Gender Role Characteristics and Depressive Symptomatology among Adolescents

Abstract

The influence of three gender role related variables-instrumentality, silencing-the-self and ruminating-on depressive symptomatology among 73 adolescents with a mean age of 14.5 years was examined for this study. Girls reported more symptomatology and ruminating than did boys. Girls had higher scores on one facet of silencing-the-self externalized self-perception, than did boys. Positive correlations were found between symptomatology and both ruminating and silencing-the-self; both for boys and for girls. Instrumentality was correlated negatively with silencing-the-self for both sexes and with symptomatology for boys. In a hierarchical regression analysis, instrumentality, silencing-the-self and ruminating accounted for 59% of the variance in depressive symptomatology. Being male or female did not account for an additional increment in the variance in symptomatology after instrumentality silencing-the-self and ruminating had been entered into the regression. It is argued that the gender difference in depressive symptomatology among adolescents may be related to gender role typing. Specifically, low instrumentality and undesirable or exaggerated feminine traits were associated with increased symptomatology.