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Gender Stereotypes for Paranoid, Antisocial, Compulsive, Dependent, and Histrionic PD


Abstract

To assess similarity between gender-role stereotypes and the personality disorder prototypes, university students (31 women and 13 men) were asked to assign gender to six descriptions of DSM-III—R personality disorders. Significant agreement was found in gender assignment for five of the six descriptions. Descriptions of the paranoid, antisocial, and compulsive personality disorders were viewed as male, and descriptions of the dependent and histrionic personality disorders were viewed as female. The description of schizoid personality disorder was not significantly gender-typed.


Rienzi, B. M., & Scrams, D. J. (1991). Gender Stereotypes for Paranoid, Antisocial, Compulsive, Dependent, and Histrionic Personality Disorders. Psychological Reports, 69(3), 976–978. https://doi.org/10.2466/pr0.1991.69.3.976

 

Key Points


"Many diagnoses of personality disorder have distinct gender distributions, but these distributions may represent underlying gender-specific role expectations and role stereotypes rather than clinicians' bias. Gender bias has been reported in the assignment of personality disorders (Kaplan, 1983; Kass, Spitzer, & Williams, 1983; Reich, 1987), in the labeling process (Ford & Widiger, 1989), and in gender-weighting in the diagnostic criteria of personality disorders (Sprock, Blashfield, & Smith, 1990)."


"Landrine (1989) suggests that a specific personality disorder might be differentially assigned to the genders when the diagnostic description is con- sistent with gender-role stereotypes. Using this hypothesis involving social role, one would predict that personality disorders are likely to be gender-assigned not only by trained clinicians but also by subjects untrained in clinical diagnosis."

 

Note from PDV!: Most more modern studies on gender bias in personality disorders seems to focus on the functionality and levels of impairment, finding that there's nothing to see here because the traits would be equally troublesome in any gender. The discussion of gender roles and potential impact of socialisation is welcome.

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