This article investigates gender differences in implicit and explicit measures of the BIG FIVE traits of personality. In a high-powered study (N=14,348), we replicated previous research showing that women report higher levels of Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion and Neuroticism. For implicit measures, gender differences were much smaller and opposite in sign for Extraversion. Somewhat higher levels of implicit Neuroticism and Agreeableness were observed in women, and somewhat higher levels of implicit Extraversion and Openness were observed in men. There was no gender difference in implicit Conscientiousness. Overall, the multivariate personality distributions of male and females differ by 8% when implicit measures are employed and 25% when explicit measures are employed. Results support both the “measurement artifact” (Feingold, 1990) and the “social role model” (Eagly, 1987) accounts of gender differences in personality traits. Yet, they also suggest that gender differences cannot be completely explained by social desirability, as the measurement artifact account would expect. Also, within the social role model framework, the existence of very small implicit gender differences could indicate that gender roles may not be completely internalized, since implicit gender differences are 3 times smaller than gender differences at the explicit level. A possible explanation is that explicit self-concepts partly reflect social norms and self-expectations about gender roles, while implicit self-concepts may mostly reflect self-experience with the personality characteristics.

Table 2 shows the sex differences (negative d indicates a greater male value):

[EDIT: corrected sign]

  • Neuroticism: d = .089

  • Conscientiousness: d = -.004

  • Agreeableness: d = .116

  • Openness: d = -.039

  • Extraversion: d = -.075

  • Multivariate difference: D = .189

I can't tell what the implicit gender identity is measuring (it measures association of 'self' with 'male/man' but not AFAICT with the gender-stereotypical traits of agency and communion) but it shows a larger difference than the explicit gender identity - I will withhold judgement regarding its significance however.