استرس نقش جنسیتی مردانه: یک پیش بینی بالقوه از رفتار ترس و وسواس فکری و عملی

Eisler and Blalock (Clin. Psychol. Rev. 11 (1991) 45) developed a cognitively mediated notion of Masculine Gender Role Stress (MGRS) which assumes that rigid commitment to masculine schemata for appraisal and coping with life's problems may both produce stress and result in dysfunctional coping patterns in men. Previous findings obtained in a non-clinical sample pointed to the ability of the MGRS General scale to predict different forms of irrational fears. Using a predominantly psychologically distressed sample, the present study replicated this finding. In addition, different subordinate concepts of MGRS (Physical inadequacy, Emotional inexpressiveness, Subordination to women, Intellectual inferiority, and Performance failure) predicted Agoraphobic fears, Blood-Injury fears, Social fears, and Obsessional checking and washing compulsions distinctively. Intellectual inferiority was the strongest predictor of Social fears. Most MGRS measures emerged as better predictors of Checking than of Washing rituals. There were no sex differences in the predictive capabilities of any of the MGRS measures on any of the criterion measures. A hypothetical explanation is given for the observation of MGRS being more strongly predictive of Checking than of Washing rituals using the concept of “inflated responsibility”. Implications for assessment, treatment and further studies are briefly pinpointed.

The notion that differential gender role socialization of men and women might predispose each sex to different kinds of mental health problems may be viewed as an application of sociocultural and psychosocial models to the aetiology of behaviour disorders (Eisler & Blalock, 1991). Central to this viewpoint are the concepts of gender (i.e., social conceptions of what it is to be masculine or feminine), gender identity, and the acquisition of gender role. Basing their conception of gender role socialization in relation to mental health functioning on a biopsychosocial view of masculinity, Eisler and Blalock (1991; see also Eisler & Skidmore, 1987; Eisler, 1990) introduced a cognitively mediated theory of Masculine Gender Role Stress (MGRS). Basically, Eisler's (1990) conceptualization of MGRS entails that there are significant gender differences in the specific situations that men and women appraise as stressful. The social contingencies rewarding masculine attitudes and behaviour, while punishing non-masculine (feminine) attitudes and behaviour, result in the development of masculine gender role schemata in all men. Such masculine schemata are used by men to appraise potential threats in the environment and to guide their coping responses. However, there are individual differences in the degree to which men become committed to such schemata as a basis for organizing their behavioural displays: strong commitment to masculine gender role cognitive schemata is hypothesized to restrict the types of coping strategies available to men in particular situations. Put somewhat differently, Eisler and Blalock (1991) believe that MGRS may result from excessive reliance on culturally approved masculine schemata that hamper the individual man in his objective appraisal of threatening situations and permit him a limited range of sex-linked approved coping strategies to deal with stress. This, in turn, may predispose men to behaviour patterns that are unhealthy or dysfunctional. Thus, the concept of MGRS is based on the paradigm that gender-related differences in the way men appraise environmental, behavioural, and perceptual events are directly related to their experience of stress, which may increase vulnerability to physical and psychological disorders (e.g., Selye, 1976; Goldberger & Breznitz, 1982). In actual fact, Eisler and Blalock (1991) hypothesized that in dealing with stressful situations, the dysfunctional coping behaviour that could result are those involving the inhibition of emotional expressiveness, reliance on aggression, power, and control, and obsession with achievement and success. In order to explore some of the relationships between MGRS and dysfunctional behaviour patterns in men, Eisler and Skidmore (1987) and Eisler, Skidmore, and Ward (1988) developed the MGRS scale (see below). Among other things, Eisler and his coworkers found that the measure (a) distinguished males from females, with men scoring significantly higher, (b) was highly correlated with anger in men, but less so in women, (c) was more strongly related to cognitive and somatic anxiety in women than in men, and (d) was inversely correlated with good health practices. In addition, factor analysis of the MGRS item pool demonstrated that men tend to experience stress in situations that (1) reflect physical inadequacy, (2) require the expression of “tender” emotions, (3) place them in subordination to women, (4) imply intellectual inferiority, and (5) involve any failure to perform with regard to work or sexual activity. Moreover, in a further study on psychosocial and physiological correlates of MGRS among employed adults, not only did males obtain significantly higher scale scores than females, but women with elevated MGRS scale scores also experienced undesirable outcomes much to the same extent as their male counterparts with high MGRS scores (Watkins, Eisler, Carpenter, Schechtman, & Fisher, 1991). Specifically, Watkins et al. (1991) found MGRS scale scores to be significantly associated with Type A behaviour, hostility, personal loss, life dissatisfaction, and elevated systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Importantly, the associations between MGRS and psychosocial variables were equal1y strong for males and females, the only notable exception being that MGRS scale scores were more strongly associated with life dissatisfaction in women than in men. Thus, high MGRS scores may be of potential aetiological significance in relation to psychological health for both males and females, rather than for males alone who formed the focus surrounding the theoretical notion of MGRS and for whom the corresponding scale was originally constructed. Given the findings by Eisler, Skidmore, and Ward (1988) indicating that MGRS is positively associated with psychological distress (cognitive and somatic anxiety in particular) and general life maladjustment, Arrindell, Kolk, Pickersgill, and Hageman (1993) set out to empirically examine the associations between MGRS and self-assessed fears and the ability of the former to predict scores on the latter independent of the influences of potential confounds such as biological sex, other background factors, and dissimulation tendency. It should be borne in mind that Eisler and Blalock (1991) contended that a man's excessive reliance on masculine ideology and fear of femininity would produce confining and restrictive coping patterns that may have long-term dysfunctional consequences manifested in a variety of ways including the emergence of clinical problems. These dysfunctions may include: anxiety, hostility, alcoholism, marital violence, other disturbed interpersonal relationships, sexual dysfunction, Type A behaviour patterns, poor self-disclosure, overall life maladjustment, dysfunctional stress responses (as assessed psychophysiological1y), chronic nervous system arousal, psychosomatic health problems, and inability to obtain social support from others and to give social support to others (social incompetence). Using a non-clinical sample comprising volunteers from Britain, Arrindell et al. (1993) found MGRS scores to be significantly positively correlated with Social fears, Agoraphobic fears, Fears of bodily injury, death and illness, Fears of sexual and aggressive scenes, but not with Harmless animals fears. In addition, high MGRS scores predicted high Social, Agoraphobic, Bodily injury, death and illness, and Sexual and aggressive scenes fears, independent of the influences of several potential confounds. Moreover, the complex MGRS×Biological sex variable emerged as a significant predictor of Social fears, again independent of the influences of potential confounds, with being male and having a high MGRS score predicting the highest Social fears scores. On the basis of the above findings, Arrindell et al. (1993) hypothesized that MGRS might be capable of predicting phobic anxiety and phobic avoidance behaviour in psychologically distressed subjects. Extending the Arrindell et al. (1993) study, the present investigation was set up to explore this possibility with a sample comprising members of a society for individuals suffering from anxiety disorders. In addition, the present study represented an amplification of the previous one by being also aimed at examining the predictive capability of each of the five subordinate concepts making up the more general, high-order MGRS construct. Further, a third expansion of the original study entailed including as criterion measures dimensional representations of obsessive–compulsive behaviour in addition to those for phobic avoidance behaviour in order (a) to have a fuller account of the potential aetiological significance of MGRS in relation to distinct types of anxiety complaints, and (b) to obtain useful information which could eventually be utilized for the design of treatment programmes for such complaints (see Discussion). The aims of the present investigation could be summarized as follows: (1) to determine whether the significantly positive correlations observed between MGRS and self-assessed fears in a non-clinical sample can be replicated with a psychologically distressed sample; (2) to compare the pattern of associations yielded in correlating MGRS with fears with the configuration found in relating MGRS to obsessive–compulsive symptoms, with positive correlations anticipated for the latter case as well; (3) to examine the capability of each of the MGRS constructs to predict phobic and obsessive–compulsive behaviour, independent of the capabilities of potential confounds (background, demographic factors, features related to the symptomatology of the subject, and dissimulation tendency) to do similarly; and (4) to scrutinize in a purely exploratory fashion the predictive capability of each MGRS scale in interaction with Biological sex on each criterion measure, again, independent of the influences of other potential confounds, now in addition to the probable impact of the main effects of MGRS and Biological sex. Such an exploration might yield important findings with respect to any differential significance of MGRS for the two sexes.