Femininity reformulated: The Big Five and gender role.

Abstract

Four hundred-three undergraduate students, 121 men and 253 women, participated in the investigation of the relationship of sex role orientation to the Big Five personality domains. Femininity, as measured by the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) (Bem, 1974), was expanded by the addition of eighteen items comprising three dimensions, hypothesized by the authors, to represent dimensions of femininity which are not included on the BSRI, (Bem, 1974) encompassing the notions of empathy and relationship competence.

The Big Five Personality domains, Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Conscientiousness, and Agreeableness, were assessed with the NEO Personality Inventory-Revised (NEO-PI-R) (Costa & McCrae, 1992). An all-possible-subsets multiple regression was used to derive the best predictive model for each gender role factor. The resulting models utilize well established personality domains to untangle the complex relationships between gender role orientation and personality. The results support the addition of items to the BSRI (Bem, 1974) and underscore the more adaptive aspects of Femininity. Agreeableness, or the capacity to be fundamentally altruistic and helpful was most predictive of the factors associated with Femininity.

The original sixty BSRI (Bem, 1974) items, and the eighteen experimental items were then subjected to separate exploratory factor analyses in order to examine the relationships of the gender role dimensions to the Big Five personality domains. Principal components analysis with varimax rotation produced a five factor solution on the original BSRI (Bem, 1974) items. Three factors emerged from principal components analysis with oblique rotation of the experimental items.