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The relationship between creativity and androgyny was studied in 163 women and men with the Creative Functioning Test (CFT) and the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI). A 2 (femininity: high/low) X 2 (masculinity: high/low) X 2 (sex) ANOVA was conducted on subjects’ CFT scores. A significant interaction effect between femininity and masculinity was found showing that subjects high on both femininity and masculinity (androgynous) and low on both scales (undifferentiated) reached higher CFT scores than female-typed and male-typed subjects. Further, a significant three-way interaction including sex of subject indicated that the former two-way interaction was accounted for by men only. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article cites two studies which investigated personality adjustment differences in the Bem masculinity and feminity scales. The first study compared the adjustment values of the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) Masculinity and Femininity scales and their individual items, using 40 mental health workers as judges. It was also determined that if differences in the adjustment ratings of the scales emerged, modified Masculinity and Femininity scales, matched for mental health value, will be developed. The relationships of vocational and personal adjustment variables to masculinity, femininity, androgyny and undifferentiatedness, as defined by the original and the modified scales, then were to be compared in a second study. When categorized by the original BSRI scales, the authors' masculine and androgynous samples produced healthier scores than their feminine and undifferentiated groups on a modest number of measures. These findings are similar to those reported in earlier research. However, when individuals with invalid Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventories were deleted, the sizes of the observed differences decreased, perhaps because of relationships between the BSRI scales and social desirability.

This article presents information on Bern sex-Role Inventory (BSRI). The BSRI has been presented as an instrument that allows one to measure an aspect of sex roles that is not tapped by more tradi tional MF scales. This unique quality of the BSRI is said to be the result of three important features that distinguish it from other, commonly used MF scales. In most of the research that involves items that relate to sex roles, items have been chosen on the basis of their differential endorsement by males and females or on the basis of the fact that males and females earn significantly different scores on those items. The implication of using this method to select sex-role-related items is that the items so selected will be different items than would have been selected on the basis of their differential endorsement by males and females.

The Bem Sex-Role Inventory (BSRI), the recently developed measure for psychological androgyny, was administered to 344 middle-Tennessee high school and university students. The BSRI's reliability coefficients and mean scores were very similar to those reported earlier for California junior college and university students, respectively. The present scoring patterns for the BSRI remained unchanged with the introduction of the four "familial context" variables of sex of Ss' siblings, sex of Ss' nearest-in-age sibling, parent whom the Ss considered emotionally warmest, and parent whom the Ss would most prefer to be like. Contrary to Bem's original findings, the present results with the BSRI suggested that Ss' responses to the measure may be affected by the social desirability phenomenon. Moreover, scores on the BSRI did not correlate consistently or highly with those presently obtained with a symbolic sex-role measure and a verbal sex-role scale. This lack of construct validity has been reported previously in at least two other studies. Though apparently reliable, the validity of the BSRI remains problematic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]