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Androgyny

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Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences

Synonyms

Hybrid characteristics

Definition

Psychological androgyny is an attributional term used to describe an individual who possesses similar (high) levels of stereotypical “feminine” and “masculine” psychological attributes or characteristics.

Introduction

The androgyny construct was first formulated and introduced by Sandra Bem in the early 1970s. This introduction challenged the long held notion in the wider society and in the field of psychology that masculinity and femininity constitute bipolar ends of a single continuum. According to this previously held assumption, a person is either masculine or feminine, but cannot be both. In accordance with this theory, numerous personality inventories contained M–F scales to measure the masculinity–femininity personality trait. However, Bem (1974, 1975) argued that masculinity and femininity represent independent clusters of socially desirable instrumental and expressive traits and that it was possible, and even preferable, for...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Department of Psychology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel

    Ronit Kark

Authors
  1. Ronit Kark
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ronit Kark .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA

    Virgil Zeigler-Hill

  2. Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. Lakehead University, Orillia, ON, Canada

    Beth A. Visser

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Kark, R. (2020). Androgyny. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24612-3_1041

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