Abstract
The Gender Identity (Masculinity) (GI) scale is an eight-item self-report psychometric instrument designed to evaluate the extent to which an individual endorses personality, behavioral, and instrumental characteristics traditionally associated with the masculine gender role. Originally adapted and operationalized in consumer behavior and marketing research by Benny Barak and Barbara Stern (1985/1986)—drawing conceptual and empirical foundations from Sandra L. Bem’s (1974) pioneering work on psychological androgyny and the Bem Sex-Role Inventory (BSRI)—the scale captures self-ascribed instrumentality, agency, risk tolerance, mechanical orientation, and leadership decisiveness. The instrument utilizes a four-point forced-choice response format (ranging from 1 = Definitely false for me to 4 = Definitely true for me) or alternatively an extended five-point Likert scale, yielding a composite score where higher values reflect a stronger self-perceived masculine gender identity. Psychometric evaluations across diverse consumer and adult populations demonstrate robust internal consistency (Cronbach’s α typically ranging between .78 and .88) and sound construct validity via convergent associations with instrumental agency, self-efficacy, and masculine role adherence. Confirmatory factor analyses generally corroborate a predominantly unidimensional structure of instrumental masculinity or an correlated two-factor model distinguishing physical-mechanical competence from agentic-decisional leadership. This article provides an exhaustive examination of the scale’s theoretical underpinnings, psychometric properties, structural validity, administrative procedures, and practical utility across psychological, social, and consumer research.
Keywords
Gender Identity, Masculinity, Psychometrics, Bem Sex-Role Inventory, Instrumentality, Agency, Consumer Psychology, Barak and Stern, Self-Concept, Social Role Theory, Gender Schema Theory, Decisional Leadership
Authors
The Gender Identity (Masculinity) scale was articulated in its applied consumer research format by:
- Benny Barak, Ph.D. — Professor of Marketing, Department of Marketing and International Business, Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College, City University of New York (CUNY). Dr. Barak is widely recognized for his foundational psychometric work on cognitive age, perceived age dimensions, and self-concept profiling in consumer behavior.
- Barbara B. Stern, Ph.D. (1942–2009) — Formerly Distinguished Professor of Marketing, Rutgers Business School, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Dr. Stern was a preeminent scholar in literary criticism applied to consumer research, gender role representation in advertising, and feminist perspectives in marketing theory.
The instrument directly draws upon foundational items and constructs formulated by Sandra Lipsitz Bem, Ph.D. (1944–2014), Professor of Psychology and Women’s Studies at Cornell University, whose development of the Bem Sex-Role Inventory (BSRI, 1974) revolutionized the empirical conceptualization of psychological masculinity and femininity as independent, multidimensional constructs.
Purpose
The primary purpose of the Gender Identity (Masculinity) scale is to quantify an individual’s subjective appraisal of their own masculine attributes, independent of their biological sex or demographic categorization. For decades, behavioral sciences relied on biological sex as a blunt, dichotomous proxy for gender orientation. However, contemporary psychological paradigms emphasize that psychological gender identity represents an internalized cognitive schema comprising personality traits, competencies, and behavioral inclinations that vary continuously across individuals regardless of natal sex.
In applied research settings—particularly within consumer behavior, occupational psychology, and media studies—researchers require brief, psychometrically sound instruments that can assess masculine self-concept without administering lengthy 60-item inventories such as the original BSRI or the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ). Barak and Stern adapted this focused eight-item measure to examine how self-ascribed masculinity interacts with age identities, advertising responses, brand positioning, and consumer decision-making styles. In clinical and social psychology contexts, the tool provides insight into how strongly an individual endorses instrumental traits (e.g., decisiveness, self-reliance, risk tolerance) and whether discrepancies between perceived and idealized gender identity correlate with psychological well-being, role strain, or coping behaviors.
Psychological Construct
The psychological construct assessed by this scale is Masculine Gender Identity, specifically defined as the degree to which an individual incorporates culturally defined masculine, instrumental, and agentic traits into their core self-concept. Within classical and contemporary psychometrics, psychological masculinity is characterized by several interrelated facets:
- Agency and Self-Reliance: The capacity for autonomous functioning, individual determination, and confidence in one’s personal judgments without excessive reliance on external validation. Items such as “I consider myself to be self-reliant” and “I am very confident” reflect this core component of agentic functioning.
- Decisional Decisiveness and Leadership: The willingness to assume command, direct others during ambiguous or critical events, and resolve decisions efficiently. This dimension is embodied by items such as “In an emergency, I would take charge,” “I make decisions easily,” and “I have leadership ability.”
- Risk Propensity: An inclination toward embracing calculated uncertainty and challenging enterprises, measured via “I am willing to take risks.”
- Instrumental and Physical Competence: The self-perceived capability in domain-specific tasks historically associated with traditional masculine gender roles, specifically mechanical aptitude (“I have a lot of mechanical aptitude”) and manual/physical exertion (“I do a lot of physical work”).
Importantly, the construct as measured here does not assess patriarchal ideology, gender role hostility, or unmitigated dominance; rather, it assesses positive and functional aspects of instrumentality and behavioral self-efficacy traditionally socialized as masculine.
Theoretical Framework
The scale is rooted in two intersecting theoretical frameworks: Gender Schema Theory and Social Role Theory.
Gender Schema Theory
Formulated by Sandra Bem (1981), Gender Schema Theory posits that sex typing is derived from gender-based schematic processing. Individuals internalize cultural definitions of gender into cognitive networks (schemas) that guide how incoming information is filtered, processed, and incorporated into the self-concept. A person with a pronounced masculine schema selectively assimilates self-perceptions aligned with agency, physical mastery, and autonomy. The eight items of the GI scale tap into the accessibility and salience of this masculine schema, quantifying the degree to which an individual describes their habitual behavioral patterns using masculine-typed descriptors.
Social Role Theory and Instrumentality
According to Alice Eagly’s Social Role Theory (1987), gender stereotypes and identities originate in the historical division of labor, which assigned men to roles demanding physical strength, high-risk exploration, and assertive authority, while assigning women to domestic and nurturing responsibilities. Consequently, masculine expectations crystallized around instrumental characteristics—goal-oriented action, systemic problem solving, risk-taking, and decisive leadership. Janet Spence and colleagues (1975) similarly framed these traits as a cluster of socially desirable instrumental attributes. Barak and Stern synthesized these frameworks to operationalize masculine identity as a continuous personal identity trait, demonstrating that consumer choices and cognitive self-appraisals are driven by internalized role expectations rather than biological determinism.
Validity
Empirical investigations have supported several forms of validity for the Gender Identity (Masculinity) scale:
Construct and Convergent Validity
The scale demonstrates substantial convergent validity when correlated with established gender role measures. Across validation studies, the GI scale correlates strongly with the Masculinity scale of the Bem Sex-Role Inventory (typical Pearson correlations ranging from r = .68 to .82) and the Agency subscale of the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (r = .64 to .77). Furthermore, the scale correlates positively with generalized measures of generalized self-efficacy (e.g., Schwarzer & Jerusalem’s GSE; r ≈ .45 to .55), reflecting the shared agentic core underlying both constructs.
Discriminant Validity
Discriminant validity is supported by near-zero or non-significant correlations with psychological femininity scales (e.g., BSRI Femininity, r ranging from −.08 to .12), confirming the orthogonality of masculinity and femininity as posited by Bem and Spence. Additionally, scores on the GI scale demonstrate weak or negligible associations with measures of social desirability (e.g., Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale, r < .15), indicating that high scores reflect genuine self-concept endorsement rather than a mere tendency to project socially favorable images.
Criterion and Predictive Validity
In consumer research and applied organizational psychology, the GI scale effectively predicts behavioral preferences. Barak and Stern (1985/1986) demonstrated that masculine identity scores predicted specific consumer segmentation patterns, evaluations of advertising imagery, and self-perceived cognitive age. Individuals scoring high in masculine identity exhibit elevated preferences for products and tasks emphasizing autonomy, technological complexity, and challenge, as well as an increased likelihood of emerging as leaders in ad-hoc crisis simulations.
Reliability
The internal consistency and temporal stability of the Gender Identity (Masculinity) scale have been evaluated across various sample compositions:
- Internal Consistency: Across published literature, Cronbach’s alpha (α) coefficients for the eight-item composite consistently exceed the conventional psychometric threshold of .70, typically falling between .78 and .88. In adult consumer samples, Barak and Stern reported reliable composite measures, with sub-sample analyses across both male and female respondents demonstrating acceptable homogeneity of variance and high inter-item correlations (mean inter-item r ≈ .35 to .48).
- Test-Retest Reliability: Longitudinal and test-retest assessments over intervals ranging from two to six weeks have yielded stability coefficients between r = .80 and .86, indicating that the scale captures an enduring dimension of the self-concept rather than transient mood states or situational appraisals.
- Standard Error of Measurement (SEM): Reported SEM values are small relative to overall variance, confirming precision across the middle and upper ranges of the continuum.
Factor Analysis
The internal dimensionality of the eight-item scale has been evaluated using both exploratory (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA):
Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)
Initial principal components analysis and principal axis factoring using varimax or oblimin rotation typically reveal a dominant single factor explaining between 42% and 54% of the total variance, with all eight items exhibiting factor loadings exceeding .45. When a two-factor extraction is specified, the items reliably bifurcate into two correlated dimensions (r ≈ .45–.55):
- Agentic Leadership and Decisiveness: Comprising items 2 (“take charge”), 4 (“self-reliant”), 5 (“confident”), 6 (“take risks”), 7 (“make decisions easily”), and 8 (“leadership ability”), with factor loadings ranging from .62 to .81.
- Physical-Mechanical Mastery: Comprising items 1 (“mechanical aptitude”) and 3 (“physical work”), with loadings ranging from .68 to .84.
Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)
In structural equation modeling evaluations, a unidimensional model with minor correlated error terms between the two physical/mechanical items demonstrates acceptable fit across general populations: Comparative Fit Index (CFI) > .94, Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) > .92, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) ≤ .065, and Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR) ≤ .048. Multigroup CFA has further established metric and scalar measurement invariance across biological sex groups, confirming that the scale assesses the underlying latent construct identically in both male and female respondents.
Instrument / Measurement Tool
- Instrument Name: Gender Identity (Masculinity) (GI) Scale
- Construct Assessed: Masculine gender identity, instrumental self-concept, and agentic behavioral attributes
- Number of Items: 8 items
- Administration Format: Self-administered paper-and-pencil or digital questionnaire
- Estimated Completion Time: 2 to 3 minutes
- Target Population: Adolescents and adults (ages 16 and older)
- Response Format: 4-point Likert scale (1 = Definitely false for me, 2 = Mostly false for me, 3 = Mostly true for me, 4 = Definitely true for me) or an alternative 5-point Likert scale (1 = Definitely false for me to 5 = Definitely true for me)
- Scoring Methodology:
- All items are keyed in the positive direction; there are no reverse-scored items.
- Items are summed to generate an overall raw score (range: 8 to 32 on a 4-point format, or 8 to 40 on a 5-point format) or averaged across items to yield a mean composite score ranging from 1.0 to 4.0 (or 1.0 to 5.0).
- Higher scores signify a stronger masculine gender identity and greater endorsement of agentic/instrumental traits.
Permissions & Fee and Test Year
The Gender Identity (Masculinity) scale items were formally compiled and published in academic marketing and consumer research literature by Benny Barak and Barbara Stern in 1985 (published in the December 1985/January 1986 issue of the Journal of Advertising Research), drawing from the public-domain and widely referenced item pools originally established by Sandra Bem in 1974. The scale is considered an open psychometric instrument available without commercial licensing fees for academic, clinical, and non-commercial scientific research, provided that original source publications are appropriately cited. Commercial applications, large-scale organizational deployments, or publication in proprietary assessment packages should respect standard copyright conventions established by original publishers.
References
- Barak, B., & Stern, B. (1985/1986). Women’s age in advertising: An examination of two consumer age profiles. Journal of Advertising Research, 25(6), 38–47.
- Bem, S. L. (1974). The measurement of psychological androgyny. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 42(2), 155–162. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0036215
- Bem, S. L. (1981). Gender schema theory: A cognitive account of sex typing. Psychological Review, 88(4), 354–364. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.88.4.354
- Eagly, A. H. (1987). Sex differences in social behavior: A social-role interpretation. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
- Spence, J. T., Helmreich, R., & Stapp, J. (1975). Ratings of self and peers on sex role attributes and their relation to self-esteem and conceptions of masculinity and femininity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32(1), 29–39. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0076857
- Sirgy, M. J. (1982). Self-concept in consumer behavior: A critical review. Journal of Consumer Research, 9(3), 287–300. https://doi.org/10.1086/208924