The Effects of Counterstereotypic Gender Strategies on Candidate Evaluations

Voters do not associate female candidates with feminine stereotypes, but voters also do not associate female candidates with the qualities most valued in political leaders such as experience and knowledge. Current research offers conflicting conclusions on whether female candidates benefit from breaking with feminine norms or face a backlash for being too aggressive and not likable enough. Using a series of experiments, I show how counterstereotypic gender strategies, including women emphasizing masculine trait competencies, improve evaluations of female candidates along both masculine and feminine leadership dimensions. These results offer novel insights into how female candidates can overcome perceptual deficits among voters that they lack critical masculine leadership qualities. I also show that female candidates can overcome these biases without losing on traditional feminine strengths such as warmth and likability. However, counterstereotypic female candidates can face a “likability” backlash from out‐partisan voters. These findings suggest counterstereotypes may be more beneficial for female candidates in a primary election context when voters are copartisans rather than general elections where candidates often need cross‐partisan support.     

Constructing Gender in Chat Groups

We investigated the construction of gender in chat groups. Four unacquainted persons chatted in two gender-anonymous conditions and a non-anonymous control condition. In one anonymous condition, the gender focus was made salient. The other groups did not know about the gender focus. All participants had to guess the gender of the others and give reasons for their decisions. Results suggest that (a) overall, 2/3 of gender guesses fit the sex category of the targets, (b) gender anonymity was more comfortable for women, (c) participants used mostly gender-stereotypic cues to infer gender, however, men and women used syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic cues (with different predictive value) to different degrees, (d) conversational behavior varied depending on gender anonymity, and (e) degree of gender salience was irrelevant for the use of gender as an organizing category.     

If Bill Clinton Were a Woman: The Effectiveness of Male and Female Politicians' Account Strategies Following Alleged Transgressions

As persons whose careers depend upon the support of the public, politicians by definition are required to be concerned with the management of their public impressions. This research considers the impact of a politician's sex on citizens' evaluations following alleged transgressions. The study uses an experimental design to test how the sex of the politician affects the acceptability of various accounts following transgressions. The interaction of sex with the nature of the offense and the type of account offered is examined. Analysis suggests that sex, type of account, and type of transgression affect citizens' evaluations although not always in obvious or direct ways. Most significantly, the analysis shows that women are not judged more harshly than men when involved in a transgression.     

Environment and Goals Jointly Direct Category Acquisition

Abstract— Developing categorization schemes involves discovering structures in the world that support a learner's goals. Existing models of category learning, such as exemplar and prototype models, neglect the role of goals in shaping conceptual organization. Here, a clustering approach is discussed that reflects the joint influences of the environment and goals in directing category acquisition. Clusters are a flexible representational medium that exhibits properties of exemplar, prototype, and rule-based models. Clusters reflect the natural bundles of correlated features present in our environment. The clustering model Supervised and Unsupervised Stratified Incremental Adaptive Network (SUSTAIN) operates by assuming the world has a simple structure and adding complexity (i.e., clusters) when existing clusters fail to satisfy the learner's goals and thus elicit surprise. Although simple, this operation is sufficient to address findings from numerous laboratory and cross-cultural categorization studies.     

双元孝道、祖孙关系与老人刻板印象的关系

采取双元孝道量表、祖孙关系量表和老人刻板印象量表调查了15到38岁的1610名被试,探讨双元孝道与老人刻板印象的关系及祖孙关系在其中的作用机制。结果发现：（1）权威性孝道和互惠性孝道与情感性团结、关联性团结、老人能力刻板印象和老人热情刻板印象之间显著正相关;（2）权威性孝道主要直接预测老人能力刻板印象,而互惠性孝道主要直接预测老人热情刻板印象,以及祖孙关系在权威性孝道和互惠性孝道与老人的热情和能力刻板之间起部分中介作用;（3）权威性孝道主要以关联性团结为中介变量间接预测老人刻板印象,互惠性孝道则能以情感性团结和关联性团结为中介变量间接预测老人刻板印象;（4）性别在双元孝道对祖孙关系和老人刻板印象之间起显著调节作用,但年龄的调节效应不显著。     

Speech vs. reading comprehension: an explorative study of gender representations in Norwegian

As research on the construction of a mental representation of referent gender in speech comprehension is scarce, this study examined whether factors identified in reading comprehension exert similar influence in speech comprehension. Conceptually replicating previous research, a sentence continuation evaluation task was set up in two modalities, as a listening task and as a time-confined reading task (i.e. to correspond to the time constraint when listening). In line with previous findings from self-paced reading paradigms we found gender representations in language comprehension to be grounded in the interaction between textual (grammatical) and background (stereotypical) information. Extending previous research, the effect of stereotypical information was however modulated by presentation modality. In all, although speech and reading comprehension share higher-level processes of comprehension, this study provides first evidence that differences in comprehension might occur due to differences such as orthographic access or attention allocation.     

He throws like a girl (but only when he's sad): emotion affects sex-decoding of biological motion displays

Gender stereotypes have been implicated in sex-typed perceptions of facial emotion. Such interpretations were recently called into question because facial cues of emotion are confounded with sexually dimorphic facial cues. Here we examine the role of visual cues and gender stereotypes in perceptions of biological motion displays, thus overcoming the morphological confounding inherent in facial displays. In four studies, participants’ judgments revealed gender stereotyping. Observers accurately perceived emotion from biological motion displays (Study 1), and this affected sex categorizations. Angry displays were overwhelmingly judged to be men; sad displays were judged to be women (Studies 2–4). Moreover, this pattern remained strong when stimuli were equated for velocity (Study 3). We argue that these results were obtained because perceivers applied gender stereotypes of emotion to infer sex category (Study 4). Implications for both vision sciences and social psychology are discussed.     

Mental Health Stereotypes About Gay Men

Three studies were conducted to examine the mental health stereotypes about gay men among college student and therapist trainee samples. Results from Study 1 indicated that (a) college students and therapist trainees endorsed a stereotype of the mental health of gay men that was similar in terms of its content and strength, and (b) the stereotype was consistent with five DSM-IV-TR disorder categories: mood, anxiety, sexual and gender identity, eating, and personality disorders. In Study 2 and 3 we investigated whether homophobia or a tendency to report cultural beliefs could account for the lack of difference between college students and therapist trainees. Results did not support either explanation.     

Will you still hire me when I am over 50? The effects of implicit and explicit age stereotyping on resume evaluations

Multiple studies have found that older workers may be disadvantaged in their job search due to explicit age stereotypes. However, no published research has examined the effect of both explicit (conscious) and implicit (unconscious) negative age stereotypes against older workers on hiring decisions. The current study fills this gap by using an experimental design to simultaneously examine how both explicit and implicit age stereotypes affect the evaluation of resumes for older and younger job applicants. Participants completed measures of explicit age stereotypes via a questionnaire and implicit age stereotypes with an Implicit Association Test focused on older and younger working-age people. They then completed a resume screening task that included younger and older potential applicants. Results showed that participants’ explicit age stereotypes positively influenced the evaluation of younger applicants’ resumes but had no significant effect on the evaluation of older applicants’ resumes. Conversely, implicit age stereotypes had a negative effect on the evaluation of older applicants’ resumes but had no significant effect on the evaluation of younger applicants’ resumes. The results suggest that both implicit and explicit age stereotypes may harm older job applicants’ hireablity, but through different pathways.     

老年夫妻的老化刻板印象对死亡焦虑的行动者效应和对象效应

目的：考察老年人的老化刻板印象对自身及配偶的死亡焦虑的影响。方法：145对老年夫妻完成老化印象量表和死亡焦虑量表,并运用行动者-对象互依模型进行数据分析。结果：（1）老化刻板印象和死亡焦虑在夫妻内部分别具有一致性;（2）老化刻板印象对自身死亡焦虑的行动者效应显著;（3）丈夫的积极老化刻板印象对妻子死亡焦虑的对象效应显著,妻子的消极老化刻板印象对丈夫死亡焦虑的对象效应显著。结论：老年人的老化刻板印象不仅影响自身而且影响配偶的死亡焦虑,但夫妻之间的影响存在性别差异。