PSY 3121 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Cross-Dressing, Gender Dysphoria, Sex Reassignment Surgery

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 3121
• Professor: Kathleen Biard

Document Summary

The psychology of women: developing gender identity. Gender identity refers to our identi cation and acceptation of the self as male or female. Gender roles are the behaviours typically associated with males or females. Our behaviour and our identity are separate on many levels. Infants as young as seven months can distinguish between male and female faces, but they attend primarily to hair length as the distinguishing cue: this is found in both preference and attention studies. Around 24 months, infants start to notice gender typical activities based on what happens within the home (has no permanent structure; i. e. if dad skis and wears ski clothes, than anyone who wears ski clothes is a boy) 18 months old fail at gender labeling. 24 months old can correctly label gander based on super cial characteristics: television allows them to speed along in this development (most shows are gendered)