Record: 1

Title:
The his and hers of prosocial behavior: An examination of the social psychology of
gender.
Authors:
Eagly, Alice H., Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, US, eagly@northwestern.edu
Address:
Eagly, Alice H., Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, 2029 Sheridan
Road, Evanston, IL, US, 60208, eagly@northwestern.edu
Source:
American Psychologist, Vol 64(8), Nov, 2009. pp. 644-658
Publisher:
US: American Psychological Association
ISSN:
0003-066X (Print)
1935-990X (Electronic)
Language:
English
Keywords:
prosocial behavior; gender role beliefs
Abstract:
Prosocial behavior consists of behaviors regarded as beneficial to others, including
helping, sharing, comforting, guiding, rescuing, and defending others. Although women
and men are similar in engaging in extensive prosocial behavior, they are different in
their emphasis on particular classes of these behaviors. The specialty of women is
prosocial behaviors that are more communal and relational, and that of men is
behaviors that are more agentic and collectively oriented as well as strength intensive.
These sex differences, which appear in research in various settings, match widely
shared gender role beliefs. The origins of these beliefs lie in the division of labor,
which reflects a biosocial interaction between male and female physical attributes and
the social structure. The effects of gender roles on behavior are mediated by hormonal
processes, social expectations, and individual dispositions. (PsycINFO Database
Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved) (from the journal abstract)
Subjects:
*Prosocial Behavior; *Sex Role Attitudes; Human Sex Differences; Sex Roles
Classification:
Social Psychology (3000)
Population:
Human (10)
Male (30)
Female (40)
Conference:
American Psychological Association annual convention, 117th, Aug, 2009, Toronto,
ON, Canada
Format Availablability:
Electronic; Print
Format Covered:
 Electronic
Publication Type:
Journal; Peer Reviewed Journal
Document Type:
Journal Article
Release Date:
20091109
Digital Object Identifier:
10.1037/0003-066X.64.8.644
PsycINFO AN:
2009-19983-007
Accession Number:
amp-64-8-644
Number of Citations in Source:
134
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The His and Hers of Prosocial Behavior : An

Examination of the Social Psychology of
Gender
By: Alice H. Eagly
Northwestern University
Acknowledgement: Author’s Note

Wendy Wood, Amanda Diekman, Paul Eastwick, Anne Koenig, and Seymour Becker provided
helpful comments on a draft of this article.
Note: Editor’s Note

Alice H. Eagly received the Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions. Award winners
are invited to deliver an award address at the APA’s annual convention. A version of this
award address was delivered at the 117th annual meeting, held August 6–9, 2009, in
Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Articles based on award addresses are reviewed, but they differ
from unsolicited articles in that they are expressions of the winners’ reflections on their
work and their views of the field.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to: Alice H. Eagly,
Department of Psychology, 2029 Sheridan Road, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208
Electronic Mail may be sent to: eagly@northwestern.edu.
Gender fascinates the public and scientists alike, inspiring continuing debate about how nature
and nurture intertwine in influencing female and male behavior. The fact that the keyword
gender garnered 24,169 hits in 2000–2008 in the PsycINFO database shows the thriving
state of scholarship on gender. These publications contain an abundance of information about
male–female similarities and differences. Although the aggregation of large amounts of such
information in meta-analyses or other summaries is useful, such approaches can also be
limiting. If the puzzles of gender are to be solved, the integration of male–female
comparisons must be coordinated with effective theory. In its absence, variation in the
direction and magnitude of these differences and similarities can appear to be random and can
even give the impression that gender has little or no effect on behavior. Yet, the experiences
and observations of everyday life suggest that gender remains a multifaceted system of
influences on personal choices, social interaction, and societal institutions. In this article, I
examine how these influences operate in one domain of human behavior.
This domain is prosocial behavior, which consists of behaviors consensually regarded as
beneficial to others. It includes actions such as helping, sharing, comforting, guiding, rescuing,
and defending ( Batson, 1998; Dovidio, Piliavin, Schroeder, & Penner, 2006). Much prosocial
behavior is directed to helping individuals, but it can be directed as well to supporting a
collective, such as a group, organization, or nation. Although such actions are not necessarily
altruistic in the sense of being devoid of self-oriented motivation, they deliver help to others.
A simple first question might be whether there is a more helpful sex. If armchair analysis
answers this question, one’s first thoughts, be they implicit or explicit, might well reflect
gender stereotypes that ascribe kindness and concern with others more to women than to men
(e.g., Diekman & Goodfriend, 2006; Williams & Best, 1990). Yet, probing for second thoughts
should bring to mind examples of helpful men. What about heroic men who take enormous
risks for others and warriors who protect their tribe or nation from external assault? Given
these disparate images, a first step toward understanding the prosocial behavior of women and
men involves an examination of gender roles. Subsequent steps involve explaining the origins
of gender roles and the processes by which they affect behavior.
Gender Roles as a Tool for Understanding Prosocial Behavior
Elementary insights about social behavior follow from scrutiny of a society’s gender
roles , which are the shared beliefs that apply to individuals on the basis of their socially
identified sex (Eagly, 1987 ). Gender role beliefs are both descriptive and prescriptive in that
they indicate what men and women usually do and what they should do. The descriptive aspect
of gender roles, or stereotypes , tells people what is typical for their sex. Especially if a
situation is ambiguous or confusing, people tend to enact sex-typical behaviors. The
prescriptive aspect of gender roles tells people what is considered admirable for their sex in
their cultural context. People may enact these desirable behaviors to gain social approval or
bolster their own esteem. To varying extents, gender role beliefs are embedded both in
others’ expectations, thereby acting as social norms, and in individuals’ internalized
gender identities, thereby acting as personal dispositions (Wood & Eagly, 2009 , Wood &
Eagly, in press ). These culturally shared beliefs provide a general framework for
understanding why male and female behavior can be different or similar, depending on the
behavior and its circumstances.
Gender role beliefs imply different prosocial behaviors for women and men. Following
concepts introduced by Bakan (1966) , most beliefs about men and women can be summarized
in two dimensions, which are most often labeled communion , or connection with others, and
agency , or self-assertion. Women, more than men, are thought to be communal—that is,
friendly, unselfish, concerned with others, and emotionally expressive. Men, more than
women, are thought to be agentic—that is, masterful, assertive, competitive, and dominant
(e.g., Newport, 2001 ; Spence & Buckner, 2000 ). Studies of gender stereotypes have
consistently found that their content is heavily saturated with communion and agency, with
more minor themes pertaining to other qualities (e.g., Kite, Deaux, & Haines, 2007 ). This
predominance of communion and agency is widespread in world cultures (Williams & Best,
1990 ). To understand the relevance of these beliefs for prosocial behavior, it is helpful to
consider their implications for the types of social bonds that people form.
Social bonds can take a relational form by linking people to particular others in close
relationships or a collective form by linking people to groups and organizations (Brewer &
Gardner, 1996 ). This distinction between relational and collective interdependence
corresponds to the communal and agentic dimensions of gender stereotypes (Gardner &
Gabriel, 2004 ). By ascribing warm, sympathetic, and kind qualities to women, gender role
beliefs imply that women have a propensity for bonding with others in close, dyadic
relationships. Expressive, affectionate qualities facilitate friendships, romantic relationships,
and family relationships and convey cooperative interdependence with others (Fiske, Cuddy,
Glick, & Xu, 2002 ).
In contrast, by ascribing assertive, ambitious, and competitive qualities to men, gender role
beliefs imply a social context in which people differ in status and men strive to improve their
hierarchical position (Baumeister & Sommer, 1997 ; Gardner & Gabriel, 2004 ). Such qualities
are consistent with men’s directing of much of their prosocial behavior to collectives
(Gilmore, 1990 ). Although independence is also one of the agentic qualities commonly
ascribed to men, demonstrating a degree of independence in a group setting can produce
influence (Moscovici & Nemeth, 1974 ; Shackelford, Wood, & Worchel, 1996 ) and
potentially provide an opportunity for leadership (Eagly, Wood, & Fishbaugh, 1981 ). In
general, superior social status is conveyed by the agentic attributes ascribed to men, such as
being dominant and masterful (Ridgeway & Bourg, 2004 ), even though these attributes are not
as favorably evaluated as the communal attributes ascribed to women (Eagly & Mladinic, 1994
; Langford & MacKinnon, 2000 ).
In the next section of this article I classify prosocial behaviors according to their agentic or
communal emphasis. A gender role analysis suggests that prosocial behaviors are more
common in women to the extent that these behaviors have primarily a communal focus and
more common in men to the extent that they have primarily an agentic focus. A corollary of
this prediction is that prosocial behaviors are more common in women if they have a relational
emphasis (e.g., supporting or caring for an individual). A second corollary is that prosocial
behaviors are more common in men if they have a collective emphasis, facilitate gaining status,
or imply higher status. Yet another consideration is that some differences in male and female
behavior reflect sex differences in physical size and strength. Women’s lesser physical
prowess can act as a deterrent to their participation in highly strength-intensive activities,
which include some prosocial behaviors (Wood & Eagly, 2002 , Wood & Eagly, in press ).
These predictions should be understood as implying not dichotomous male–female
differences but general trends (or main effects of participant sex) that emerge across situational
and other individual factors that also affect prosocial behavior and that can moderate or
compete with the effects of gender roles. The logic of prediction for gender effects is thus
similar to that for other personal characteristics (see Leary & Hoyle, 2009 ). In particular,
gender roles influence behavior in conjunction with many other roles, including those
associated with other group memberships (e.g., ethnicity, religion) and specific obligations
(e.g., family, occupation).
Despite the myriad of influences on social behaviors, gender roles are important, acting in part
through others’ expectations and broader social norms. These external pressures range
from subtle (e.g., stereotype threat) to obvious (e.g., laws or norms forbidding one sex access
to certain roles or opportunities). Gender roles also act through individuals’ personal
identification with their gender and are intertwined with hormonal processes that facilitate
masculine and feminine behavior (Wood & Eagly, 2009 ). In addition, all behaviors are
contextually situated, and this context can influence the salience of gender norms and the
accessibility of gender identities (e.g., Deaux & Major, 1987 ; Piliavin & Unger, 1985 ).
A convenient organization of trends in agentic and communal prosocial behavior classifies
findings by their social context: interactions with strangers, interactions in close relationships,
interactions in workplaces, and interactions in other social settings. Meta-analyses are
informative, as are archival data and individual field and laboratory studies. Invoking these
rich sources of data, in the next section I report male–female differences and similarities,
organized by gender role beliefs and social context. In a subsequent section (The Origin and
Consequences of Gender Roles), I consider the causal relations in which these beliefs and
behaviors are embedded.
Male–female comparisons from meta-analyses appear in this article as averaged findings in
the d metric, defined as the difference between the male and female mean values divided by
the pooled standard deviation (see Borenstein, Hedges, Higgins, & Rothstein, 2009 ). Effect
sizes from single studies, which are less reliable, are omitted. In contemplating the effect sizes,
readers should keep in mind that the cumulative impact of small effects can be considerable.
This insight was compellingly explained by Abelson (1985 , p. 133), who concluded that
“small variance contributions of independent variables in single-shot studies grossly
understate the variance contribution in the long run” (see also Epstein, 1980 ; Rosenthal,
1990 ). If studies’ measures are not “single-shot” but are appropriately aggregated
across multiple observations of behaviors, effect magnitudes are generally larger.
Given these considerations, the most relevant baseline for interpreting effect magnitudes for
prosocial behavior incorporates the methodological characteristics of its typical research
paradigms. In this domain, single-shot studies are common, depressing effect magnitudes. It is
therefore not surprising that averaging the effects from all available meta-analyses of prosocial
behaviors in social psychology, regardless of hypothesis, yielded a d of only 0.37 (Richard,
Bond, & Stokes-Zoota, 2003 ).
Research Comparing Female and Male Prosocial Behavior
Interactions With Strangers
Helping strangers, a domain that includes many agentic behaviors, became a focus of social
psychological research in the wake of Darley and Latané’s (1968) research addressing
the failure of bystanders to intervene in the infamous Kitty Genovese murder. Social
psychologists then carried out numerous field and laboratory experiments on helping behavior
(see Batson, 1998; Dovidio et al., 2006). Many of these researchers, like Darley and Latané,
studied bystander interventions in emergency situations in which another person appeared to be
distressed or endangered (e.g., helping a man who fell in the subway). Other types of helping
that attracted experimentation included assistance in response to requests (e.g., giving someone
money for the subway) as well as polite behaviors (e.g., helping someone pick up dropped
packages).
A meta-analysis of these experiments revealed that in general men helped more than women
( d = 0.34, Eagly & Crowley, 1986; see Johnson et al., 1989, for cross-cultural replication with
a self-report questionnaire). Although all of the behaviors assessed in these experiments
required some attentiveness to the needs of others, only a portion required taking the initiative,
thus calling on the assertive qualities central to the male gender role. Therefore, the studies
were classified by whether a need merely presented itself to bystanders (e.g., through
observation that someone was ill or distressed) or an explicit request to help was directed to
them (e.g., an appeal for a charity donation). When a need is merely present, helpers assert
themselves to deliver aid, whereas when a request is made, helpers acquiesce to someone
else’s wishes. A finding consistent with the agentic theme of the male gender role was that
men were especially more helpful than women when helpers had to take the initiative ( d =
0.55) than when helpers had to acquiesce to a request ( d = 0.07).
Many of these helping behaviors drew on agency’s implications for status—that is, the
common, albeit eroding, expectation that men are dominant over women. In a prosocial
context, male dominance implies directing benevolent protectiveness and politeness toward
women. Men are expected not only to protect women from dangers but to deliver acts of
courtesy such as helping them put on their coats. With cultural roots in medieval codes of
chivalry, such norms have survived in common paternalistic beliefs and behaviors ( Glick &
Fiske, 2001).
Aspects of the helping behavior findings suggest male chivalry. Specifically, in experiments
that had divided data by the sex of the person receiving aid, men helped more than women for
female recipients of help ( d = 0.27); this effect slightly reversed for male recipients ( d =
−0.08, Eagly & Crowley, 1986). In a finding consistent with the idea that men’s helping
is driven in part by social norms that can be made salient by others’ presence, another
analysis showed that the tendency for men to help more than women was substantial when the
potential helpers were in the presence of onlookers ( d = 0.74) but not when they were the only
bystander ( d = −0.02).
Some prosocial behaviors, often labeled heroic, require that the helper take considerable
personal risk to aid another person ( Becker & Eagly, 2004). Heroic acts of rescuing others in
emergencies are consistent with the male gender role in that they are highly agentic in their
requirement for quick and decisive intervention that often places the rescuer’s own life at
risk. Many such actions also advantage men’s greater size and strength, as suggested by the
larger physical size of interveners than of noninterveners in crimes and emergencies ( Huston,
Ruggiero, Conner, & Geis, 1981).
Relevant archival data come from the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission (2009), which
recognizes individuals who voluntarily risk their own lives while saving or attempting to save
the life of another person. People whose job roles or parental responsibilities require acts of
rescuing are ineligible for this recognition. Men have received the great majority of these
heroism awards (91% in 1904–2008), and there is no evidence of systematic change in this
distribution over the years (e.g., 92% men in 2004–2008; W. F. Rutkowsky, Executive
Director of the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission, personal communication, May 27, 2009).
This disproportion is very unlikely to reflect a bias against honoring eligible women (see
Becker & Eagly, 2004). Replication of this pattern has emerged from the Canadian
government’s awarding of a similar Medal of Bravery; 87% of these awards in
2004–2008 have honored men ( Governor General of Canada, 2009). In addition, men have
strongly predominated in contemporary newspaper accounts of heroic interventions ( Lyons,
2005) and among people recognized for intervening in dangerous criminal events such as
muggings and bank holdups (e.g., Huston et al., 1981). Also, in the social psychological
helping experiments, to the extent that a behavior was perceived as more dangerous by women
than men (e.g., letting a stranger into your house to use the phone), it yielded greater male
advantage in helping ( Eagly & Crowley, 1986).
Interactions in Close Relationships
In close relationships, much prosocial behavior has a communal emphasis in that it involves
extending care, nurturing, helping, and sympathy to individuals. Among people bound to
others through friendship and family roles, women generally provide more sensitive emotional
support than do men. For example, on the basis of their narrative review, Burleson and Kunkel
(2006, p. 150) concluded that
women are more likely than men to provide emotional support to others, to seek emotional
support from others, to focus on emotions while providing support, and to use HPC [highly
person-centered] comforting messages in the effort to relieve distress… . the observed gender
differences in behavior are comparatively substantial, often accounting for more than 10% of
the variance in the examined dependent variables.
These conclusions echoed Cross and Madson’s (1997) narrative review claiming that
women manifest greater awareness and sensitivity concerning emotions and their importance
in friendships. As a result of these behaviors, both men and women generally prefer to obtain
emotional support from women ( Burleson & Kunkel, 2006). For example, among students
asked whether they would likely seek emotional support from a friend of their own or the other
sex, a preference for a woman emerged in 71% of the men and 76% of the women ( Kunkel &
Burleson, 1999). These patterns in adult behavior are preceded by analogous trends in
childhood and adolescent friendships: Girls are more likely than boys to engage in prosocial
interactions emphasizing helping, self-disclosure, and empathy (e.g., Rose & Asher, 2004; see
review by Rose & Rudolph, 2006, Tables 1 and 2).
Similar patterns of social interaction exist in marital relationships (e.g., Cutrona, 1996),
especially in women’s provision of emotional support to their spouses when it is most
needed ( Neff & Karney, 2005). Prosocial behavior in families extends beyond emotional
support to broader patterns of caring (see Cancian & Oliker, 2000). Despite some weakening of
the traditional family division of labor in recent decades, in U.S. households with children
present, women spend approximately twice as much time as men in caring for and helping
household members ( U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2008a). Women also comprise
approximately 75% of caregivers for older family members and friends and 62% of
grandparents living with and caring for grandchildren ( U.S. Health Resources and Services
Administration, 2005). Men, more often than women, are the main family provider, thereby
carrying out collectively oriented prosocial behavior. In U.S. households with children present,
men spend almost twice as much time as women in their employment activities ( U.S. Bureau
of Labor Statistics, 2008a).
Providing additional insight into familial prosocial behavior are excellent records that exist for
a rare yet highly beneficial act: living kidney donation, which occurs mainly between
genetically related persons. In this context, the medical goal of maximizing donor–recipient
biological compatibility should foster gender similarity in donations. Nevertheless, living
kidney donors are somewhat more likely to be female in the United States (58%), as are living
donors of all organs (58%, with a gradually rising female trend from 1988 to the present, U.S.
Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, 2009; see Biller-Andorno, 2002, for similar
German data). In addition, donations between unrelated individuals are often between spouses,
and wife-to-husband transfers are considerably more common than husband-to-wife transfers
( Becker & Eagly, 2004). Consistent with these data and the communal theme of the female
gender role is the finding that female donors, more than male donors, viewed themselves as
having an obligation to family members that extended to this physical form of caring
( Simmons, Klein, & Simmons, 1977). These kidney donation findings are consistent as well
with the already noted family division of labor between women’s caring and service
activities and men’s wage earning.
Interactions in Workplaces
Gender often marks prosocial workplace behaviors that go beyond what people are required to
do on the job. Because formal job descriptions apply equally to women and men in the same
job, they reduce sex differences in the behaviors bound by such requirements. Therefore, of
special interest are organizational citizenship behaviors, which consist of discretionary acts
that are not explicitly recognized by the formal reward system and that promote the functioning
of the organization ( Organ, 1988). Some of these behaviors are relationally prosocial in
extending help to specific individuals (e.g., aiding a colleague with an excessive workload). In
contrast, others of these behaviors, sometimes labeled civic virtue, demonstrate extra
commitment to the employing organization and may yield gains in status (e.g., attending
meetings that are not mandatory).
Research assessing people’s estimates of organizational citizenship behaviors suggests
little overall difference between women and men in these behaviors (e.g., Organ & Ryan,
1995). However, within this domain, women, more than men, appear to engage in relationally
prosocial citizenship behaviors (e.g., Farrell & Finkelstein, 2007; Heilman & Chen, 2005;
Kidder, 2002). These findings cohere with meta-analytic research on managerial style showing
that female managers, more than male managers, deliver individualized consideration
behaviors, which focus on developing and mentoring subordinates and attending to their
individual needs (e.g., d = 0.19, Eagly, Johannesen-Schmidt, & van Engen, 2003). Less
consistently, men, more than women, appear to engage in the civic virtue behaviors that focus
on the organization itself (e.g., Farrell & Finkelstein, 2007; Heilman & Chen, 2005; Kidder,
2002).
Providing additional evidence of women’s relational workplace behavior, Moskowitz, Suh,
and Desaulniers (1994, with a Canadian sample) found that women, regardless of their job
status, reported more communal behaviors, such as friendly, unselfish, and expressive acts,
than did men, especially when interacting with other women. Similarly, a meta-analysis of
physicians’ behavior established that women and men physicians gave equivalent medical
information but that women physicians displayed more communal behaviors, including more
positive talk, psychosocial counseling, emotion-focused talk, and nodding and smiling (e.g., ds
= 0.36 for positive talk and 0.22 for psychosocial counseling, Roter, Hall, & Aoki, 2002).
Many occupational roles thus appear to allow relational prosocial behavior that goes beyond
job requirements (see also Fletcher, 1999).
Also relevant to prosocial behavior are occupational roles themselves, some of which are
defined primarily by role occupants’ activities of extending help, support, or protection to
individuals or collectives (see Cancian & Oliker, 2000). Many such roles remain dominated by
one sex, which is consistent with the moderate overall sex segregation of the U.S. labor force
( Tomaskovic-Devey et al., 2006). As general trends, the distributions of women and men into
occupations are correlated with gender stereotypes, with male-dominated occupations regarded
as agentically demanding and female-dominated occupations regarded as communally
demanding ( Cejka & Eagly, 1999). Women are relatively rare in occupations such as
firefighter (5%), police officer (15%), and soldier (14%), which are designed to protect the
community and society ( U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2009; U.S. Department of Defense,
2009). In contrast, women especially predominate in occupations such as preschool and
kindergarten teacher (98%), social worker (79%), and registered nurse (92%), which
emphasize caring for individuals ( England, Budig, & Folbre, 2002; U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics, 2009).
Interactions in Other Social Settings
Social scientists have studied prosocial behavior in other settings that encompass varied social
relationships and span a wide range of behaviors. One example is the rescuing of Jews in the
occupied countries of Europe during World War II, which involved risky acts that could be
punished by death or confinement in concentration camps ( Becker & Eagly, 2004). Some
people rescued coworkers or friends, but others rescued strangers (e.g., M. Gilbert, 2003;
Oliner & Oliner, 1988). Rescuers sometimes took the initiative to help Jews and other times
responded to appeals from them. Some gave short-term help, but many entered into longer
term caring relationships by hiding Jews, often within their own dwellings. Holocaust rescuing
thus encompassed communal and agentic behaviors, often involving complex sequences of
actions. Consistent with this variability is the finding from an analysis of the Yad Vashem
archive of data on non-Jews honored for rescuing Jews that women and men participated
approximately equally, although when married couples were excluded from the analysis,
slightly more women were found to have participated ( Becker & Eagly, 2004).
Community volunteering, which entails giving time and services to benefit another person,
group, or organization, also encompasses varied communal and agentic behaviors as well as
differing types of social relationships ( Wilson, 2000). In the United States, slightly more
women than men volunteer (e.g., 29% of women and 23% of men, U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics, 2008b). Similarly, women have received 56% of the Caring Canadian Awards (for
2004–2008) given by the Canadian government for exceptional unpaid volunteer activity in
the form of caring for individuals, families, or groups or supporting community service or
humanitarian causes ( Governor General of Canada, 2009). Also, women are somewhat
overrepresented as Peace Corp applicants and volunteers and as U.S. medical volunteers who
serve in troubled foreign settings (see Becker & Eagly, 2004).
Categorizations of volunteer activities in available data do not allow a sharp division into
agentic and communal behaviors. Nonetheless, volunteer work is moderately segregated by
sex, especially in activities related to children, youth, and schools, a finding consistent with
sociological research ( Rotolo & Wilson, 2007). Specifically, female volunteers, more than
male volunteers, perform care work related to education or youth-oriented or health services
(e.g., Rotolo & Wilson, 2007; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2008b). In addition, men are
disproportionally represented in leadership roles and as coaches of sports teams, and women in
activities pertaining to the provision and preparation of food.
Gender Roles as Descriptions of Similarity and Difference
This review reveals that neither sex deserves recognition for delivering the majority of
prosocial behavior. Although both women and men deliver extensive help to others, they
specialize to some extent in different types of behavior. In general, these patterns are consistent
with societal gender roles, which can act both as social pressures external to individuals and as
internalized gender identities. Thus, the size and direction of sex differences in prosocial
behaviors depend in part on whether a behavior requires mainly agentic attributes associated
with men or communal attributes associated with women. In addition, men’s physical
prowess yields male advantage for those prosocial actions that favor exceptional physical
strength. As overall trends, men tend to extend heroic help in dangerous emergencies,
interventionist help to strangers encountering accidents and difficulties, chivalrous help to
women, and collectivist support that promotes the interests of families, organizations, and
nations at war. Women tend to extend care to children and elderly relatives, sensitive
emotional support to spouses and friends, and relational support to workplace peers and
subordinates.
Has this research answered the question that began this article? That is, are men and women
similar or different in their prosocial behavior? To produce an answer consistent with
Hyde’s (2005) gender similarity hypothesis, psychologists could aggregate prosocial
behaviors across a wide range of more communal and more agentic acts. Also, averaging
across a single domain that mixes agentic and communal behavior yields gender similarity
(e.g., Holocaust rescuing). As I have shown, this apparent similarity emerges mainly with
aggregations across culturally masculine and feminine behaviors. Classifying behaviors
according to communion and agency displays the power of gender to shape social behavior.
The magnitudes of female–male differences are of some interest in relation to the meta-
analytical baseline of 0.37 for all research on prosocial behavior (Richard et al., 2003 ). Some
of the meta-analyzed findings noted in this article approximate or exceed these typical findings
for prosocial behavior (e.g., 0.55 for taking the initiative to help strangers; 0.74 for helping
strangers in the presence of an audience of bystanders, Eagly & Crowley, 1986 ; 0.36 for
physicians’ positive talk, Roter et al., 2002 ). Moreover, some natural setting archives yield
extremely disproportionate sex distributions (e.g., 91% men for Carnegie Award heroism, W.
F. Rutkowsky, executive director of the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission, personal
communication, May 27, 2009; 92% female nurses and 95% male firefighters, U.S. Bureau of
Labor Statistics, 2009 ).
As this article has demonstrated, researchers equipped with the simple tools of culturally
shared gender roles can track this specialization of the sexes in different types of prosocial
behavior. Lacking these tools, research psychologists often fail to recognize these patterns of
sex-related differences (e.g., Ellis, Field, Hershberger, Wersinger, & Geary, 2008 ).
Nevertheless, this identification of differences and similarities does not derive from privileged
scientific knowledge. On the contrary, these insights derive from the descriptive gender roles
that are available to all who share in a given culture. It is therefore not surprising that people
are skilled at predicting the sex differences and similarities established in psychological
research.
There are many demonstrations of this everyday accuracy about female and male behavior. For
prosocial behaviors, students’ estimates of the likelihood that women versus men would
engage in each of the behaviors assessed in the experiments on helping behavior accurately
tracked the sex differences and similarities in these studies (Eagly & Crowley, 1986 ). Even
more impressively, in several research projects, student participants’ beliefs about the
direction and magnitude of sex-related differences in a wide range of personality traits,
abilities, and social behaviors proved to be moderately correlated with the findings of the meta-
analyses that had compared the sexes (Briton & Hall, 1995 ; Hall & Carter, 1999 ; Swim,
1994 ). Also suggesting accuracy is the finding that gender-stereotypic beliefs correlated with
men’s and women’s experiences of the emotions of anger, fear, love, joy, and sadness
(Grossman & Wood, 1993 ). In addition, students successfully estimated the social attitudes
held by men versus women on a variety of topics (Diekman, Eagly, & Kulesa, 2002 ) as well
as the distributions of men and women into occupations (Cejka & Eagly, 1999 ). Finally,
individual differences in the accuracy of students’ beliefs about sex differences and
similarities related positively to measures of their interpersonal sensitivity and self-reported
accuracy of social perception (Hall & Carter, 1999 ).
Research has thus shown that people have generally good descriptive knowledge of female and
male behavior, and this knowledge is more astute for accurate observers of social life. Of
course, this substantial kernel of truth in gender stereotypes holds only for group differences
between men and women. These beliefs are of limited value in predicting the behavior of
individuals, who may or may not be typical of their sex.
The Origins and Consequences of Gender Roles
The match between culturally shared gender roles and actual sex-related differences is
provocative but does not constitute a theory of why men and women differ in their social
behavior to varying extents. Explanation is the specialty of scientists, who articulate principles
and design empirical tests of their validity. An adequate theory must extend beyond these ideas
about male agency and female communion through a nomological net of related constructs that
reach upward to the ultimate origins of male and female behavior and downward to the
processes that instigate behavior. In social role theory, the gender role beliefs introduced at the
beginning of this article exist within a larger nomological net, which I now briefly present (see
Eagly & Wood, in press; Eagly, Wood, & Diekman, 2000; Wood & Eagly, in press).
The gender role beliefs that can order patterns of prosocial behavior are surely not arbitrary
social constructions. Instead, their proximal origins reside in people’s observations of the
everyday activities observed as typical of women and men in a society. In a manner consistent
with the social psychological principle of correspondent inference ( D. T. Gilbert, 1998),
people infer the traits of each sex from observations of their behavior. To the extent that people
observe men and women engaging in a division of labor, they regard them as psychologically
different.
In daily life, people observe more domestic work carried out by women and more paid work
carried out by men ( Bianchi, Robinson, & Milkie, 2006; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics,
2008a). The social behaviors that typify domestic versus wage labor differ in their perceived
communal versus agentic emphasis. People thus regard the domestic role as fostering a
communal pattern of facilitative behaviors in close relationships, including the nurturing of
children. In contrast, people regard employment roles as favoring more agentic behaviors (
Eagly & Steffen, 1984).
Despite this association of employment roles with agency, paid jobs are highly variable in their
demands. Women and men are regarded as possessing the attributes required by the
occupations in which they are most commonly observed ( Koenig & Eagly, 2008). Men’s
roles in the workplace tend to place them in positions of higher status or power vis-Ã -vis the
women with whom they interact, conveying expectations of dominance and control
( Ridgeway & Bourg, 2004). Also, as already noted, the requirements for success in specific
occupations are correlated with perceived agency to the extent that they are male dominated
and with perceived communion to the extent that they are female dominated ( Cejka & Eagly,
1999; Glick, 1991).
If gender role beliefs derive mainly from natural-setting observations of women and men in
their family and occupational roles (see Fiedler & Walther, 2004), it is important to understand
the origins of these differing roles. As Wood and Eagly ( Wood and Eagly 2002, Wood and
Eagly in press) argued in their biosocial origin theory, the ultimate origins of male and female
roles follow mainly from physical differences between the sexes, especially women’s
reproductive activities and men’s greater size and strength, as these factors interact with
the demands of the social structure.
In most societies, considerable biosocial constraint on roles has followed from women’s
reproductive activities, which include the energy-intensive and time-consuming activities of
gestating, nursing, and caring for infants ( Huber, 2007). In traditional societies, women were
bound to long-term lactation for lack of other safe methods to feed infants, and contraceptive
technologies were absent. Pregnancies and infant care made it difficult for women to
participate as much as men did in tasks that demanded speed of locomotion, uninterrupted
activity, extended training, or long-distance travel away from home. In addition, men’s
greater size and strength equipped them for strength-intensive tasks. In foraging, horticultural,
and agricultural societies, these tasks included activities such as hunting large animals,
plowing, and conducting warfare. The resulting division of labor thus reflects the specialization
of each sex in activities for which they are physically better suited in the circumstances
presented by their society. This division of labor in turn typically yields expectations about
female communion and male agency.
How do these expectations produce sex differences in behavior? As Wood and Eagly (in press)
have explained, a trio of biosocial mechanisms enables behavior. Biological processes
involving hormonal changes interact with sociocultural factors of others’ stereotypic
expectations and individuals’ gender identities to yield sex differences and similarities.
Men and women selectively recruit hormones and other neurochemical processes to facilitate
their role behavior. Higher levels of oxytocin (as well as reduced cortisol and testosterone) are
associated with behaviors that produce parental bonding, nurturance, and intimacy ( Campbell,
2008; Taylor et al., 2000). Also important to bonding and affiliation are the neurochemical
processes associated with rewards and learning of affiliation, which supplement or even
supplant the influence of oxytocin ( Broad, Curley, & Keverne, 2006). In contrast, testosterone
is recruited for distinctively masculine roles involving dominance and competition ( Archer,
2006, Archer, in press). These activities would include prosocial behaviors such as rescuing in
emergencies and defending one’s family, tribe, or nation in the face of external threat.
Gender roles also affect behavior through their embedding in other people’s expectations:
Behavior consistent with these roles usually garners approval, and inconsistent behavior is
often negatively sanctioned ( Diekman & Eagly, 2008). Extensive social psychological
research has documented the power of others’ expectations and culturally shared norms to
shape behavior in directions consistent with gender roles. Examples include experiments on the
debilitating effects of stereotype threat on women’s math performance and interest in
leadership and on men’s social sensitivity, emotional intelligence, and affective
information processing (see review by Wood & Eagly, in press). More obvious examples
include discrimination against women and men in relation to occupations and opportunities
inconsistent with their gender roles, which thus fosters sex-segregated occupations ( Heilman
& Eagly, 2008).
Gender role beliefs also influence people’s self-concepts and thereby become gender
identities—individuals’ sense of themselves as female or male (see Wood & Eagly, 2009,
Wood & Eagly, in press). One reason that individuals of the same sex differ in their prosocial
behavior is that they internalize agency or communion (or other aspects of gender) to varying
degrees. Evidence of this internalization is that the self-descriptions of men and women differ
on gender identity measures, with men describing themselves more agentically ( d = 0.60) and
women more communally ( d = 0.73, J. M. Twenge, personal communication, April 1, 2009,
averaged across Twenge, 1997, data sets). Replicating these trends are personality tests that
yield self-reported tendencies toward greater male assertiveness ( d = 0.50, Feingold, 1994; see
also Costa, Terracciano, & McCrae, 2001) and greater female tender-mindedness and
nurturance ( ds = 0.97, 0.75, Feingold, 1994) as well as greater emotional intelligence ( d =
0.28, Whitman, 2009) and empathy and sympathy (for a review of relevant meta-analyses, see
Eisenberg, Fabes, & Spinrad, 2006).
Gender identities exert trait-like influences on behavior by serving as standards against which
people regulate their behavior ( Witt & Wood, in press; Wood, Christensen, Hebl, &
Rothgerber, 1997). These identities, which reflect the segregation of male and female roles, in
turn act to recreate such segregation as men and women select into social roles that offer
opportunities for meeting their self-standards ( Corrigall & Konrad, 2006; Evans & Diekman,
2009).
Gender identities thus join with social pressures deriving from others’ expectations and
with hormonal influences to foster prosocial behavior that tends to be more agentic in men and
communal in women. These influences are facilitated by socialization that enables boys and
girls to recognize and channel hormonal signals, others’ expectations, and their own gender
identities in the service of performing their everyday social roles ( Ruble, Martin, &
Berenbaum, 2006).
Change in Sex Differences in Prosocial Behavior
Are the patterns of female and male prosocial behavior noted in this article likely to disappear
over time? The answer to this question is not simple. According to the causal flows
emphasized in social role theory (Eagly, Wood, & Diekman, 2000 ), even moderately
segregated social roles act through mediational processes to yield sex-related patterns of
prosocial behavior. Individual men’s greater delivery of agentically oriented prosocial
behavior thus follows from the social fact of men’s predominance in social roles perceived
as demanding considerable agency. Yet, it is precisely this aspect of role occupancy that has
shown substantial change. Women have not only increased their labor force participation but
have moved into many white-collar, traditionally male-dominated occupations; they now
constitute 51% of individuals in management, professional, and related occupations. In sharp
contrast, few women have shifted into male-dominated blue-collar occupations; they constitute
only 3% of those in construction and extraction occupations; 4% of those in installation,
maintenance, and repair occupations; and 15% of those in transportation and material moving
occupations (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2009 ; see Webb, 2009 , for cross-national
comparisons). Yet, women have gained broader responsibilities and considerable status by
becoming managers and professionals. As a consequence, they have come to view themselves
as more agentic than in the past (Twenge, 1997 , Twenge, 2001 ; see also Kasen, Chen, Sneed,
Crawford, & Cohen, 2006 ). Even though men are still higher in self-reported agency in many
comparisons (e.g., Lueptow, Garovich-Szabo, & Lueptow, 2001 ), the changes in women’s
roles suggest considerable potential for women to undertake agentically oriented prosocial
behavior.
So far there is less reason to expect changes in communally oriented prosocial behavior.
Female-dominated occupations, generally perceived as communally demanding (Cejka &
Eagly, 1999 ), have not changed much in sex composition (England, 2005 ; U.S. Bureau of
Labor Statistics, 2009 ). Also, women continue to take primary responsibility for child care and
household service work, despite some increase in men’s contributions (Aguiar & Hurst,
2007 ; Bianchi et al., 2006 ). For example, in 2003–2006, even among men and women
filling the same roles as married parents with full-time employment, women devoted 1.5 hours
to child care for every hour devoted by men as well as 1.5 hours to other household service
work for every hour devoted by men (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2008a ). Therefore, it is
not surprising that self-reported communal tendencies in women and men have appeared to be
relatively stable over time (Twenge, 1997 ). Also, this lingering specialization of women in
family caring and service activity hinders gender equality because it tends to reduce many
women’s commitment to continuous, full-time employment. This reduction occurs even
among women in the occupational roles that yield maximum status, authority, and wages (e.g.,
Bertrand, Goldin, & Katz, 2009 ; Herr & Wolfram, 2009 ) and that therefore have the greatest
capacity to promote social expectations of women’s increased agency.
Equal participation in communally demanding roles so far has proven difficult to achieve.
Impediments to men taking on such roles include the lower wages of occupations that
emphasize caring (England, 2006 ; England et al., 2002 ), men’s lack of self-efficacy in
relation to such activity (Giles & Rea, 1999 ), social expectations that men are deficient in
communal skills (Cejka & Eagly, 1999 ), and stigma associated with nontraditional male roles
such as stay-at-home dads (Brescoll & Uhlmann, 2005 ).
There are in addition impediments to women lowering their participation in child care. The
energetic demands of bearing children and the health benefits of some months of breast-
feeding can influence mothers with sufficient financial resources to reduce their commitment
to paid work in favor of child care, given the limited accommodation of workplaces to infant
care. Lowering paid work hours or eliminating them altogether can be congruent with many
mothers’ gender identities and the expectations of others, including husbands and partners.
Hormonal processes also may encourage mothers’ child care, as the cascading hormones of
pregnancy and lactation support women’s tending (Campbell, 2008 ; Feldman, Weller,
Zagoory-Sharon, & Levine, 2007 ; Taylor et al., 2000 ). Yet, fathering can be supported by
parallel hormonal accommodation (Berg & Wynne-Edwards, 2001 , Berg & Wynne-Edwards,
2002 ). In both sexes, caretaking of infants and young children is also supported by
neurochemical mechanisms of reward learning (Broad et al., 2006 ; Depue & Morrone-
Strupinsky, 2005 ). Fathering is additionally facilitated by changing attitudes in the United
States, especially among younger adults (e.g., Milkie, Bianchi, Mattingly, & Robinson, 2002 ).
Considerable potential thus exists for fathers to share child care more fully with mothers and
consequently to deliver more caring, supportive prosocial behavior.
There is less reason to predict much change in men’s greater enactment of highly strength-
intensive behaviors, including heroic rescuing. Even though women may be increasing their
physical prowess through athletics and conditioning, biological sex differences in size and
strength remain substantial (see review by Archer, 2009 ). Nonetheless, many occupations that
were once highly strength intensive (e.g., warrior) are now more reliant on technology that
lessens the importance of strength, thus becoming more accessible to women (e.g., Simon,
2001 ). Still, physical differences foster categorical thinking about men’s greater capacity
for behaviors requiring brief bursts of strength and speed and thereby give men privileged
access to the status-enhancing designation as heroic, at least for the types of actions that yield
Carnegie medals. Yet, heroism is not accorded only to rescuers. Extraordinary caring in close
relationships is sometimes acknowledged as heroic. For example, when a community sample
of respondents named heroes known to them personally, they often listed family guardians who
had consistently cared and provided for family members despite encountering serious
challenges. Women and men were equally represented among these personal heroes (Rankin &
Eagly, 2008 ).
Change in male and female social roles does not flow easily because resistance counters
pressures toward change. Opposition to some changes is intense, such as opposition to women
in military combat roles (e.g., Browne, 2007 ). Societal ideologies legitimize inequalities
between men and women (Pratto, Sidanius, & Levin, 2006 ; Ridgeway, 2006 ). To some
extent, even women accept ideologies that subordinate women (Jost, Pelham, Sheldon, &
Sullivan, 2003 ) and endorse paternalistic ideas (Glick & Fiske, 2001 ). Nevertheless,
women’s attitudes and ideologies are more progressive than men’s (e.g., Eagly,
Diekman, Johannesen-Schmidt, & Koenig, 2004 ; Seguino, 2007 ), and their political
commitments can speed social change (e.g., Dodson, 2006 ). Gradual movement toward less
segregated social roles is thus a reasonable expectation (Jackson, 2006 ), as is gradual
weakening of the majority of the sex differences in prosocial behavior.
In summary, research on prosocial behavior yields patterns of gender specialization that are
well known in daily life. Although it is incorrect to claim that there is a more helpful sex, a
persistent pattern emerges of female emotionally supportive and sensitive behavior, especially
in close relationships, and male agentic behavior, often directed to strangers and to the support
of social collectives. In relevant data, these differences range from small to large in magnitude,
depending on the behaviors themselves, their social context, individuals’ dispositions,
studies’ methods, and the presence of competing influences on the behaviors.
Despite the considerable information available in existing reports, many aspects of prosocial
behavior remain relatively unexplored, including the ways in which social class, race,
ethnicity, and religious commitments may moderate gender effects (Cole, 2009 ). Also
deserving attention are the interactions between the three processes that serve as proximal
determinants of male and female behavior: hormonal processes, socially shared expectations,
and individual dispositions that include gender identity. Further expansion of knowledge about
the rich mosaic of prosocial behavior will allow psychologists to refine theories that
disentangle the conditions under which men and women are similar or different and the
implications of these findings for progress toward gender equality in society.
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