What causes non-assertive behaviour?

November 13, 2008 11:12 AM

Please point me to online sources of information or research about the societal / cultural causes of non-assertive behaviour! Looking for research which looks into this type of behaviour in women, but open to non-gender specific information also.

Googling points me to plenty of assertiveness training sites and 'how-to' sites, and those are great, but really, I want to understand underlying factors. I remember reading articles several years ago which described cultural norms which lead to women lacking assertive skills / behaviours in the workplace, which I found immensely helpful in understanding my own behaviour.

However, I am now fuzzy on details, and even on sources, and I want to provide a colleague with some of this type of information. Any sources, or ideas on google search terms I should use would be much appreciated!

posted by darsh to human relations (4 comments total)

How about the book Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office? I think there's a lot of "advice" in there but I'm guessing they try to explain some of the underlying problem as well.
posted by olinerd at 11:51 AM on November 13, 2008

Try scholar.google.com.
posted by k8t at 12:04 PM on November 13, 2008

Reviving Ophelia puts forward one explanation.

Carol Gilligan's In a Different Voice has a different theory, although according to this article, "Most psychologists now disagree with the empirical claim that men and women differ in their moral reasoning in the way Gilligan outlines."

Did Deborah Tannen, author of You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation, put forward any theories? (I haven't read that one.)

Those are just the few I know of off the top of my head. I guess the first two approach the question from the standpoint of developmental psychology, and the last one approaches it through linguistics. To really answer this, you'd want some Ph.D. student to come in here and explain how a whole bunch of schools of theory deal with this question (eg, evolutionary psychology, sociology of subordinate and majority groups, etc).
posted by salvia at 7:41 PM on November 13, 2008

Women don't ask addresses your question with a lot of studies, really worth reading. There is also a follow-up book on negotiation, but I haven't read that yet.
posted by meijusa at 1:10 AM on November 14, 2008