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This research examined gender-role flexibility across a variety of stressful events, and tested two proposed hypotheses that explicate the processes underlying gender-role flexibility. Theknowing-more hypothesisposits that androgynous individuals have a broad coping repertoire. Theknowing-how hypothesisposits that androgynous individuals know how to cope according to changing situational characteristics. The coping responses of Chinese university students were assessed in both real-life (Study 1) and hypothetical (Study 2) stressful situations. Results revealed that androgynous participants, who were less depressed than others, were characterized by (a) cognitive astuteness in distinguishing among situational characteristics and (b) deployment of strategies that fit specific situational demands. Results supported theknowing-how hypothesisonly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of gender attributes, masculinity and femininity, has comprised a major research program in twentieth-century psychology. Historical examination reveals that this research program has produced not cumulative discovery but a pattern of repetition and reification. Researchers have repeatedly attempted to ensure the reality of masculinity and femininity, and have even introduced methodological techniques that privilege their observational statements on that reality. Similar patterns have occurred in the case of androgyny research, despite expectations that the androgyny construct would remedy the shortcomings of masculinity and femininity concepts. When analyzed in historical context, these gender concepts are found to share ethnopsychological origins-roots in social practices and prescriptions. Contextual analysis also provides telling details about researchers normative interests. If we choose to terminate such fruitless ventures and to generate novel understandings of the social world, then we must undertake critical self-appraisal and adopt a new metatheoretical grounding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purposes of the present investigation are to examine theoretical issues in androgyny theory by testing the effect of participation in the Outward Bound program on measures of masculinity (M) and femininity (F) Bipolar conceptualizations of MF posit that an increase in either M or F must lead to a decrease in the other, whereas androgyny theory posits M and F to be independent constructs Consistent with a priori predictions based on the nature of the Outward Bound program, participation substantially enhanced M and had a small positive effect on F The results were reasonably consistent for male and female participants, for single-sex and mixed-sex groups, and across responses to three different MF measures Results support the androgyny interpretation of MF and demonstrate the effectiveness of the Outward Bound program in changing MF The results contradict the bipolar perspective that an increase in M must be accompanied by a decrease in F [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]