Another look at sex stereotypes and social judgments: an analysis of the social perceiver's use of subjective probabilities

Locksley, Borgida, Brekke, and Hepburn (1980) assert that subjects fall prey to the base-rate fallacy when they make stereotype-related trait judgments. They found that subjects ignored their stereotypes when trait judgments were made in the presence of trait-related behavioral information. The present article reexamines those findings with respect to two issues: (a) the use of a normative criterion in comparison with subjects' judgments and (b) the level of analysis (group vs. individual) of subjects' judgments. We conducted a replication of the Locksley et al. (1980) Study 2, and the results were examined with respect to these two issues. We found no support for the base-rate fallacy. When a Bayesian normative criterion was constructed for each subject based on the subject's own stereotype judgments and was compared with assertiveness judgments made in the presence of individuating information, there was no evidence that subjects ignored or underused their stereotypes as the base-rate fallacy predicts.     

Children and Adults Use Gender and Age Stereotypes in Ownership Judgments

In everyday life, we are often faced with the problem of judging who owns an object. The current experiments show that children and adults base ownership judgments on group stereotypes, which relate kinds of people to kinds of objects. Moreover, the experiments show that reliance on stereotypes can override another means by which people make ownership judgments—inferring ownership from first possession. Experiment 1 replicates previous findings in showing that children and adults are strongly biased to assume that the first person to possess an object is its owner, while also demonstrating that the first-possession bias shows specificity to ownership. Experiment 2 shows that preschoolers and adults used gender stereotypes to make ownership judgments, and they do this even when stereotypes conflict with first possession. Experiment 3 reports similar findings but with age stereotypes. These findings reveal that stereotypes are a powerful means for making ownership judgments.     

STRUCTURE AND CONTENT OF GENDER STEREOTYPES: EFFECTS OF SOMATIC APPEARANCE AND TRAIT INFORMATION

Two components of gender stereotypes were examined in order to determine their influence on judgments of gender–related characteristics. Male and female subjects were presented with photographs of female stimulus persons who differed in somatic appearance and were given information about traits. Subjects were asked to estimate the probability that the stimulus person possessed other gender–related traits and engaged in gender–related behaviors. Results provide support for a multiple–component construction of stereotypes, with physical appearance being the most potent component. An unfavorable image of low attractive women was also indicated.     

Body posture and gender impact neural processing of power-related words

Judging others’ power facilitates successful social interaction. Both gender and body posture have been shown to influence judgments of another’s power. However, little is known about how these two cues interact when they conflict or how they influence early processing. The present study investigated this question during very early processing of power-related words using event-related potentials (ERPs). Participants viewed images of women and men in dominant and submissive postures that were quickly followed by dominant or submissive words. Gender and posture both modulated neural responses in the N2 latency range to dominant words, but for submissive words they had little impact. Thus, in the context of dual-processing theories of person perception, information extracted from both behavior (i.e., posture) and from category membership (i.e., gender) are recruited side-by-side to impact word processing.     

The effect of gender stereotype activation on entrepreneurial intentions

In this study, the impact of implicit and explicit activation of gender stereotypes on men's and women's intentions to pursue a traditionally masculine career, such as entrepreneurship, was examined. On the basis of stereotype activation theory, it was hypothesized that men and women would confirm the gender stereotype about entrepreneurship when it was presented implicitly but disconfirm it when it was presented explicitly. Hypotheses were tested by randomly assigning 469 business students to one of 6 experimental conditions and then measuring their entrepreneurial intentions. Results supported the hypothesis when entrepreneurship was associated with stereotypically masculine characteristics but not when it was associated with traditionally feminine characteristics. Men also had higher entrepreneurial intention scores compared with women when no stereotypical information about entrepreneurship was presented, suggesting that underlying societal stereotypes associating entrepreneurship with masculine characteristics may influence people's intentions. However, men and women reported similar intentions when entrepreneurship was presented as gender neutral, suggesting that widely held gender stereotypes can be nullified. Practical implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Gender stereotypes as situation–behavior profiles

Recent research suggests that social perceivers’ dispositional inferences are influenced by information about the ways others’ behavior varies stably across situations. We extend this research to stereotypes. Specifically, we examined peoples’ preconceptions about the situation–behavior profiles that social groups are likely to display, as well as the implications of such preconceptions for behavioral judgments. Focusing on gender stereotypes, in Study 1 we found that perceivers’ expectations about men’s and women’s assertiveness are qualified by situational information. Study 2 revealed that perceivers’ beliefs about the mentalistic attributes (e.g., goals, beliefs, motivations) that characterize men and women mediated the relationship between target gender and perceivers’ expectations about situation–behavior patterns. Study 3 explored how such contextualized stereotypes affect on-line judgments of targets’ behavior, showing that perceivers judge a given behavior’s assertiveness based not only on target gender but also on situation type.     

Immediate activation of stereotypical gender information

This article reports six experiments in which we explored whether gender stereotype information is typically invoked when certain role and profession terms are read and the extent to which the use of such information is under the reader's strategic control. All of the experiments used a design in which subjects had to decide whether two terms (one an occupation and one a kinship term) could refer to the same person (e.g., surgeon-brother or surgeon-sister). The presentation conditions and the instructions were varied from experiment to experiment, to try to encourage the subjects to respond strategically and to suppress their use of gender stereotypes when responding. The results support not only the hypothesis that information about the stereotypical gender associated with occupations and roles is typically incorporated into the reader's representation immediately, but also the hypothesis that such information is difficult or impossible to suppress. The implications of these findings for current theories of text processing and text representation are discussed.     

Incorporating if...then...personality signatures in person perception: beyond the person-situation dichotomy

Three studies investigated conditions in which perceivers view dispositions and situations as interactive, rather than independent, causal forces when making judgments about another's personality. Study 1 showed that perceivers associated 5 common trait terms (e.g., friendly and shy) with characteristic if...then... (if situation a, then the person does x, but if situation b, then the person does y) personality signatures. Study 2 demonstrated that perceivers used information about a target's stable if...then... signature to infer the target's motives and traits; dispositional judgments were mediated by inferences about the target's motivations. Study 3 tested whether perceivers draw on if...then... signatures when making judgments about Big Five trait dimensions. Together, the findings indicate that perceivers take account of person-situation interactions (reflected in if...then... signatures) in everyday explanations of social behavior and personality dispositions. Boundary conditions are also discussed.     

When a product takes on characteristics of the person who created it: Sometimes it sounds sweeter

We investigated when consumers' judgments about a product reflect information about its product source (the person who creates the product). Three experiments manipulated congruence between the source's gender and the gender-typing of the source's product. When congruent with expectations (a male conductor played male-typed music), pre-trial source information had the same effect on post-trial product judgments as when source information was absent. Incongruence (a female conductor played male-typed music) distorted product attribute judgments when the source's competence was questioned. Her music was judged to be more delicate, less powerful and worse quality than his. This process of product experience being assimilated into incompetence stereotypes required minimal cognitive resources. When the incongruent source was undoubtedly competent, the amount of experiential evidence about an attribute influenced distortion. Consumers judged powerful music as powerful regardless of conductor gender, but, lacking much evidence about its delicacy, judged hers as more delicate than his. The selective effect of source gender information reflects consumers' cognitively effortful hypothesis testing of beliefs that gender expresses itself in a person's output against experiential evidence.     

Stereotypes and social judgment: the effects of typicality and group heterogeneity

Two experiments showed that when subjects believed a group to be heterogenous, they based their liking for a particular group member on their liking for the group as a whole, independently of and in addition to the target's behavior, and regardless of the target's typicality. When they believed the group to be homogenous, however, they treated the target's typicality as a favorable or unfavorable attribute, which affected their evaluation. The latter subjects used their group stereotype as a standard of comparison in judging the implications of the target's behavior for a trait to which it was relevant. All subjects' stereotypes had a positive influence on judgments of stereotyped-related traits for which the target's behavior was uninformative. A conceptualization is proposed to account for these findings.     

The Gender Heuristic and the Database: Factors Affecting the Perception of Gender-Related Differences in the Experience and Display of Emotions

Two studies investigated the conditions under which people use gender stereotypes about emotion to make judgments about the emotions of self and others. Participants in Study 1 either played or watched a competitive word game (actual game conditions), or imagined themselves playing or watching the same game (hypothetical condition). Participants actually involved in the game made emotion judgments either immediately after the game (online condition) or after a time delay (delayed condition). Both in terms of self-reports of emotional experience and perceptions of the emotional displays of others, gender-related stereotypes had a significant influence on judgments of participants in the hypothetical condition but had no significant influence on online judgments. Furthermore, participants rating their own emotional experiences (after a 1-week delay) exhibited responses consistent with gender stereotypes, whereas participants rating the emotional displays of others (after a 1-day delay) did not show a gender-stereotypic response pattern. Study 2 found that participants rating hypothetical others were more likely to employ gender-related stereotypes of emotion than participants rating themselves were. The results of both studies suggest that people tend to use an emotion-related gender heuristic when they lack a database of concrete situational experiences on which to base their judgments.     

Facial expressions can inhibit the activation of gender stereotypes

ABSTRACT

Using faces as the priming stimuli, the present study explored the influence of facial expressions on the activation of gender stereotypes using a lexical decision paradigm. Experiment 1 explored the activation of gender stereotypes when the facial primes contained only gender information. The results showed that gender stereotypes were activated. In Experiment 2, the facial primes contained both gender category and expression information. The results indicated that gender stereotypes were not activated. Experiment 3 required the participants to make emotion, gender, or impression decisions concerning the facial primes before the lexical decision task. The results showed that gender stereotypes were not activated in emotion and impression decisions conditions, whereas stereotypes were activated in gender decisions condition. These finding suggest that facial expressions can inhibit automatic activation of gender stereotypes, unless the perceivers perform gender categorization processing to prime faces intentionally.     

Social stereotypes and judgments of individuals: An instance of the base-rate fallacy

Social stereotypes may be defined as beliefs that various traits or acts are characteristic of particular social groups. As such, stereotypic beliefs represent subjective estimates of the frequencies of attributes within social groups, and so should be expected to “behave like” base-rate information within the context of judgments of individuals: specifically, individuating target case information should induce subjects to disregard their own stereotypic beliefs. Although the results of previous research are consisten with this prediction, no studies have permitted normative evaluation of stereotypic judgments. Because the hypothesis equates base rates and stereotypes, normative evaluation is essential for demonstrating equivalence between the base-rate fallacy and neglect of stereotypes in the presence of individuating case information. Two experiments were conducted, allowing for normative evaluation of effects of stereotypes on judgments of individuals. The results confirmed the hypothesis and established the generalizability of the effect across controversial and uncontroversial, socially desirable and socially underirable stereotypic beliefs. More generally, an examination of the differences between intuitive and normative statistical models of the judgment task suggest that the base-rate fallacy is but one instance of a general characteristic of intuitive judgment processes: namely, the failure to appropriately adjust evaluations of any one cue in the light of concurrent evaluations of other cues.     

Effects of gender,target's gender,topic, and self-esteem on disclosure to best and midling friends

Two studies examining self-disclosure as a function of discloser's gender, target's gender, topic, class standing, and self-esteem are reported. In the first study, 172 college students were given a test containing items from a modified Jourard Self-Disclosure Questionnaire and the Culture-Free Self-Esteem Inventory, and asked to report disclosure to their best, nonromantic, same-and cross-sex friends; the second study was a replication of the first, but the 138 subjects were questioned about disclosure to midling-level friends. The expected effects were found—topic, target's gender, etc.—and self-esteem level and class standing were found to influence disclosure levels as well. The ² and correlations are reported, so that readers can see an estimate of the effects' magnitudes as well as their significance levels.     

Mood and the impact of individuating information on the evaluation of ingroup and outgroup members: The role of mood-based expectancies

This research investigates the role of mood-based expectancies regarding a target's group membership for the impact of individuating information on target judgments. We argue that target judgments in both positive and negative mood may be more or less affected by individuating information depending on whether the target is an ingroup member or an outgroup member. Specifically, in a competitive intergroup setting it should be less congruent with mood-based expectancies when individuals in positive (negative) mood learn that an outgroup (ingroup) member rather than an ingroup (outgroup) member has succeeded. Hence, unexpected (i.e., mood-incongruent) category information should elicit more attention than expected (mood-congruent) category information. More importantly, subsequent individuating information (high vs. low target competence) should be processed more effortful and influence target judgments more strongly given mood-incongruent (vs. mood-congruent) category membership. Findings of an experiment support these predictions. Results are discussed in regard to implications for different research domains.     

Parents’ Judgments about the Desirability of Toys for Their Children: Associations with Gender Role Attitudes,Gender-typing of Toys,and Demographics

Parental toy selection and responses to toy play are important factors in children’s gender socialization. Reinforcing play with same-gender-typed toys guides children’s activities and limits their action repertoires in accordance with gender stereotypes. A survey of 324 Austrian parents of three- to six-year-old children was conducted to investigate parents’ judgments about the desirability of different types of toys for their children and how these judgements relate to parents’ gender-typing of toys, gender role attitudes, and demographics (age, education, gender). Results show that parents rated same-gender-typed and gender-neutral toys as more desirable for their children than cross-gender-typed toys. The traditionalism of parents’ gender role attitudes was not associated with their desirability judgments of same-gender-typed toys, but was negatively related to their desirability judgments of cross-gender-typed toys. This indicates that egalitarian parents permit a greater range of interests and behaviors in their children than traditional parents do. Younger parents, parents with lower educational levels, and fathers reported more traditional gender role attitudes than did older parents, parents with higher educational levels, and mothers. However, no differences based on age, educational level or gender were found in parents’ judgments of toy desirability. The present study demonstrates that parents’ judgments about the desirability of toys for their children do not accurately reflect their gender role attitudes. This finding highlights the importance of simultaneously investigating different aspects of parents’ gender-related attitudes in order to gain a better understanding of parental transmission of gender stereotypes.     

Familiarity impacts person perception

We investigated the effects of familiarity on person perception. We predicted that familiarity would increase non‐analytic processing, reducing attention to and the impact of individuating information, and increasing the impact of category labels on judgments about a target person. In two studies participants read either incriminating or exculpatory individuating information about a defendant in a criminal case and made judgments of guilt. In Study 1, participants were subliminally exposed to the defendant's photo, another matched photo, or no photo before seeing the evidence. Participants familiar with the defendant's photo both processed and used the individuating information less. In Study 2, participants were subtly made familiar or not with the incriminating and exculpatory information itself, and the defendant was described either as a priest or as a skinhead. Familiarity with the information reduced attention to its content and also tended to increase reliance on category information in guilt judgments. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The impact of nontraditionalism on the malleability of gender stereotypes in Spain and Germany

Gender stereotypes and inequalities are based on and sustained by people's perception of gender roles. The evolution of these gender roles, however, might be substantially different depending on cultural and social evolution in different countries. In a study, we investigated stereotypes in Germany and Spain, where residents might have different beliefs about gender roles due to their different social evolution after the Second World War and their economic and social advances. Results showed that in both countries people's expectations of differences in masculine characteristics between men and women were less noticeable than perceptions in the past or present. We also demonstrated that people perceive an increase in masculinity in women. This increase is more evident in Spaniards than in Germans. In estimations about the past, present, and future, Spaniards also perceived an increase of gender-stereotypic feminine characteristics more in men than in women. Our results are consistent with the predictions of social role theory, as gender stereotypes can include dynamic aspects and the content of these stereotypes is rooted in social roles.     

Women who tell and men who ask: Perceptions of men and women departing from gender stereotypes during initial interaction

An experiment was conducted to determine if behavior that deviated from gender stereotypes during initial interaction produced less positive perceptions of a target than did behavior conforming to stereotype. Thirty-seven males and 38 females (targets) were randomly assigned to conditions where they either enacted a behavior stereotypical to their gender or engaged in a behavior departing from the stereotype during initial interaction with a randomly assigned different-gender stranger (perceiver). All of the participants were raised in the United States. The majority of participants were Caucasian, approximately 30% of the participants were Hispanic. The participants were predominantly middle class. The gender stereotypical condition required the female target to ask questions and the male target to talk about himself during the interaction. A second condition required male and female targets to do the reverse (female tell and male ask). Following the interaction perceivers completed measures of positive affect and social attractiveness. The results indicated that perceptions of targets engaging in behavior opposite of gender stereotypes depend on the perceiver's level of gender-schematicity. The level of gender schematicity indicates a person's tendency to depend on traditional gender stereotypes. While schematics tended to feel less positively or no differently during interactions with gender opposite versus gender norm targets, they tended to evaluate the gender opposite target as more or no differently socially attractive than gender norm targets. Results also suggest that men may have more latitude to engage in gender opposite behaviors than do women.