Thesis (Ph. D.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1993. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 87-94). Also available via the Internet.

The purpose of the present study was to determine the relationship between masculine traits in males and the characteristic patterns of emotional responses which affect social adjustment.

The problem of this study was to determine if the sex role identification, age, education, and income of employed married couples were related to their perception of who should and does perform household tasks. The forty-five couples were volunteers from organizations for working women. Each spouse completed a Bem Sex Role Inventory and a Household Task Inventory. Using Chi-square and t-tests no significant differences were found between sex role identification, education level, income level, and the sharing of household tasks. When a Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient was used, age and sharing of household tasks were found to have an inverse relationship with the young sharing more tasks. The study concluded that couples expect household tasks to be shared but females tend to perform the traditional feminine tasks and males the traditional masculine tasks.

Previous research demonstrates expectations predict actual performance. These studies evaluated the influence of other variables, specifically task sex orientation, biological gender, and sex-role identification, on performance expectancies. Two studies investigated sex differences in performance expectancies: Study 1 used a task normatively favoring males; Study 2 used a task normatively unbiased by gender. Subjects were 207 undergraduates, approximately equal numbers of males and females. Experimenter sex was controlled. Performance expectancies were influenced by interactions of task sex orientation with biological gender and task sex orientation with sex-role identification, but these variables became secondary to personal experience. These findings were interpreted as having implications on initial choice and consequent involvement in novel activities and situations.

Theories and research in the field of disparaging humor were reviewed, and sexist humor was studied as representative of this field. The relationships of sex-role identification, self-esteem, and attitudes toward women to the judgement of humor in sexist material were investigated. The Scale of Sexist Humor, developed for this investigation, utilized a set of 50 cartoons and jokes devised to approximate overlapping standard curves on the dimensions of sexist content and humor. Subjects were 57 males and 70 female undergraduate students. Each subject performed a forced Q^-sort of the cartoons and jokes, thereby rating them on a five-point scale of funniness, then completed instruments designed to evaluate sex-role identification (the Personal Attributes Questionnaire), self-esteem (The Texas Social Behavior Inventory), and attitudes toward women (the Attitudes Toward Women Scale), A demographic information sheet was also obtained from each subject to utilize in ancillary analysis.