An examination of the influence of sex and sex role identity on learned helplessness and depression

Attempts have been made to explain why depression occurs more frequently in women than in men. A number of authors have focused particularly on the learned helplessness model of depression and have emphasized the possible effects of sex role identity on exposure and susceptibility to helplessness. The current research was designed to further explore the role of sex role identity in susceptibility to depression.

Introductory psychology students who volunteered to participate were given a battery of questionnaires that assessed masculinity and femininity, desire for control over decision making on a team problem-solving task, preference for luck versus skill based tasks, and attributional style. Eighty males and eighty females were selected to participate further. Half of the males and females in each of the four sex role identity groups were exposed to unsolvable concept formation problems and responded to questions concerning attributions for their performance. All students completed measures of mood, self-esteem and an anagram task as measures of symptoms of helplessness. All of the students were then taken to another room to what they thought was a separate experiment and given additional measures of mood, self-esteem and generalizability of helplessness effects.

Both sex and sex role identity were found to influence preference for control over decision making and for luck versus skill tasks. Male gender and high masculinity was associated with preference to have control over one's environment. The implications of these findings for differential self-exposure to depression producing experiences is discussed.

Contrary to earlier research, only androgynous females appeared to have been affected by the helplessness manipulation. Sex and sex role identity did influence measures of attributions; however, these differences did not parallel differences found in susceptibility to helplessness symptoms. Results are discussed in relation to sex differences in reported rates of depression, the learned helplessness model of depression, and methodological considerations for research on sex or sex role identity differences in susceptibility to learned helplessness.