The display of masculinity, femininity, and gender diagnosticity in self-descriptive photo essays

Thirty-seven college men and 57 college women assessed on Gender Diagnosticity (GD), Masculinity (M), and Femininity (F) created self-descriptive photo essays, which were then rated by six judges on 38 personality characteristics, including masculinity and femininity. Lay judges reliably rated men and women's masculinity and femininity from photo essay information. Men's GD strongly correlated with their judged masculinity and femininity, M with judged extraversion, and F with judged warmth and nurturance. However, women's GD correlated most strongly with their judged maladjustment and athleticism, M with dominance and extraversion, and F with adjustment and physical attractiveness. Naive judgments of men and women's masculinity-femininity were strongly linked to other judged personality characteristics, and physical attractiveness was correlated with judgments of women's but not men's masculinity and femininity. The results show that masculinity and femininity make sense to laypeople, are readily judged from multidimensional information, and that for men, GD predicts lay judgments of masculinity and femininity better than M and F do.