Gender stereotypes for paranoid, antisocial, compulsive, dependent, and histrionic personality disorders

Abstract

To assess similarity between gender-role stereotypes and the personality disorder prototypes, university students (31 women and 13 men) were asked to assign gender to six descriptions of DSM-III--R personality disorders. Significant agreement was found in gender assignment for five of the six descriptions. Descriptions of the paranoid, antisocial, and compulsive personality disorders were viewed as male, and descriptions of the dependent and histrionic personality disorders were viewed as female. The description of schizoid personality disorder was not significantly gender-typed.