Abstract

This paper presents a research about the relationships between sex, self-gender schemata and value preferences, a topic which has been quite neglected by empirical research, even if it has been hypothesized that males and females differ in the moral reasoning, and that the self-concept is an important prescriptive and evaluative model. In our study 312 male and female adolescents, classified according to their self-gender schemata as Masculine, Feminine, Androgynous and Indifferentiated, were administered a questionnaire including 15 value scales. Results show that both sex and self-gender schemata are associated to value preferences and are discussed with reference to the causes of the differences between males and females and between subjects with different self-gender schemata.