The Adaptive Gender: Effects of Social Conformity on Gender Self-Perception

The cultural boundaries of gender have been growing somewhat ambiguously for decades, gaining widespread coverage from pop-stars declining to appoint their own gender to national debate surrounding gender-neutral bathrooms. This experiment explored how self-evaluations of gender using the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) can be influenced by peer experiences and campus trends. Participants were either presented with survey data of acceptance rates regarding gender-ambiguous situations (scenarios of people that do not identify with a specific gender) or unexposed to additional information in the control condition. Participants in the experimental condition received the gender-fluid statistics in one of two forms of deception: Either (a) results of an on-campus survey, or (b) results of peers completing the experiment with the participant; In other words, these participants were led to believe their peers held a true level of comfortability with gender fluidity based upon previously established rates of acceptance. Participants were asked to complete the BSRI short-form and asked about their gender safety and inclusion on campus. Results showed no significant difference in BSRI scores or gender safety and inclusion between the control and the manipulated (campus and peer) conditions. Throughout all conditions, participants showed high levels of androgyny suggesting the socially constructed definitions of masculinity and femininity may not be as dichotomous today as they used to be as well as the possibility social forces of campus culture and peer opinion had no direct effect on participant self-perception.