Research in a wide variety of fields, ranging from criminology and risk sociology to political psychology and risk psychology, shows that women tend to display higher levels of anxiety to both personal and social risks and threats than do men. Indeed, the strong relationship between sex/gender and anxiety comes across as one of the most robust findings in the social sciences (Bord & O’ Connor, 1997; Flynn, Slovic, & Mertz, 1994; Slovic, 1999). Drawing on a multidisciplinary approach to explore the causal links between sex/gender and sociotropic (social/collective) anxiety Djerf-Pierre and Wängnerud (2015) studies the characteristics and magnitude of differences between women and men in anxiety to social risks and threats. The main finding is that sex/gender is a significant predictor of an individual’s sociotropic anxiety. Factors such as perceived personal vulnerability, personality traits, socio-economy and political ideology all reduce the effect of sex/gender. However, even when a large number of mediating factors are taken into consideration a significant effect of sex/gender remains. Djerf-Pierre and Wängnerud (2015) conclude that the outstanding effect of sex/gender remains a conundrum and suggest that future research could examine whether differences between women and men can be attributed to social desirability responses (Cantor 2002). In this study we elaborate on the concept of gender identity in order to test the theory on social desirability. The assumption is that pervasive cultural association linking femaleness to anxiety make women more willing to announce their worries publicly (or in a survey), while these same socializing factors may suppress expression of anxiety among men. Gender identity is measured through self-placement on two different scales, asking respondents to what extent they perceive that they have male/female characteristics (the scale runs from 0 “few male/female characteristics” to 10 “many male/female characteristics”). Thus we are able to handle gender as a multidimensional phenomenon and, for example, test if feminine women – those who perceive that they have many female but few male characteristics – differ in anxiety from women who perceive that they have a mix of female/male characteristics (and vice versa for men). The data used draws from the yearly surveys conducted by the Society Opinion Media Institute (SOM) at the University of Gothenburg (Vernersdotter 2013). This is a mail questionnaire sent to 3,400 individuals in Sweden, randomly selected from census register, generating around 60% response rate. The main dependent variable is the sociotropic anxiety index (Djerf-Pierre and Wängnerud 2015) which is an additive index of 10 variables that measure self-reported feelings of worry about social risks and threats such as terrorism, environmental degradation and social cleavages. The data allows for a number of controls. The gender factor deserves in-depth scrutiny as anxiety drives democratically important processes such as information-seeking and attention to politics.
