Do Attitudes Affect Memory? Tests of the Congeniality Hypothesis

Social psychologists have usually hypothesized that attitudinal selectivity biases people's memory in favor of information that is congenial to their attitudes, because they are motivated to defend their attitudes against uncongenial information. However, our meta-analysis found that such effects have been only inconsistently obtained. One reason for these inconsistencies is that the defense of attitudes against attacks does not necessarily entail avoiding the uncongenial information. As shown by our experiments, people often expose themselves to attitudinally uncongenial information, attend to it, scrutinize it carefully, encode it accurately, and remember it fairly well, even though they dislike the information and are not persuaded by it. Given sufficient motivation and capacity, people mount an active defense that enhances memory for the information.     

The heroism of women and men

Heroism consists of actions undertaken to help others, despite the possibility that they may result in the helper's death or injury. The authors examine heroism by women and men in 2 extremely dangerous settings: the emergency situations in which Carnegie medalists rescued others and the holocaust in which some non-Jews risked their lives to rescue Jews. The authors also consider 3 risky but less dangerous prosocial actions: living kidney donations, volunteering for the Peace Corps, and volunteering for Doctors of the World. Although the Carnegie medalists were disproportionately men, the other actions yielded representations of women that were at least equal to and in most cases higher than those of men. These findings have important implications for the psychology of heroism and of gender.     

Are leader stereotypes masculine? A meta-analysis of three research paradigms

This meta-analysis examined the extent to which stereotypes of leaders are culturally masculine. The primary studies fit into 1 of 3 paradigms: (a) In Schein's (1973) think manager-think male paradigm, 40 studies with 51 effect sizes compared the similarity of male and leader stereotypes and the similarity of female and leader stereotypes; (b) in Powell and Butterfield's (1979) agency-communion paradigm, 22 studies with 47 effect sizes compared stereotypes of leaders' agency and communion; and (c) in Shinar's (1975) masculinity-femininity paradigm, 7 studies with 101 effect sizes represented stereotypes of leadership-related occupations on a single masculinity-femininity dimension. Analyses implemented appropriate random and mixed effects models. All 3 paradigms demonstrated overall masculinity of leader stereotypes: (a) In the think manager-think male paradigm, intraclass correlation = .25 for the women-leaders similarity and intraclass correlation = .62 for the men-leaders similarity; (b) in the agency-communion paradigm, g = 1.55, indicating greater agency than communion; and (c) in the masculinity-femininity paradigm, g = 0.92, indicating greater masculinity than the androgynous scale midpoint. Subgroup and meta-regression analyses indicated that this masculine construal of leadership has decreased over time and was greater for male than female research participants. In addition, stereotypes portrayed leaders as less masculine in educational organizations than in other domains and in moderate- than in high-status leader roles. This article considers the relation of these findings to Eagly and Karau's (2002) role congruity theory, which proposed contextual influences on the incongruity between stereotypes of women and leaders. The implications for prejudice against women leaders are also considered.     

Another Look at Sex Differences in Preferred Mate Characteristics: The Effects of Endorsing the Traditional Female Gender Role

This research used an individual differences approach to test Eagly and Wood's (1999) claim that sex differences in the characteristics that people prefer in mates reflect the tendency for men and women to occupy different social roles in a society. The study related the extent to which participants endorsed the traditional female gender role to their preferences for their future mate's traits and age relative to their own age. In general, the sex–differentiated preferences that are consistent with the traditional division of labor were more pronounced, especially in male participants, to the extent that they endorsed the traditional female role.     

ARE WOMEN EVALUATED MORE FAVORABLY THAN MEN?

In an experiment in which male and female respondents evaluated the social category of women or men on several types of measures, analysis of respondents' attitudes toward the sexes and of the evaluative content of their beliefs established that they evaluated women more favorably than men. In addition, analysis of respondents' emotional reactions toward women and men did not yield evidence of negativity toward women at the emotional level. Nor did it appear that respondents' very positive evaluations of women masked ambivalence toward them. This research, therefore, provides strong evidence that women are evaluated quite favorably—in fact, more favorably than men.