Negative and Positive Attributes of Gender Stereotypes and Gender Self-Attributions: A Study with Spanish Adolescents

The changing dynamics of gender stereotypes and the effect of context in adults are two aspects that have been confirmed in the literature. Less research has been carried out with adolescents however. This paper analyzes gender stereotypes and self-attributions in Spanish adolescents using positive and negative gender-typed attributes of GRI-JUG. Study 1 evaluated attributes in terms of valence, desirability and typicality. In Study 2, the structure of the attributes was explored in order to identify a new measure of gender typing. In Study 3, the self-attributions of adolescents were examined. The results showed a broad agreement between boys and girls in relation to the valence of attributes. With regard to desirability and typicality, an effect of both participant gender and target gender was found. The confirmatory factor analysis identified four dimensions in the new measure. While positive attributes were related to the masculine and feminine dimensions, negative ones were better described in terms of passive and active dimensions. Finally, boys, but not girls, used negative attributes for self-description. Together, these findings suggest that gender stereotypes and self-attributions are changing in adolescents. Furthermore, our results can be considered to be an empirical confirmation of the rupture of the masculinity-male and femininity-female associations.