Gender Differences In Adulthood

Despite the common assumptions that males and females are profoundly different due to the obvious anatomical and biological lay out of their body, they are quite similar as Hyde (2005) analysed 46 meta-analyses and found that “men and women were alike in terms of personality, cognitive ability and leadership.” Furthermore, she discovered that from childhood to adulthood males and females were more alike than different resulting to a “gender similarities hypothesis”. Browne (1998) also suggested that people who are exposed to gender stereotypes from early childhood could grow up thinking these are true which would increase the differences between males and females and would guide and perceive the way people interpret the world around them …show more content…
Johnston et al (2014) and Samsha (2013) found that males are more likely to smoke marijuana and cigarettes and they use these substances in a greater amount compared to females. However a recent longitudinal study conducted by Mahalik et al (2013) found that marijuana and cigarette use changes over time as adolescent females were to smoke more cigarettes than males, but males escalated their marijuana and cigarette use in adolescence surpassing females. However females do catch up within time, so the difference in adulthood is very little. Furthermore, this could lead to depression as the symptoms of marijuana and cigarette use indicate so. There is a significant gender difference from adolescence that continues in to adulthood due to an increase in clinical depressive disorder in females than males. For adolescent girls, their negative emotions mainly derive from social settings as they place more importance on that, which is included in their daily life and makes them more prone to depression. A study by Charbonneau, Mezulis and Hyde (2009) showed that 15 year old girls showed more emotional reactivity to stressful interpersonal events compared to boys. Furthermore, the ABC- model supports this by suggesting that girls have an effective vulnerability, which triggers depressive symptoms. A depressed male and female encounter themselves differently for example a depressive female was more likely to talk about their emotional symptoms where as men were more likely to talk about their physical symptoms (Danielsson and Johansson (2005). Also, in terms of feelings women expressed shame and guilt where as men expressed aggression and anger (Gross and john (1995). This supports the idea that depression is experienced differently between males and