As soon as we are born gender roles are placed on us and we begin to learn the way we are expected to act. For example, " children use gender as an organizing theme to classify and understand perceptions about the world"(Lefton 319). Children get many ideas about how they are supposed to behave, and that there are many differences between boys and girls simply by the way they are treated by their parents as a child. Boys are usually treated a little rougher than girls and get bounced around on their parent's knees more often, where girls on the other hand, are cuddled and treated delicately. The toys children are given are also dif

2. Lefton, Lester A. Psychology. Needham Heights: Allyn and Bacon, 1994.

accept at a later age, instead of being a result of social influence.

Men can also learn from the media that society expects them to be unemotional and independent. Most men have seen on television or learned from other men that it is not very manly to cry under any circumstance, nor should they ask for help or directions. Women, on the other hand, tend to be less stubborn, cry more often, and will ask for directions instead of getting lost. Other differences that can easily be seen, and are often shown by the media, are the way men and women solve conflicts. Women are more likely to discuss a problem in a rational manner being "lady like," the only exception would women on the Jerry Springer show, where as men often result to violence. These actions are learned because it is the way in which the media depicts us and how society expects us to act.

Before I started doing this research I never really knew, or even cared, how much our society influences the way we behave throughout our lives. I always had heard how violence on television could make people more violent, but I never thought it was possible. As I read several Psychology books I learned that researches have "found that children who had viewed aggressive films tended to be aggressive afterward" and that children who saw non-aggressive films acted calmly (Lefton 321). After reading this I began to realize that people do not always make all their own decisions on their behavior, and just how much society determines excepted behavior based on gender. I also began to understand that just because we are born mal

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