4. Methodology II: The Filter Tests
The tests of compatibility carried out by the receptive areas are then accompanied by further tests carried out by the active areas, which will be called ‘filter tests’. Indeed, if the possibility of the tie-up is regulated by the switching on of the RAs and by the success of the compatibility tests, the active areas have the faculty of pointing the selective attention of each subject toward certain potential partners instead of others, on the basis of the capacity of the former to conform to a series of norms and social conventions of particular relevance in the socio-cultural context under examination. In contexts characterized by marked gender inequalities, for instance, a female personality with strong autonomy and/or significant cultural and intellective skills could send a negative signal from the point of view of the ‘filter tests’, in that such personality traits prefigure a high propensity to question male leadership, thus threatening its social validation , and contradict the social expectations according to which men would be endowed with a superior level of intelligence in a wide array of dimensions . Continue reading “It is on these bases that a possible dilemma between compatibility and conformity emerges”
