PsychologicalReporh, 1992, 71, 1216-1218.

@ Psychological Reports 1992

PSYCHOLOGICAL ANDROGYNY AND THE NEO PERSONALITY INVENTORY ' NERELLA V. RAMANAIAH AND FRED R. J. DETWILER Southern Illinois University Carbondale Summary.-The hypothesis that the profile of androgynous individuals is different from those of the other sex-role groups was tested by giving the Personal Attributes Questionnaire and the NEO Personalicy Inventory to 113 male and 135 female undergraduates. Results strongly supported the hypothesis.

According to Bem (1974), an androgynous individual is assumed to show a wide range of both masculine and feminine behaviors and to function effectively across different situations. Androgynous individuals are considered to be more open to different experiences which would enhance their chances of developing more aspects of their personality. Research on the personalities of different sex-role groups has provided some support for Bern's hypothesis about androgyny. For example, Burchardt and Serbin (1982) found that androgynous women were significantly lower on the Depression and Social Introversion scales of Faschingbauer's Abbreviated MMPI than sex-typed females and were also lower on the Schizophrenia and Mania scales than cross-sexed women. More recently, Hong and Rust (1989) reported that androgynous subjects showed more openness to experience than sex-typed and undifferentiated subjects, using a modified version of Coan's (1974) Experience Inventory. The present study tested the hypothesis that the personality profiles of androgynous individuals are different from those of the other sex-role groups, using the NEO Personality Inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1985) which was developed for measuring the five major dimensions of personality, Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. Method.-The Personal Attributes Questionnaire (Spence, Helrnreich, & Stapp, 1975) and the NEO Personality Inventory were administered to 248 undergraduate psychology students (113 men and 135 women) who participated for partial course credit. Using the median scores on the Personal Attributes Questionnaire Masculinity scale (Mdn = 21.20) and the Femininity scale (Mdn = 23.96), the subjects were dvided into four sex-role groups, undifferentiated, feminine-typed, masculine-typed, and androgynous. The hypothesis was tested by analysis of variance as well as multivariate analysis of variance for the scores on the five NEO Personality Inventory scales for the four sex-role groups. 'Requests for reprints should be sent to Nerella V. Ramanaiah, Department of Psychology, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Carbondale, Illinois 62901-6502.

ANDROGYNY AND T H E NEO PERSONALITY INVENTORY

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Results and discussion.-There were significant mean differences among the four sex-role groups on each N E O Personality Inventory scale as indicated by the univariate F ratios in Table 1. In addition, the mean profiles of the four sex-role groups were significantly different (Wilks' A = .60; F,,,,,, = 8.82, p

Psychological androgyny and the NEO Personality Inventory.

The hypothesis that the personality profile of androgynous individuals is different from those of the other sex-role groups was tested by giving the P...
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