- 期刊
- OpenAccess
Perceived Parental Rearing and Conflict Management: Sex Differences and Sex Roles
並列摘要
Conflict management is an interdisciplinary topic in psychology. Scientific research mostly focuses on variables connected to assertive and cooperative behavior, while applied fields emphasize education and techniques of above mentioned behaviors. Several studies reported on biological sex, sex roles and perceived parental rearing to having an effect on individual differences in conflict management strategies. The aim of the study was to reveal how biological sex, sex roles and perceived parenting effected preferred conflict management strategies. We measured sex roles with BSRI, and perceived parental rearing behavior with EMBU and conflict management strategies with the Thomas‐Kilman Instrument. The study included sample consisting of 125 university students in which there are 65 female and 60 male, respectively. In addition, the data were statistically analyzed. We found that (1) while dimensions of conflict management (i.e. assertiveness and cooperativeness) were independent of biological sex, more feminine individuals were more cooperative and more masculine individuals were more assertive. (2) Childhood socialization effected the formation of sex roles and conflict management style as well: subjects reporting higher parental rejection were more masculine and more assertive, while individuals reporting higher parental emotional warmth were more feminine and more cooperative. (3) When running partial correlation between dimensions of conflict management and perceived parental rearing controlled for sex roles, correlations disappeared. Because previous studies showed correlation between sex role identity and prenatal gonadal hormones (as indicated by 2D:4D digit ratio), we explain our results from a biopsychological perspective. In this article, we present two alternative models that account for the connection between masculine sex role induced by higher levels of testosterone: assertive conflict management and rejecting, cold parental caregiving.