Stoicism: its relation to gender, attitudes toward poverty, and reactions to emotive material.

A scale was developed to test the hypotheses that stoicism would be more prevalent in British men (n = 30) than in British women (n = 32) and that stoicism would be related to negative attitudes toward the poor. It was also hypothesized that stoics would exhibit a weaker emotional reaction to stories that had emotive content. All three hypotheses were supported. There was evidence that the Stoicism Scale had internal consistency and some external validity.