Sex Role Orientation, Cognitive Flexibility, and Life Satisfaction Among Older Adults

Abstract

Bem's Sex Role Inventory (Bem, 1974) was employed to categorize 101 older adults into masculine, feminine, androgynous, and undifferentiated sex role orientations. Relationships among these sex role orientations and cognitive flexibility and life satisfaction were explored. Additionally, hierarchical multiple regression analyses were performed to assess the contributions of masculinity, femininity, and the interaction term (masculinity x femininity) in the prediction of cognitive flexibility and life satisfaction. These older adults did not vary significantly in either their cognitive flexibility or their life satisfaction as a function of their sex role categorization, nor was an appreciable percentage of variance accounted for by the predictor variables in the regression analyses. Issues are raised regarding the validity of the typological (median-split based) approaches used by researchers to assess expectations of the differentiation of masculine and feminine components in older adults. An alternative structural developmental approach, based on a factor-analytic methodology, is proposed.