Ashley Templin, & Dr. Lindsey Trimble O’Connor
Men and women are expected to act differently according to societal expectations, restricting their ability for full self-expression. Stigma and stereotypes follow gender as previous research has used a feminist theoretical lens in conceptualizing gender as a hierarchy, with femininity and masculinity to help understand the presence of gender inequality. This leads into my research question: Does being masculine/feminine affect one’s beliefs about how men and women are the same or different in expressing their feelings? I hypothesize that the more masculine men feel themselves to be and the more feminine that woman feel themselves to be, the more likely they are to say that men and women are different in how they express their feelings. I conducted a secondary data analysis and analyzed data from the Pew Research Center’s 29th wave of the American Trends Panel survey, which has a sample size of 4,867. The survey uses a national probability based online panel of adults living in the U.S. and respondents were 18+ years old. I found that the more feminine and masculine someone thinks they are, the more likely they will believe women and men are different in how they express their feelings. These findings show that the degree to which one sees themselves as gendered is associated with seeing gender difference.