PoliPsych.com Exploring Political Attitudes Through Moral Psychology

Reasons to be the opposite sex, a social psychology classroom demonstration of sexism?

Recently, a professor expressed the opinion that the purpose of social psychology is to publish first-rate research in journals.  Personally, I do not feel that social psychology is an end, in and of itself, but rather a means.  It is true that one of the primary means that psychology gets disseminated is through journals, but that is certainly not the only way to disseminate ideas.  Social psychology is especially interesting to me, in that it is applicable to the average undergraduate student's daily life and so the teaching of social psychology becomes one of the most important ways that ideas are disseminated.  Social psychology hopefully contributes toward more worthy ends by teaching students about their world.

One exercise we use to teach undergraduates is one where we ask students to list reasons why they might want to be the opposite sex.  Below is the number of reasons that students listed in a recent exercise, divided by gender.

What exactly does this mean?  We use this to teach the students about sexism.  Somehow, it is just easier for women to think of reasons why they want to be men rather than for men to think of reasons why they want to be women.  There are several explanations for this.  It could be that women simply write more.  It could be that this accurately reflects society and there are more reasons in society to be a man than a woman.  Or it could be that women are more comfortable thinking about being masculine compared to men thinking about being more feminine.  This last hypothesis is supported by the below graph where we see that men were much more likely to fold their paper in half when turning it in, indicating that they perhaps wanted to hide their answers.

Some sample responses?

Reasons women thought it might be easier to be a man: less attention to appearance, capable, menstruation, less drama, physical abilities, aging not a big deal, less prejudice, & giving birth.

Reasons men thought it might be easier to be a woman: free drinks,nicer, don't neccesarily have to get a job, socially acceptable to go to bathroom in groups, don't have to fight wars, & easier to get dates.