Social and personality factors predicting sex differences in fearful behavior

One hundred twenty undergraduates reporting "a little" or "a fair amount" of fear of harmless snakes were asked to perform a behavioral avoidance test with a red rat snake. Significant sex differences were anticipated for behavioral and self-report measures of fear. Additionally, it was hypothesized that individual characteristics of instrumentality, sex-role attitudes and/or self-monitoring would affect fearful behavior. Main effects for gender were found on all measures except self-reported anxiety, on which a sex by fear level interaction was obtained. Instrumentality, sex-role attitudes and self-monitoring were not related to fearful behavior. Despite the restricted range of fear in this sample, fear level was an unanticipated important variable in interaction with gender and self-monitoring. These findings strengthen confidence in the phenomenon of sex differences but are equivocal regarding the effects of sex-role attitudes in avoidance.