BIOLOGICAL SEX, SEX-ROLE ORIENTATION, MASCULINE SEX-ROLE STRESS, DISSIMULATION AND SELF-REPORTED FEARS

Given meta-analytic findings showing females to be generally more fear ful than males on multi-dimensional self-report measures of fear, an e mpirical attempt was made to examine whether this outcome could be exp lained by psychological factors such as sex role orientation and mascu line sex role stress. In addition, the bearing of dissimulation tenden cies on findings relating self-reported fears to biological sex, sex r oles, and masculine sex role stress was also addressed. Using a non-cl inical sample of volunteers from Britain, it was observed with simple correlational analyses that females were more fearful than males on So cial, Agoraphobic, Harmless animals and Sexual and aggressive scenes f ears, even after holding constant the combined influences of Masculini ty and Masculine sex role stress. The sex difference in Bodily injury, death and illness fears emerged only after adjusting for the joint in fluences of Masculinity and Masculine sex role stress. Applying hierar chical multiple regression analysis with interaction terms, it was fou nd that (a) Biological sex contributed significantly in increasing the proportion of variance accounted for in scores on Social, Agoraphobic , Harmless animals and Sexual and aggressive scenes fears, after accou nting for the joint influences of Masculinity (M), Femininity (F), Mas culine sex role stress (MGRS), Dissimulation (Lie) and other potential ly confounding factors; (b) following the simultaneous adjustment for the influences of the same set of potentially confounding factors (thu s including M, F, MGRS, and Lie scores), Biological sex emerged as a c onsistent predictor of all five types of fears considered, with, as hy pothesized, being female predicting high fear scores; (c) the same app lied to the predictive ability of Masculine sex role stress (with Biol ogical sex now included as a covariate), with, as predicted, higher st ress being predictive of higher fear levels; (d) again, taking into ac count potentially confounding factors, Masculinity predicted all types of fears considered, except Fears of sexual and aggressive scenes, wi th, as anticipated, high Masculinity predicting low levels of fear, wh ereas, contrary to expectations, Femininity and Dissimulation did not succeed in predicting fear scores of any type; (e) few combinations of independent variables (involving Biological sex, M, F, MGRS and Lie) predicted fear scores significantly following adjustment for potential confounds, the significant predictors being MGRS x Biological sex (in relation to Social fears), Lie x Biological sex (Fears of bodily inju ry, death and illness) and M x F (Harmless animals fears) with respect ive betas of -. 14, .17 and .22 (.01 less-than-or-equal-to P less-than -or-equal-to .05); (f) while Biological sex. Masculinity and Masculine sex role stress were all factors predicting the magnitude of self-rep orted fears, their relative contributions varied according to the fear dimension. Five major hypotheses about the relationship between sex r oles and mental and physical health have been advanced in the literatu re: the traditional hypothesis, the balance theory of androgyny, the m ain effects androgyny hypothesis, the emergent properties theory of an drogyny, and the Masculinity hypothesis (cf. K. Davidson-Katz (1991). Gender roles and health. In C. R. Snyder & D. R. Forsyth (Eds.), Handb ook of Social and Clinical Psychology: The Health Perspective. New Yor k: Pergamon). The present findings supported only the Masculinity theo ry across four out of five fear dimensions (all but the Sexual and agg ressive scenes component). The implications of the findings and sugges tions for new research directions are discussed.