Page 187 - The Language of Composition 4e Teacher Edition Sample.indd

in its practices, I might have been sent away researchers at Ohio State University. (The process 4
with a prescription for a mild painkiller and a involves questions that force the participants to
bag of ice. rate the significance of bravery and self-reliance BUILDING CONTEXT chapter 4
Machismo, the driver of so many ques- 5 to their respective genders as well as to them Y ou may want to ask students if they know
You may want to ask students if they know
tionable decisions made by men, is a fickle personally). They also asked questions about the origins of the term “machismo” (par . 5)
the origins of the term “machismo” (par. 5)
thing. Sometimes, a little bit of it — a tinge health care, including ones that gauged the and if they associate different connotations
ent connotations
fer
and if they associate dif
of toughness — doesn’t seem to hurt. In sport, frequency with which the participants sought out with machismo than with masculinity. You
ou
. Y
with machismo than with masculinity
for instance. Or maybe negotiation. Other times, preventive care and the regularity with which Conversation / Roberto A. Ferdman might ask about the wor d “macho,” too.
might ask about the word “macho,” too.
it turns out, it can do more harm than good. Like, they delayed care. How do cultural dif fer ences determine
How do cultural differences determine
Copyright (c) 2023 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Uncorrected proofs have been used for this sample chapter.
say, when it comes to caring for one’s health. What they found is that for both men and masculinity and femininity?
masculinity and femininity?
“Everyone has a story about how a male women, those who exhibited the most machismo
friend or family member has been reluctant to (deriving self-worth from things such as bravery
go to the doctor,” said Diana Sanchez, who and self-reliance) were also the least likely to
teaches psychology at Rutgers University. “But seek preventive care and the most likely to
it’s more than that — it’s also what happens delay care.
Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution.
when they actually go see a doctor.” “Masculine men, in particular, tend to avoid
“There are all sorts of adverse consequences the doctor,” Sanchez said. “Obviously, that’s not
associated with masculinity,” she added. a good thing.”
In the second study, which was published
A downside to being too much of a dude. in the journal Preventive Medicine in December,
Sanchez first became interested in the subject the researchers used three experiments to
both because of the discrepancy in the life approximate what happens when people
expectancy for men and women (men tend to actually end up going to the doctor.
die about five years earlier than women) and In the first two, the researchers tested the
because of a personal experience with a family relationship between masculinity and male doc-
member who waited too long to see a doctor. tor preference, measuring each in the roughly
She wondered whether the two might somehow 150 participants (all male) and finding that the
be related. And she figured that there must be a two exhibited a strong correlation.
way to find out. In the third, they explored what happens 15
when men see male doctors. They had 246 indi-
Eventually, she, along with Mary S.
Himmelstein, a doctoral candidate at Rutgers, viduals (all male) complete a prescreening,
devised two studies to explore the extent to during which the researchers also measured
which masculinity affects decisions about masculinity, and then had them come in and
health care. And together they suggest that the discuss their ailments with either male or female
effect could be fairly significant. medical students (all of whom were unaware of
In the first of the two studies, which was 10 each patient’s masculinity score).
published in the Journal of Health Psychology The results were fairly straightforward. Per
in late 2014, they gathered two groups — one the study:
of them comprising university students, the In accordance with predictions, men with
other not. They measured the importance of higher scores in masculinity reported fewer
manliness to the individuals in each group, using symptoms in the lab compared to their
a scale called the Contingencies of Self-Worth prescreen reports when reporting to a male
(CSW for short), which was developed by interviewer relative to a female interviewer.
293

05_sheatlc4e_40925_ch04_170_315.indd 293 12/10/22 2:37 PM
DIFFERENTIATION
Connections to Self
Ohio State University’s Contingencies of Self-
Worth scale (par. 10) is available through Ohio
State’s Department of Psychology website.
Students may appreciate looking at the scale
and even assessing their self-worth using the
scale themselves. It does, however, include
“God’s love” as one of a number of external
sources of self-worth, and students’ results
may be bothersome to them. The results also
won’t correlate specifically to “bravery and
self-reliance,” but students would gain a
better understanding of how they derive
their self-worth.

Conversation / Roberto A. Ferdman 293

05_sheatlcte4e_46921_ch04_170a_315_2pp.indd 293 1/20/23 7:53 PM