuses more exclusively on infor-
mation exchange and problem solving. The
female gender role may foster the caring,
communal behavior that has been observed
especially in female physicians as well as the
participative, team-building style that has
been observed especially in female managers
(Eagly and Johnson, 1990; Eagly et al.,
2003b). Thus, gender roles may have their
primary influence on discretionary behaviors
that are not required by the occupational role,
which may often be behaviors in the commu-
nal repertoire. Gender roles are still important
even through they become a secondary, back-
ground influence in settings in which specific
roles are of primary importance.
APPLICATIONS TO SOCIAL ISSUES
Ever since the advent of the second-wave
feminist movement, gender equality has been
an important societal goal for many people.
Yet debates continue about whether equality
will come about, even though much social
policy has been designed to promote equality.
Affirmative action programs facilitating
women’s entry into nontraditional roles have
produced mixed reactions (Heilman and
Haynes, 2005). Women entering male-
dominated roles contend with cultural incon-
gruity between people’s beliefs about what it
takes to excel in those roles and stereotypes
about the attributes of women (e.g., Eagly
and Karau, 2002). As a result, even highly
qualified women may be judged to lack the
attributes necessary for success. Yet, these
beliefs are not inevitable. As women assume
nontraditional roles, people may develop new
beliefs about women’s attributes, given that
these beliefs in part reflect role performance.
With respect to changes in men’s and
women’s roles, an important question
addressed by our theory is whether men and
women differ in their behavior due to intrinsic
sex differences built in through evolution or
merely due to the social environment. As we
have explained, our biosocial theory has a
more complex view than these two opposing
positions. Sex differences and similarities take
a variety of forms, depending on men’s and
women’s roles in society, which in turn reflect
the more distal factors of male and female
physical attributes, in combination with socio-
economic and cultural conditions. Roles in
turn affect behavior through the immediate,
proximal causes of hormonal regulation, self-
regulation by gender identities, and social
regulation by others’ sanctions and rewards. It
follows that female and male psychology is
not fixed but emerges from interactions across
multiple biological and sociocultural factors.
The varying forms of this interaction depend
on the division of labor within a society and
the ways in which boys and girls are social-
ized into sex-typical roles.
The dramatic changes that have occurred
in women’s roles in recent decades reflect
the loosening of biosocial restraints through
sharp reductions in birth rates and length of
lactation combined with a shift toward an
occupational structure that favors brains
over brawn. These changes, combined with
women’s increased education, qualify them
for occupations with more status and income.
However, this shift has so far produced
only partial equality between the sexes.
 SOCIAL ROLE THEORY
Men continue to dominate leadership roles,
especially at higher levels (e.g., Helfat et al.,
2006). Women continue to take responsibil-
ity for the majority of childcare and house-
work (e.g., Bianchi et al., 2006), even when
both spouses are employed full-time (US
Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2008).
The continuing wage and authority gaps in
the workforce can be traced in part to women
continuing to fill caretaking roles, especially
childcare. Childcare roles that take women
out of the labor force or reduce their employ-
ment to part-time lessen their training and
experience. This reduction of human capital,
compounded by job discrimination against
mothers (e.g., Correll et al., 2007), lessens
women’s opportunities to attain jobs that
offer high wages and substantial workplace
authority (Polachek, 2006).
Social role theory offers a way to under-
stand both stability and change in gender
roles and associated behavioral sex differ-
ences. The recent social changes involved
shifts in the roles of women as they moved
into new educational and employment arenas.
Thus, we expect to find convergence in those
male and female attributes that reflect this
masculinizing of women’s experiences. A
number of findings are consistent with this
prediction. For example, women report
increasing importance of job attributes such
as freedom, challenge, leadership, prestige,
and power, thus becoming more similar to
men (Konrad et al., 2000). The career plans of
female university students have shown corre-
sponding changes (Pryor et al., 2006). Also,
meta-analyses found decreases over time in
the tendencies of men to engage in riskier
behavior than women (Byrnes et al., 1999)
and to emerge more than women as leaders in
small groups (Eagly and Karau, 1991). Also,
women’s self-reported agency has increased
over time to become more similar to men’s
agency, whereas the sex difference in com-
munion has been relatively invariant
(Twenge, 1997, 2001; although see Lueptow
et al., 2001). This increasing gender similarity
in traditionally masculine domains is consist-
ent with women’s growing labor force
471
participation and lessening concentration on
childcare and other domestic activities.
The convergence of the sexes on mascu-
line attributes is sufficiently marked to be
apparent to everyday observers of men and
women. Diekman and Eagly (2000) showed
that people believe that women and men have
converged in their personality, cognitive,
and physical characteristics during the past
50 years and will continue to converge during
the next 50 years. This perceived conver-
gence mainly took the form of women
increasing in the qualities typically associ-
ated with men. These studies also showed
that perceivers function like implicit role
theorists by assuming that, because the roles
of women and men have become more simi-
lar, their attributes converge.
Despite this evidence of social change,
men in industrialized nations do not appear to
be undergoing transitions in their daily activi-
ties comparable to those of women. Men have
only modestly increased their contributions to
childcare and domestic work (Bianchi et al.,
2006) and have yet to enter in large numbers
into caring professions and other typically
female types of paid employment (Queneau,
2006). Given the logic of social role theory,
men’s attributes will shift to include more
communal qualities to the extent that they
enter female-typical roles by performing
more family caring activities and holding
more communally demanding occupations.
Is it possible for men to adopt more com-
munal roles and develop more caring, warm,
emotionally-expressive personalities? A rea-
soned answer requires knowledge of the
biosocial roots of the role structure and the
limits it may impose on role flexibility. As
we have explained, these roots lay mainly in
the ways that male size and strength and
female reproductive activities interact with
socioeconomic complexity. Contemporary
changes in female reproductive activity and
the demands of occupations have eased
women’s inroads into male-dominated pro-
fessional and managerial occupations and
increased their agency. Barriers to men taking
on childcare and communally demanding
472 HANDBOOK OF THEORIES OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
occupations include lower monetary com-
pensation of these occupations (England,
2006), beliefs that men are less well endowed
with communal skills (Cejka and Eagly,
1999), and stigma associated with nontradi-
tional roles such as stay-at-home dads
(Brescoll and Uhlmann, 2005).
Women undertake childcare more than
men in part because of the continuing effi-
ciency of this activity for women. The ener-
getic demands of bearing children and the
health benefits of some months of breast-
feeding can orient mothers away from contin-
ued paid employment and toward infant care.
This arrangement is fostered by female
socialization and societal beliefs that promote
sex-typical role performance. Hormonal proc-
esses also may encourage mothers’ childcare,
as the cascading hormones of pregnancy and
lactation support women’s tending (Campbell,
2008; Kuzawa et al., 2010; Taylor, 2002).
Paternal behavior can also be supported by
hormonal processes, as fathers show hormo-
nal accommodation to parenthood similar to
that of women (Berg & Wynne-Edwards,
2001; Wynne-Edwards, 2001). New fathers
and mothers thus show suppressed testoster-
one and other hormonal changes, presumably
to facilitate caretaking. Caretaking is addi-
tionally facilitated in both sexes by neuro-
chemical mechanisms of reward learning that
can undergird nurturing of infants and young
children (Broad et al., 2006; Depue and
Morrone-Strupinsky, 2005). Fathering activi-
ties also are fostered by changing norms and
attitudes in the US, especially among younger
adults, who have become more accepting of
men’s equal participation in childcare (e.g.,
Milkie et al., 2002).
In general, change toward gender equality is
slowed by societal ideologies and status beliefs
that legitimize social inequalities on the basis
of sex and other attributes (Ridgeway, 2006;
Sidanius and Pratto, 1999). Despite evidence
that the pace of change in gender equality has
slowed on many attitudinal and behavioral
indicators since the second half of the twenti-
eth century (Blau et al., 2006b), women’s
attitudes and ideologies are more progressive
than men’s (e.g., Eagly et al., 2003a), and their
political commitments and actions continue to
speed social change (e.g., Dodson, 2006;
Seguino, 2007). For those committed to gender
equality, a challenge for the future is to under-
stand the roots of role asymmetries. Such
understanding could facilitate social policy
that opens paths for both men and women to
occupy a wider range of social roles.
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