Gender-Typed Behavioral Examples of Histrionic Personality Disorder

Findings that clinicians diagnose Histrionic Personality Disorder more frequently in women may be due to the feminine gender weighting of the criteria or because the diagnostic label elicits a feminine stereotype. Using a method derived from the act-frequency approach, undergraduates generated behavioral examples of the DSM-IIIR and DSM-IV Histrionic criteria without regard to sex or according to sex role instructions that elicited masculine or feminine sex roles. A national sample of psychologists and psychiatrists rated the representativeness of the symptoms for the Histrionic criteria or for Histrionic Personality Disorder. Feminine behaviors were rated more representative of Histrionic Personality Disorder and somewhat more representative of the Histrionic criteria than masculine behaviors suggesting that the feminine sex role is more strongly associated with the label than the criteria. Masculine behaviors were also rated less representative than sex-unspecified examples. Results provide a possible explanation for the higher rates of diagnosis of Histrionic Personality Disorder in women.