Record: 1 Title: The His and Hers of Prosocial Behavior:

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Record: 1

Title:The his and hers of prosocial behavior: An examination of the social psychology ofgender.

Authors:

Eagly, Alice H., Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, US, [email protected]:

Eagly, Alice H., Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, 2029 SheridanRoad, Evanston, IL, US, 60208, [email protected]

Source:American Psychologist, Vol 64(8), Nov, 2009. pp. 644-658

Publisher:US: American Psychological Association

ISSN:0003-066X (Print)1935-990X (Electronic)

Language:EnglishKeywords:

prosocial behavior; gender role beliefsAbstract:

Prosocial behavior consists of behaviors regarded as beneficial to others, includinghelping, sharing, comforting, guiding, rescuing, and defending others. Although womenand men are similar in engaging in extensive prosocial behavior, they are different intheir emphasis on particular classes of these behaviors. The specialty of women isprosocial behaviors that are more communal and relational, and that of men isbehaviors that are more agentic and collectively oriented as well as strength intensive.These sex differences, which appear in research in various settings, match widely

shared gender role beliefs. The origins of these beliefs lie in the division of labor,which reflects a biosocial interaction between male and female physical attributes andthe social structure. The effects of gender roles on behavior are mediated by hormonalprocesses, social expectations, and individual dispositions. (PsycINFO DatabaseRecord (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved) (from the journal abstract)

Subjects:*Prosocial Behavior; *Sex Role Attitudes; Human Sex Differences; Sex Roles

Classification:Social Psychology (3000)

Population:Human (10)

Male (30)Female (40)Conference:

American Psychological Association annual convention, 117th, Aug, 2009, Toronto,ON, Canada

Format Availablability:Electronic; Print

Format Covered:


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ElectronicPublication Type:

Journal; Peer Reviewed JournalDocument Type:

Journal ArticleRelease Date:

20091109Digital Object Identifier:

10.1037/0003-066X.64.8.644PsycINFO AN:

2009-19983-007Accession Number:

amp-64-8-644Number of Citations in Source:

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The his and hers of prosocial behavior: An examination of thesocial psychology of gender.

Database:PsycARTICLES

The His and Hers of Prosocial Behavior : An

Examination of the Social Psychology ofGenderBy: Alice H. EaglyNorthwestern University

Acknowledgement: Authors Note

Wendy Wood, Amanda Diekman, Paul Eastwick, Anne Koenig, and Seymour Becker providedhelpful comments on a draft of this article.

Note: Editors Note

Alice H. Eagly received the Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions. Award winnersare invited to deliver an award address at the APAs annual convention. A version of thisaward address was delivered at the 117th annual meeting, held August 69, 2009, inToronto, Ontario, Canada. Articles based on award addresses are reviewed, but they differfrom unsolicited articles in that they are expressions of the winners reflections on theirwork and their views of the field.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to: Alice H. Eagly,
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Department of Psychology, 2029 Sheridan Road, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208Electronic Mail may be sent to: [email protected].

Gender fascinates the public and scientists alike, inspiring continuing debate about how natureand nurture intertwine in influencing female and male behavior. The fact that the keywordgendergarnered 24,169 hits in 20002008 in the PsycINFO database shows the thriving

state of scholarship on gender. These publications contain an abundance of information aboutmalefemale similarities and differences. Although the aggregation of large amounts of suchinformation in meta-analyses or other summaries is useful, such approaches can also belimiting. If the puzzles of gender are to be solved, the integration of malefemalecomparisons must be coordinated with effective theory. In its absence, variation in thedirection and magnitude of these differences and similarities can appear to be random and caneven give the impression that gender has little or no effect on behavior. Yet, the experiencesand observations of everyday life suggest that gender remains a multifaceted system ofinfluences on personal choices, social interaction, and societal institutions. In this article, Iexamine how these influences operate in one domain of human behavior.

This domain isprosocial behavior, which consists of behaviors consensually regarded as

beneficial to others. It includes actions such as helping, sharing, comforting, guiding, rescuing,and defending ( Batson, 1998; Dovidio, Piliavin, Schroeder, & Penner, 2006). Much prosocialbehavior is directed to helping individuals, but it can be directed as well to supporting acollective, such as a group, organization, or nation. Although such actions are not necessarilyaltruistic in the sense of being devoid of self-oriented motivation, they deliver help to others.

A simple first question might be whether there is a more helpful sex. If armchair analysisanswers this question, ones first thoughts, be they implicit or explicit, might well reflectgender stereotypes that ascribe kindness and concern with others more to women than to men(e.g., Diekman & Goodfriend, 2006; Williams & Best, 1990). Yet, probing for second thoughtsshould bring to mind examples of helpful men. What about heroic men who take enormousrisks for others and warriors who protect their tribe or nation from external assault? Given

these disparate images, a first step toward understanding the prosocial behavior of women andmen involves an examination of gender roles. Subsequent steps involve explaining the originsof gender roles and the processes by which they affect behavior.

Gender Roles as a Tool for Understanding Prosocial Behavior

Elementary insights about social behavior follow from scrutiny of a societysgenderroles , which are the shared beliefs that apply to individuals on the basis of their sociallyidentified sex (Eagly, 1987 ). Gender role beliefs are both descriptive andprescriptive in thatthey indicate what men and women usually do and what they should do. The descriptive aspectof gender roles, orstereotypes , tells people what is typical for their sex. Especially if asituation is ambiguous or confusing, people tend to enact sex-typical behaviors. Theprescriptive aspect of gender roles tells people what is considered admirable for their sex in

their cultural context. People may enact these desirable behaviors to gain social approval orbolster their own esteem. To varying extents, gender role beliefs are embedded both inothers expectations, thereby acting as social norms, and in individuals internalizedgender identities, thereby acting as personal dispositions (Wood & Eagly, 2009 ,Wood &Eagly, in press ). These culturally shared beliefs provide a general framework forunderstanding why male and female behavior can be different or similar, depending on thebehavior and its circumstances.

Gender role beliefs imply different prosocial behaviors for women and men. Following
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concepts introduced by Bakan (1966) , most beliefs about men and women can be summarizedin two dimensions, which are most often labeled communion , or connection with others, andagency , or self-assertion. Women, more than men, are thought to be communalthat is,friendly, unselfish, concerned with others, and emotionally expressive. Men, more thanwomen, are thought to be agenticthat is, masterful, assertive, competitive, and dominant

(e.g.,Newport, 2001 ; Spence & Buckner, 2000 ). Studies of gender stereotypes haveconsistently found that their content is heavily saturated with communion and agency, withmore minor themes pertaining to other qualities (e.g., Kite, Deaux, & Haines, 2007 ). Thispredominance of communion and agency is widespread in world cultures (Williams & Best,1990 ). To understand the relevance of these beliefs for prosocial behavior, it is helpful toconsider their implications for the types of social bonds that people form.

Social bonds can take a relationalform by linking people to particular others in closerelationships or a collective form by linking people to groups and organizations (Brewer &Gardner, 1996). This distinction between relational and collective interdependencecorresponds to the communal and agentic dimensions of gender stereotypes (Gardner &Gabriel, 2004 ). By ascribing warm, sympathetic, and kind qualities to women, gender role

beliefs imply that women have a propensity for bonding with others in close, dyadicrelationships. Expressive, affectionate qualities facilitate friendships, romantic relationships,and family relationships and convey cooperative interdependence with others (Fiske, Cuddy,Glick, & Xu, 2002 ).

In contrast, by ascribing assertive, ambitious, and competitive qualities to men, gender rolebeliefs imply a social context in which people differ in status and men strive to improve theirhierarchical position (Baumeister & Sommer, 1997 ; Gardner & Gabriel, 2004 ). Such qualitiesare consistent with mens directing of much of their prosocial behavior to collectives(Gilmore, 1990 ). Although independence is also one of the agentic qualities commonlyascribed to men, demonstrating a degree of independence in a group setting can produceinfluence (Moscovici & Nemeth, 1974 ; Shackelford, Wood, & Worchel, 1996 ) and

potentially provide an opportunity for leadership (Eagly, Wood, & Fishbaugh, 1981). Ingeneral, superior social status is conveyed by the agentic attributes ascribed to men, such asbeing dominant and masterful (Ridgeway & Bourg, 2004 ), even though these attributes are notas favorably evaluated as the communal attributes ascribed to women (Eagly & Mladinic, 1994; Langford & MacKinnon, 2000 ).

In the next section of this article I classify prosocial behaviors according to their agentic orcommunal emphasis. A gender role analysis suggests that prosocial behaviors are morecommon in women to the extent that these behaviors have primarily a communal focus andmore common in men to the extent that they have primarily an agentic focus. A corollary ofthis prediction is that prosocial behaviors are more common in women if they have a relationalemphasis (e.g., supporting or caring for an individual). A second corollary is that prosocialbehaviors are more common in men if they have a collective emphasis, facilitate gaining status,or imply higher status. Yet another consideration is that some differences in male and femalebehavior reflect sex differences in physical size and strength. Womens lesser physicalprowess can act as a deterrent to their participation in highly strength-intensive activities,which include some prosocial behaviors (Wood & Eagly, 2002, Wood & Eagly, in press ).

These predictions should be understood as implying not dichotomous malefemaledifferences but general trends (ormain effects of participant sex) that emerge across situationaland other individual factors that also affect prosocial behavior and that can moderate or


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compete with the effects of gender roles. The logic of prediction for gender effects is thussimilar to that for other personal characteristics (see Leary & Hoyle, 2009 ). In particular,gender roles influence behavior in conjunction with many other roles, including thoseassociated with other group memberships (e.g., ethnicity, religion) and specific obligations(e.g., family, occupation).

Despite the myriad of influences on social behaviors, gender roles are important, acting in partthrough others expectations and broader social norms. These external pressures rangefrom subtle (e.g., stereotype threat) to obvious (e.g., laws or norms forbidding one sex accessto certain roles or opportunities). Gender roles also act through individuals personalidentification with their gender and are intertwined with hormonal processes that facilitatemasculine and feminine behavior (Wood & Eagly, 2009). In addition, all behaviors arecontextually situated, and this context can influence the salience of gender norms and theaccessibility of gender identities (e.g., Deaux & Major, 1987;Piliavin & Unger, 1985).

A convenient organization of trends in agentic and communal prosocial behavior classifiesfindings by their social context: interactions with strangers, interactions in close relationships,interactions in workplaces, and interactions in other social settings. Meta-analyses are

informative, as are archival data and individual field and laboratory studies. Invoking theserich sources of data, in the next section I report malefemale differences and similarities,organized by gender role beliefs and social context. In a subsequent section (The Origin andConsequences of Gender Roles), I consider the causal relations in which these beliefs andbehaviors are embedded.

Malefemale comparisons from meta-analyses appear in this article as averaged findings inthe dmetric, defined as the difference between the male and female mean values divided bythe pooled standard deviation (see Borenstein, Hedges, Higgins, & Rothstein, 2009). Effectsizes from single studies, which are less reliable, are omitted. In contemplating the effect sizes,readers should keep in mind that the cumulative impact of small effects can be considerable.This insight was compellingly explained byAbelson (1985 , p. 133), who concluded that

small variance contributions of independent variables in single-shot studies grosslyunderstate the variance contribution in the long run (see also Epstein, 1980;Rosenthal,1990 ). If studies measures are not single-shot but are appropriately aggregated across multiple observations of behaviors, effect magnitudes are generally larger.

Given these considerations, the most relevant baseline for interpreting effect magnitudes forprosocial behavior incorporates the methodological characteristics of its typical researchparadigms. In this domain, single-shot studies are common, depressing effect magnitudes. It istherefore not surprising that averaging the effects from all available meta-analyses of prosocialbehaviors in social psychology, regardless of hypothesis, yielded a dof only 0.37 (Richard,Bond, & Stokes-Zoota, 2003 ).

Research Comparing Female and Male Prosocial Behavior

Interactions With Strangers

Helping strangers, a domain that includes many agentic behaviors, became a focus of socialpsychological research in the wake ofDarley and Latans (1968) research addressingthe failure of bystanders to intervene in the infamous Kitty Genovese murder. Socialpsychologists then carried out numerous field and laboratory experiments on helping behavior(see Batson, 1998; Dovidio et al., 2006). Many of these researchers, like Darley and Latan,studied bystander interventions in emergency situations in which another person appeared to be
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distressed or endangered (e.g., helping a man who fell in the subway). Other types of helpingthat attracted experimentation included assistance in response to requests (e.g., giving someonemoney for the subway) as well as polite behaviors (e.g., helping someone pick up droppedpackages).

A meta-analysis of these experiments revealed that in general men helped more than women

( d= 0.34, Eagly & Crowley, 1986; see Johnson et al., 1989, for cross-cultural replication witha self-report questionnaire). Although all of the behaviors assessed in these experimentsrequired some attentiveness to the needs of others, only a portion required taking the initiative,thus calling on the assertive qualities central to the male gender role. Therefore, the studieswere classified by whether a need merely presented itself to bystanders (e.g., throughobservation that someone was ill or distressed) or an explicit request to help was directed tothem (e.g., an appeal for a charity donation). When a need is merely present, helpers assertthemselves to deliver aid, whereas when a request is made, helpers acquiesce to someoneelses wishes. A finding consistent with the agentic theme of the male gender role was thatmen were especially more helpful than women when helpers had to take the initiative ( d=0.55) than when helpers had to acquiesce to a request ( d= 0.07).

Many of these helping behaviors drew on agencys implications for statusthat is, thecommon, albeit eroding, expectation that men are dominant over women. In a prosocialcontext, male dominance implies directing benevolent protectiveness and politeness towardwomen. Men are expected not only to protect women from dangers but to deliver acts ofcourtesy such as helping them put on their coats. With cultural roots in medieval codes ofchivalry, such norms have survived in common paternalistic beliefs and behaviors ( Glick &Fiske, 2001).

Aspects of the helping behavior findings suggest male chivalry. Specifically, in experimentsthat had divided data by the sex of the person receiving aid, men helped more than women forfemale recipients of help ( d= 0.27); this effect slightly reversed for male recipients ( d=0.08, Eagly & Crowley, 1986). In a finding consistent with the idea that mens helping

is driven in part by social norms that can be made salient by others presence, anotheranalysis showed that the tendency for men to help more than women was substantial when thepotential helpers were in the presence of onlookers ( d= 0.74) but not when they were the onlybystander ( d= 0.02).

Some prosocial behaviors, often labeled heroic, require that the helper take considerablepersonal risk to aid another person ( Becker & Eagly, 2004). Heroic acts of rescuing others inemergencies are consistent with the male gender role in that they are highly agentic in theirrequirement for quick and decisive intervention that often places the rescuers own life atrisk. Many such actions also advantage mens greater size and strength, as suggested by thelarger physical size of interveners than of noninterveners in crimes and emergencies ( Huston,Ruggiero, Conner, & Geis, 1981).

Relevant archival data come from the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission (2009), whichrecognizes individuals who voluntarily risk their own lives while saving or attempting to savethe life of another person. People whose job roles or parental responsibilities require acts ofrescuing are ineligible for this recognition. Men have received the great majority of theseheroism awards (91% in 19042008), and there is no evidence of systematic change in thisdistribution over the years (e.g., 92% men in 20042008; W. F. Rutkowsky, ExecutiveDirector of the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission, personal communication, May 27, 2009).This disproportion is very unlikely to reflect a bias against honoring eligible women (see


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Becker & Eagly, 2004). Replication of this pattern has emerged from the Canadiangovernments awarding of a similar Medal of Bravery; 87% of these awards in20042008 have honored men ( Governor General of Canada, 2009). In addition, men havestrongly predominated in contemporary newspaper accounts of heroic interventions ( Lyons,2005) and among people recognized for intervening in dangerous criminal events such as

muggings and bank holdups (e.g., Huston et al., 1981). Also, in the social psychologicalhelping experiments, to the extent that a behavior was perceived as more dangerous by womenthan men (e.g., letting a stranger into your house to use the phone), it yielded greater maleadvantage in helping ( Eagly & Crowley, 1986).

Interactions in Close Relationships

In close relationships, much prosocial behavior has a communal emphasis in that it involvesextending care, nurturing, helping, and sympathy to individuals. Among people bound toothers through friendship and family roles, women generally provide more sensitive emotionalsupport than do men. For example, on the basis of their narrative review,Burleson and Kunkel(2006, p. 150) concluded that

women are more likely than men to provide emotional support to others, to seek emotionalsupport from others, to focus on emotions while providing support, and to use HPC [highlyperson-centered] comforting messages in the effort to relieve distress . the observed genderdifferences in behavior are comparatively substantial, often accounting for more than 10% ofthe variance in the examined dependent variables.

These conclusions echoed Cross and Madsons (1997) narrative review claiming thatwomen manifest greater awareness and sensitivity concerning emotions and their importancein friendships. As a result of these behaviors, both men and women generally prefer to obtainemotional support from women ( Burleson & Kunkel, 2006). For example, among studentsasked whether they would likely seek emotional support from a friend of their own or the othersex, a preference for a woman emerged in 71% of the men and 76% of the women ( Kunkel &Burleson, 1999). These patterns in adult behavior are preceded by analogous trends inchildhood and adolescent friendships: Girls are more likely than boys to engage in prosocialinteractions emphasizing helping, self-disclosure, and empathy (e.g.,Rose & Asher, 2004; seereview by Rose & Rudolph, 2006, Tables 1 and 2).

Similar patterns of social interaction exist in marital relationships (e.g., Cutrona, 1996),especially in womens provision of emotional support to their spouses when it is mostneeded ( Neff & Karney, 2005). Prosocial behavior in families extends beyond emotionalsupport to broader patterns of caring (see Cancian & Oliker, 2000). Despite some weakening ofthe traditional family division of labor in recent decades, in U.S. households with childrenpresent, women spend approximately twice as much time as men in caring for and helpinghousehold members ( U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2008a). Women also compriseapproximately 75% of caregivers for older family members and friends and 62% of

grandparents living with and caring for grandchildren ( U.S. Health Resources and ServicesAdministration, 2005). Men, more often than women, are the main family provider, therebycarrying out collectively oriented prosocial behavior. In U.S. households with children present,men spend almost twice as much time as women in their employment activities ( U.S. Bureauof Labor Statistics, 2008a).

Providing additional insight into familial prosocial behavior are excellent records that exist fora rare yet highly beneficial act: living kidney donation, which occurs mainly betweengenetically related persons. In this context, the medical goal of maximizing donorrecipient


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biological compatibility should foster gender similarity in donations. Nevertheless, livingkidney donors are somewhat more likely to be female in the United States (58%), as are livingdonors of all organs (58%, with a gradually rising female trend from 1988 to the present, U.S.Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, 2009; seeBiller-Andorno, 2002, for similarGerman data). In addition, donations between unrelated individuals are often between spouses,

and wife-to-husband transfers are considerably more common than husband-to-wife transfers( Becker & Eagly, 2004). Consistent with these data and the communal theme of the femalegender role is the finding that female donors, more than male donors, viewed themselves ashaving an obligation to family members that extended to this physical form of caring( Simmons, Klein, & Simmons, 1977). These kidney donation findings are consistent as wellwith the already noted family division of labor between womens caring and serviceactivities and mens wage earning.

Interactions in Workplaces

Gender often marks prosocial workplace behaviors that go beyond what people are required todo on the job. Because formal job descriptions apply equally to women and men in the samejob, they reduce sex differences in the behaviors bound by such requirements. Therefore, of

special interest are organizational citizenship behaviors, which consist of discretionary actsthat are not explicitly recognized by the formal reward system and that promote the functioningof the organization ( Organ, 1988). Some of these behaviors are relationally prosocial inextending help to specific individuals (e.g., aiding a colleague with an excessive workload). Incontrast, others of these behaviors, sometimes labeled civic virtue, demonstrate extracommitment to the employing organization and may yield gains in status (e.g., attendingmeetings that are not mandatory).

Research assessing peoples estimates of organizational citizenship behaviors suggestslittle overall difference between women and men in these behaviors (e.g., Organ & Ryan,1995). However, within this domain, women, more than men, appear to engage in relationallyprosocial citizenship behaviors (e.g., Farrell & Finkelstein, 2007; Heilman & Chen, 2005;

Kidder, 2002). These findings cohere with meta-analytic research on managerial style showingthat female managers, more than male managers, deliverindividualized considerationbehaviors, which focus on developing and mentoring subordinates and attending to theirindividual needs (e.g., d= 0.19, Eagly, Johannesen-Schmidt, & van Engen, 2003). Lessconsistently, men, more than women, appear to engage in the civic virtue behaviors that focuson the organization itself (e.g., Farrell & Finkelstein, 2007; Heilman & Chen, 2005; Kidder,2002).

Providing additional evidence of womens relational workplace behavior, Moskowitz, Suh,and Desaulniers (1994, with a Canadian sample) found that women, regardless of their jobstatus, reported more communal behaviors, such as friendly, unselfish, and expressive acts,than did men, especially when interacting with other women. Similarly, a meta-analysis of

physicians behavior established that women and men physicians gave equivalent medicalinformation but that women physicians displayed more communal behaviors, including morepositive talk, psychosocial counseling, emotion-focused talk, and nodding and smiling (e.g., ds= 0.36 for positive talk and 0.22 for psychosocial counseling, Roter, Hall, & Aoki, 2002).Many occupational roles thus appear to allow relational prosocial behavior that goes beyondjob requirements (see alsoFletcher, 1999).

Also relevant to prosocial behavior are occupational roles themselves, some of which aredefined primarily by role occupants activities of extending help, support, or protection to


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individuals or collectives (see Cancian & Oliker, 2000). Many such roles remain dominated byone sex, which is consistent with the moderate overall sex segregation of the U.S. labor force( Tomaskovic-Devey et al., 2006). As general trends, the distributions of women and men intooccupations are correlated with gender stereotypes, with male-dominated occupations regardedas agentically demanding and female-dominated occupations regarded as communally

demanding ( Cejka & Eagly, 1999). Women are relatively rare in occupations such asfirefighter (5%), police officer (15%), and soldier (14%), which are designed to protect thecommunity and society ( U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2009; U.S. Department of Defense,2009). In contrast, women especially predominate in occupations such as preschool andkindergarten teacher (98%), social worker (79%), and registered nurse (92%), whichemphasize caring for individuals ( England, Budig, & Folbre, 2002; U.S. Bureau of LaborStatistics, 2009).

Interactions in Other Social Settings

Social scientists have studied prosocial behavior in other settings that encompass varied socialrelationships and span a wide range of behaviors. One example is the rescuing of Jews in theoccupied countries of Europe during World War II, which involved risky acts that could be

punished by death or confinement in concentration camps ( Becker & Eagly, 2004). Somepeople rescued coworkers or friends, but others rescued strangers (e.g., M. Gilbert, 2003;Oliner & Oliner, 1988). Rescuers sometimes took the initiative to help Jews and other timesresponded to appeals from them. Some gave short-term help, but many entered into longerterm caring relationships by hiding Jews, often within their own dwellings. Holocaust rescuingthus encompassed communal and agentic behaviors, often involving complex sequences ofactions. Consistent with this variability is the finding from an analysis of the Yad Vashemarchive of data on non-Jews honored for rescuing Jews that women and men participatedapproximately equally, although when married couples were excluded from the analysis,slightly more women were found to have participated ( Becker & Eagly, 2004).

Community volunteering, which entails giving time and services to benefit another person,

group, or organization, also encompasses varied communal and agentic behaviors as well asdiffering types of social relationships ( Wilson, 2000). In the United States, slightly morewomen than men volunteer (e.g., 29% of women and 23% of men,U.S. Bureau of LaborStatistics, 2008b). Similarly, women have received 56% of the Caring Canadian Awards (for20042008) given by the Canadian government for exceptional unpaid volunteer activity inthe form of caring for individuals, families, or groups or supporting community service orhumanitarian causes ( Governor General of Canada, 2009). Also, women are somewhatoverrepresented as Peace Corp applicants and volunteers and as U.S. medical volunteers whoserve in troubled foreign settings (see Becker & Eagly, 2004).

Categorizations of volunteer activities in available data do not allow a sharp division intoagentic and communal behaviors. Nonetheless, volunteer work is moderately segregated by

sex, especially in activities related to children, youth, and schools, a finding consistent withsociological research ( Rotolo & Wilson, 2007). Specifically, female volunteers, more thanmale volunteers, perform care work related to education or youth-oriented or health services(e.g., Rotolo & Wilson, 2007; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2008b). In addition, men aredisproportionally represented in leadership roles and as coaches of sports teams, and women inactivities pertaining to the provision and preparation of food.

Gender Roles as Descriptions of Similarity and Difference

This review reveals that neither sex deserves recognition for delivering the majority of


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prosocial behavior. Although both women and men deliver extensive help to others, theyspecialize to some extent in different types of behavior. In general, these patterns are consistentwith societal gender roles, which can act both as social pressures external to individuals and asinternalized gender identities. Thus, the size and direction of sex differences in prosocialbehaviors depend in part on whether a behavior requires mainly agentic attributes associated

with men or communal attributes associated with women. In addition, mens physicalprowess yields male advantage for those prosocial actions that favor exceptional physicalstrength. As overall trends, men tend to extend heroic help in dangerous emergencies,interventionist help to strangers encountering accidents and difficulties, chivalrous help towomen, and collectivist support that promotes the interests of families, organizations, andnations at war. Women tend to extend care to children and elderly relatives, sensitiveemotional support to spouses and friends, and relational support to workplace peers andsubordinates.

Has this research answered the question that began this article? That is, are men and womensimilar or different in their prosocial behavior? To produce an answer consistent withHydes (2005) gender similarity hypothesis, psychologists could aggregate prosocial

behaviors across a wide range of more communal and more agentic acts. Also, averagingacross a single domain that mixes agentic and communal behavior yields gender similarity(e.g., Holocaust rescuing). As I have shown, this apparent similarity emerges mainly withaggregations across culturally masculine and feminine behaviors. Classifying behaviorsaccording to communion and agency displays the power of gender to shape social behavior.

The magnitudes of femalemale differences are of some interest in relation to the meta-analytical baseline of 0.37 for all research on prosocial behavior (Richard et al., 2003). Someof the meta-analyzed findings noted in this article approximate or exceed these typical findingsfor prosocial behavior (e.g., 0.55 for taking the initiative to help strangers; 0.74 for helpingstrangers in the presence of an audience of bystanders,Eagly & Crowley, 1986; 0.36 forphysicians positive talk, Roter et al., 2002 ). Moreover, some natural setting archives yield

extremely disproportionate sex distributions (e.g., 91% men for Carnegie Award heroism, W.F. Rutkowsky, executive director of the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission, personalcommunication, May 27, 2009; 92% female nurses and 95% male firefighters, U.S. Bureau ofLabor Statistics, 2009 ).

As this article has demonstrated, researchers equipped with the simple tools of culturallyshared gender roles can track this specialization of the sexes in different types of prosocialbehavior. Lacking these tools, research psychologists often fail to recognize these patterns ofsex-related differences (e.g., Ellis, Field, Hershberger, Wersinger, & Geary, 2008 ).Nevertheless, this identification of differences and similarities does not derive from privilegedscientific knowledge. On the contrary, these insights derive from the descriptive gender rolesthat are available to all who share in a given culture. It is therefore not surprising that peopleare skilled at predicting the sex differences and similarities established in psychologicalresearch.

There are many demonstrations of this everyday accuracy about female and male behavior. Forprosocial behaviors, students estimates of the likelihood that women versus men wouldengage in each of the behaviors assessed in the experiments on helping behavior accuratelytracked the sex differences and similarities in these studies (Eagly & Crowley, 1986 ). Evenmore impressively, in several research projects, student participants beliefs about thedirection and magnitude of sex-related differences in a wide range of personality traits,


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abilities, and social behaviors proved to be moderately correlated with the findings of the meta-analyses that had compared the sexes (Briton & Hall, 1995 ; Hall & Carter, 1999 ; Swim,1994 ). Also suggesting accuracy is the finding that gender-stereotypic beliefs correlated withmens and womens experiences of the emotions of anger, fear, love, joy, and sadness(Grossman & Wood, 1993). In addition, students successfully estimated the social attitudes

held by men versus women on a variety of topics (Diekman, Eagly, & Kulesa, 2002) as wellas the distributions of men and women into occupations (Cejka & Eagly, 1999). Finally,individual differences in the accuracy of students beliefs about sex differences andsimilarities related positively to measures of their interpersonal sensitivity and self-reportedaccuracy of social perception (Hall & Carter, 1999).

Research has thus shown that people have generally good descriptive knowledge of female andmale behavior, and this knowledge is more astute for accurate observers of social life. Ofcourse, this substantial kernel of truth in gender stereotypes holds only for group differencesbetween men and women. These beliefs are of limited value in predicting the behavior ofindividuals, who may or may not be typical of their sex.

The Origins and Consequences of Gender Roles

The match between culturally shared gender roles and actual sex-related differences isprovocative but does not constitute a theory of why men and women differ in their socialbehavior to varying extents. Explanation is the specialty of scientists, who articulate principlesand design empirical tests of their validity. An adequate theory must extend beyond these ideasabout male agency and female communion through a nomological net of related constructs thatreach upward to the ultimate origins of male and female behavior and downward to theprocesses that instigate behavior. In social role theory, the gender role beliefs introduced at thebeginning of this article exist within a larger nomological net, which I now briefly present (seeEagly & Wood, in press; Eagly, Wood, & Diekman, 2000; Wood & Eagly, in press).

The gender role beliefs that can order patterns of prosocial behavior are surely not arbitrarysocial constructions. Instead, their proximal origins reside in peoples observations of theeveryday activities observed as typical of women and men in a society. In a manner consistentwith the social psychological principle ofcorrespondent inference ( D. T. Gilbert, 1998),people infer the traits of each sex from observations of their behavior. To the extent that peopleobserve men and women engaging in a division of labor, they regard them as psychologicallydifferent.

In daily life, people observe more domestic work carried out by women and more paid workcarried out by men ( Bianchi, Robinson, & Milkie, 2006; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics,2008a). The social behaviors that typify domestic versus wage labor differ in their perceivedcommunal versus agentic emphasis. People thus regard the domestic role as fostering acommunal pattern of facilitative behaviors in close relationships, including the nurturing ofchildren. In contrast, people regard employment roles as favoring more agentic behaviors (

Eagly & Steffen, 1984).Despite this association of employment roles with agency, paid jobs are highly variable in theirdemands. Women and men are regarded as possessing the attributes required by theoccupations in which they are most commonly observed ( Koenig & Eagly, 2008). Mensroles in the workplace tend to place them in positions of higher status or power vis- -vis thewomen with whom they interact, conveying expectations of dominance and control( Ridgeway & Bourg, 2004). Also, as already noted, the requirements for success in specificoccupations are correlated with perceived agency to the extent that they are male dominated
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Gender role beliefs also influence peoples self-concepts and thereby become genderidentitiesindividuals sense of themselves as female or male (seeWood & Eagly, 2009,Wood & Eagly, in press). One reason that individuals of the same sex differ in their prosocialbehavior is that they internalize agency or communion (or other aspects of gender) to varyingdegrees. Evidence of this internalization is that the self-descriptions of men and women differ

on gender identity measures, with men describing themselves more agentically ( d= 0.60) andwomen more communally ( d= 0.73, J. M. Twenge, personal communication, April 1, 2009,averaged across Twenge, 1997, data sets). Replicating these trends are personality tests thatyield self-reported tendencies toward greater male assertiveness ( d= 0.50, Feingold, 1994; seealsoCosta, Terracciano, & McCrae, 2001) and greater female tender-mindedness andnurturance ( ds = 0.97, 0.75, Feingold, 1994) as well as greater emotional intelligence ( d=0.28, Whitman, 2009) and empathy and sympathy (for a review of relevant meta-analyses, seeEisenberg, Fabes, & Spinrad, 2006).

Gender identities exert trait-like influences on behavior by serving as standards against whichpeople regulate their behavior ( Witt & Wood, in press; Wood, Christensen, Hebl, &Rothgerber, 1997). These identities, which reflect the segregation of male and female roles, in

turn act to recreate such segregation as men and women select into social roles that offeropportunities for meeting their self-standards ( Corrigall & Konrad, 2006;Evans & Diekman,2009).

Gender identities thus join with social pressures deriving from others expectations andwith hormonal influences to foster prosocial behavior that tends to be more agentic in men andcommunal in women. These influences are facilitated by socialization that enables boys andgirls to recognize and channel hormonal signals, others expectations, and their own genderidentities in the service of performing their everyday social roles ( Ruble, Martin, &Berenbaum, 2006).

Change in Sex Differences in Prosocial Behavior

Are the patterns of female and male prosocial behavior noted in this article likely to disappearover time? The answer to this question is not simple. According to the causal flowsemphasized in social role theory (Eagly, Wood, & Diekman, 2000 ), even moderatelysegregated social roles act through mediational processes to yield sex-related patterns ofprosocial behavior. Individual mens greater delivery of agentically oriented prosocialbehavior thus follows from the social fact of mens predominance in social roles perceivedas demanding considerable agency. Yet, it is precisely this aspect of role occupancy that hasshown substantial change. Women have not only increased their labor force participation buthave moved into many white-collar, traditionally male-dominated occupations; they nowconstitute 51% of individuals in management, professional, and related occupations. In sharpcontrast, few women have shifted into male-dominated blue-collar occupations; they constituteonly 3% of those in construction and extraction occupations; 4% of those in installation,

maintenance, and repair occupations; and 15% of those in transportation and material movingoccupations (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2009; see Webb, 2009 , for cross-nationalcomparisons). Yet, women have gained broader responsibilities and considerable status bybecoming managers and professionals. As a consequence, they have come to view themselvesas more agentic than in the past (Twenge, 1997 , Twenge, 2001 ; see alsoKasen, Chen, Sneed,Crawford, & Cohen, 2006 ). Even though men are still higher in self-reported agency in manycomparisons (e.g., Lueptow, Garovich-Szabo, & Lueptow, 2001 ), the changes in womensroles suggest considerable potential for women to undertake agentically oriented prosocial


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behavior.

So far there is less reason to expect changes in communally oriented prosocial behavior.Female-dominated occupations, generally perceived as communally demanding (Cejka &Eagly, 1999 ), have not changed much in sex composition (England, 2005;U.S. Bureau ofLabor Statistics, 2009 ). Also, women continue to take primary responsibility for child care and

household service work, despite some increase in mens contributions (Aguiar & Hurst,2007 ; Bianchi et al., 2006 ). For example, in 20032006, even among men and womenfilling the same roles as married parents with full-time employment, women devoted 1.5 hoursto child care for every hour devoted by men as well as 1.5 hours to other household servicework for every hour devoted by men (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2008a). Therefore, it isnot surprising that self-reported communal tendencies in women and men have appeared to berelatively stable over time (Twenge, 1997 ). Also, this lingering specialization of women infamily caring and service activity hinders gender equality because it tends to reduce manywomens commitment to continuous, full-time employment. This reduction occurs evenamong women in the occupational roles that yield maximum status, authority, and wages (e.g.,Bertrand, Goldin, & Katz, 2009; Herr & Wolfram, 2009) and that therefore have the greatest

capacity to promote social expectations of womens increased agency.Equal participation in communally demanding roles so far has proven difficult to achieve.Impediments to men taking on such roles include the lower wages of occupations thatemphasize caring (England, 2006 ; England et al., 2002), mens lack of self-efficacy inrelation to such activity (Giles & Rea, 1999), social expectations that men are deficient incommunal skills (Cejka & Eagly, 1999), and stigma associated with nontraditional male rolessuch as stay-at-home dads (Brescoll & Uhlmann, 2005 ).

There are in addition impediments to women lowering their participation in child care. Theenergetic demands of bearing children and the health benefits of some months of breast-feeding can influence mothers with sufficient financial resources to reduce their commitmentto paid work in favor of child care, given the limited accommodation of workplaces to infant

care. Lowering paid work hours or eliminating them altogether can be congruent with manymothers gender identities and the expectations of others, including husbands and partners.Hormonal processes also may encourage mothers child care, as the cascading hormones ofpregnancy and lactation support womens tending (Campbell, 2008 ; Feldman, Weller,Zagoory-Sharon, & Levine, 2007; Taylor et al., 2000 ). Yet, fathering can be supported byparallel hormonal accommodation (Berg & Wynne-Edwards, 2001 , Berg & Wynne-Edwards,2002 ). In both sexes, caretaking of infants and young children is also supported byneurochemical mechanisms of reward learning (Broad et al., 2006;Depue & Morrone-Strupinsky, 2005 ). Fathering is additionally facilitated by changing attitudes in the UnitedStates, especially among younger adults (e.g.,Milkie, Bianchi, Mattingly, & Robinson, 2002 ).Considerable potential thus exists for fathers to share child care more fully with mothers andconsequently to deliver more caring, supportive prosocial behavior.

There is less reason to predict much change in mens greater enactment of highly strength-intensive behaviors, including heroic rescuing. Even though women may be increasing theirphysical prowess through athletics and conditioning, biological sex differences in size andstrength remain substantial (see review by Archer, 2009 ). Nonetheless, many occupations thatwere once highly strength intensive (e.g., warrior) are now more reliant on technology thatlessens the importance of strength, thus becoming more accessible to women (e.g., Simon,2001 ). Still, physical differences foster categorical thinking about mens greater capacity


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for behaviors requiring brief bursts of strength and speed and thereby give men privilegedaccess to the status-enhancing designation as heroic, at least for the types of actions that yieldCarnegie medals. Yet, heroism is not accorded only to rescuers. Extraordinary caring in closerelationships is sometimes acknowledged as heroic. For example, when a community sampleof respondents named heroes known to them personally, they often listed family guardians who

had consistently cared and provided for family members despite encountering seriouschallenges. Women and men were equally represented among these personal heroes (Rankin &Eagly, 2008 ).

Change in male and female social roles does not flow easily because resistance counterspressures toward change. Opposition to some changes is intense, such as opposition to womenin military combat roles (e.g., Browne, 2007). Societal ideologies legitimize inequalitiesbetween men and women (Pratto, Sidanius, & Levin, 2006 ; Ridgeway, 2006 ). To someextent, even women accept ideologies that subordinate women (Jost, Pelham, Sheldon, &Sullivan, 2003 ) and endorse paternalistic ideas (Glick & Fiske, 2001 ). Nevertheless,womens attitudes and ideologies are more progressive than mens (e.g.,Eagly,Diekman, Johannesen-Schmidt, & Koenig, 2004 ; Seguino, 2007 ), and their political

commitments can speed social change (e.g.,Dodson, 2006 ). Gradual movement toward lesssegregated social roles is thus a reasonable expectation (Jackson, 2006 ), as is gradualweakening of the majority of the sex differences in prosocial behavior.

In summary, research on prosocial behavior yields patterns of gender specialization that arewell known in daily life. Although it is incorrect to claim that there is a more helpful sex, apersistent pattern emerges of female emotionally supportive and sensitive behavior, especiallyin close relationships, and male agentic behavior, often directed to strangers and to the supportof social collectives. In relevant data, these differences range from small to large in magnitude,depending on the behaviors themselves, their social context, individuals dispositions,studies methods, and the presence of competing influences on the behaviors.

Despite the considerable information available in existing reports, many aspects of prosocial

behavior remain relatively unexplored, including the ways in which social class, race,ethnicity, and religious commitments may moderate gender effects (Cole, 2009). Alsodeserving attention are the interactions between the three processes that serve as proximaldeterminants of male and female behavior: hormonal processes, socially shared expectations,and individual dispositions that include gender identity. Further expansion of knowledge aboutthe rich mosaic of prosocial behavior will allow psychologists to refine theories thatdisentangle the conditions under which men and women are similar or different and theimplications of these findings for progress toward gender equality in society.

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