About the lecture

In this lecture, we think about the Bem Sex-Role Inventory (BSRI) as a means of measuring psychological gender, focusing particular on: (i) how the Bem Sex-Role Inventory (BSRI) worked and the four possible results – ‘masculine’, ‘feminine’, ‘undifferentiated’ and ‘androgynous’; (ii) the impact of feminism on psychology in the 1970s – and why this mattered; (iii) other attempts to measure psychological gender, including that of Lewis Terman and Catherine Cox Miles (1936) and Janet Taylor Spence’s Personal Attributes Questionnaire (1973); (iv) the key differences between the Terman-Miles text and the Bem Sex-Role Inventory; and (v) potential criticisms of the Bem Sex-Role Inventory.

About the lecturer

Peter Hegarty is Professor of Psychology at the University of Surrey. His research focuses on the intersection of social psychology, history, and gender and sexuality studies. Professor Hegarty's two sole-authored books on the history of psychology are about early twentieth-century entanglements between sexology, intelligence testing, and masculinity, and psychology’s more recent relationships with lesbian and gay movements. Some of Professor Hegarty's recent publications include 'Public understanding of intersex: an update on recent findings' (2022) and 'Between cultural relativism and liberal ethnocentrism: What does Audi Arabia tell us about cultural variation in moral identity and prejudice?' (2021).