Cross Cultural Gender Research and Homework for Monday 31st October

We've now looked at the cross cultural research into gender development. Here is the presentation from the lesson. This contributes to the nature/nurture question, because if gender roles / behaviour are genetic / hormonal in origin we'd expect every culture to show the same differences. Anthropologists like Margaret Mead went looking for cultures which didn't fit, and found them, providing seemingly strong evidence for the Social Learning explanation of gender. However there are big methodological issues with anthropological research, particularly investigator effects (seeing what they want to see) and participant reactivity (trying to please the investigator).

Here's the question, for Edmodo submission on Monday please:

a) Discuss the social learning explanation for the development of different gender roles / behaviour. 6 AO1 + 8 AO2
b) To what extend does cross cultural research support the importance of social learning in gender development? 3 AO1 + 8AO2