Girls’ Stuff,boys’ stuff and mental rotation: fourth graders rotate faster with gender-congruent stimuli

Males outperform females in mental-rotation for various reasons, e.g. stimuli characteristics. This study tested the hypothesis that girls and boys solve mental-rotation tests with female- or respectively male-stereotyped objects faster and more correctly. 116 fourth-graders solved a chronometric mental-rotation test with either female- or male-stereotyped action-based objects as stimulus material and reported their solution strategies and familiarity with handling the objects in real life. Boys reacted faster than girls only in the male-stimuli condition, while gender differences were inversed in the female-stimuli condition. All children were faster with gender-congruent material, probably provoked by gender-schematic processing or stereotype lift effects. Furthermore, analytic solving strategies appeared as efficient as holistic strategies in gender-congruent conditions, while holistic strategies were more advantageous only in gender-incongruent conditions. The congruence of stimulus material and gender best predicted children’s reaction time. Practical implications are considered regarding the importance of diverse and gender-equalised material to assess mental-rotation skills.     

刻板印象与内隐推理的实验研究

采用间接测量方法,探讨刻板印象与内隐推理效应。实验结果表明：91）刻板印象启动的内隐推理直接影响到不同句式的记忆;（2）内隐推理不受意识水平高低以及具体的记忆任务的影响。     

Age stereotypes,flexible goal adjustment,and well-being among Chinese older adults

Previous studies have examined the independent roles of positive age stereotypes (PAS) and negative age stereotypes (NAS) in successful aging. This study aimed to examine the joint effect of PAS and NAS on the well-being of Chinese older adults, and to further examine whether this effect was moderated by flexible goal adjustment (FGA). Using a cross-sectional design, 279 Chinese older adults (age range 60?97 years) completed measures related to age stereotypes, FGA, and well-being. The results showed that PAS interacted with NAS to predict well-being. In addition, the joint effect of PAS and NAS was moderated by FGA. Specially, for older adults with low FGA, NAS weakened the positive association between PAS and well-being; whereas, for older adults with high FGA, NAS could not influence the association between PAS and well-being. Tailored interventions to modify aging perceptions and to enhance coping flexibility competence might be helpful for promoting the well-being of older adults.     

Gender is what you look like: Emerging gender identities in young children and preoccupation with appearance

Abstract

Our work examining young children’s strong desire to wear gender-stereotypical clothing suggests that physical appearance may be early reflections of developing gender identities. We test implications of this association between gender and appearance with two studies examining young children’s preoccupation with looking pretty or handsome. Findings revealed that being more attuned to gender information was linked to greater appearance preoccupation. Girls were more preoccupied with their appearances compared to boys. Age was associated with greater appearance preoccupation in two of our three measures. These studies suggest that appearances may reflect developing gender identities, and that gender identity development can influence children’s appearance preoccupation. We suggest that future research examine the stability and generalizability of appearance preoccupation.     

Republican Voters Prefer Candidates Who Have Conservative‐Looking Faces: New Evidence From Exit Polls

Research shows people share common political facial stereotypes: They associate faces with political ideologies. Moreover, given that many voters rely on party affiliation, political ideology, and appearances to select political candidates, we might expect that political facial stereotypes would sway voting preferences and, by extension, the share of votes going to each candidate in an election. And yet few studies have examined whether having a stereotypically conservative‐looking (or liberal‐looking) face predicts a candidate's vote shares. Using data from U.S. election exit polls, we show that the Republican voters within each state are more likely to vote for a candidate (even a Democrat) the more that person has a stereotypically Republican‐looking face. By contrast, the voting choices of the Democratic voters within each state are unrelated to political facial stereotypes. Moreover, we show that the relationship between political facial stereotypes and voting does not depend on state‐level ideology: Republican voters in both right‐leaning (“red”) and left‐leaning (“blue”) states are more likely to vote for candidates with conservative‐looking faces. These results have several important practical and theoretical implications concerning the nature and impact of political facial stereotypes, which we discuss.     

System‐justifying behaviors: When feeling dependent on a system triggers gender stereotype‐consistent academic performance

Based on system‐justification theory, we hypothesized that men and women would perform in accordance with gender stereotypes mainly when justification of the system is necessary. In this research, system‐justification motivation was triggered using a system‐dependency manipulation. Study 1 shows that when feeling highly (vs. less) dependent on the system, people endorsed system‐justifying beliefs more. In Study 2, men performed better in math than in verbal domains, while women showed the reverse pattern, but only when they felt highly dependent on the system. Similar results were obtained on performance self‐evaluation. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Stereotypes and attribution processes in a multi‐ethnic Italian province

In South Tyrol, a multi‐ethnic Italian province (Italians, Germans, Ladins) with an autonomous statute, the intergroup attributions expressed by members of the Italian group were examined (relationship: Italians vs. Germans). It was found that, while the stereotypes are more favourable to the ingroup, the attributions are more favourable to the outgroup. The implications of these results for South Tyrol and community relations are discussed. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Manipulating stereotype rating tasks: understanding questionnaire context effects on measures of attitudes,social identity and stereotypes

Context effects in the questionnaire measurement of national stereotypes have been demonstrated in many studies since the early pioneering work of Katz and Braly (1933). More recently, self-categorization approaches (e.g. Oakes, Haslam and Turner, 1994) have been used to explain context effects, with the suggestion that variation in stereotype content can be conceptualized as variation in the comparative meaning of categories, as specified by the meta-contrast principle. However, the methodological consequences of stereotype context effects for survey responding remain poorly understood. Using an experimental questionnaire manipulation, the current study demonstrates empirically that varying the stereotype rating task presented to respondents can have knock-on effects on responding in other questionnaire modules—in this case, modules exploring attitudes to European integration and national and European social identities. It is suggested that stereotype rating tasks might activate some social identities whilst inhibiting the activation of others, and that these effects might be affected by the level of abstraction of the social identities concerned. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Gendered Views of Ability in Parents’ Perceptions of Their Children’s Academic Competencies

The present study was designed to examine whether parents’ views of their child’s academic competencies are structured by gendered conceptions of abilities. In a longitudinal research design, a group of parents (N = 391) were asked to assess their third-grade child’s competence in mathematics and Finnish and to respond to a set of attitude statements; when the child reached the fifth grade, the parents were asked to reassess his/her competencies. It was found that the influence of the gender stereotype was partly domain-specific: The stereotype concerning Finnish organized the parental competence assessments as early as the child’s third grade and also predicted the assessments made about the child over the next two grades, whereas the stereotype concerning mathematics only predicted the assessments made as late as the fifth grade. In the Finnish competence assessments, the gender stereotype moderated the overall gender-of-the-child effect, whereas in the mathematics competence assessments, the gender-of-the-child effect was evinced only by the parent group that endorsed the gender stereotype. Culture-bound gender expectations and attitudes toward the expectations are significant, then, for parents’ assessments of their child’s competencies as early as the elementary school years.     

Social incentives for gender differences in the propensity to initiate negotiations: Sometimes it does hurt to ask

Four experiments show that gender differences in the propensity to initiate negotiations may be explained by differential treatment of men and women when they attempt to negotiate. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants evaluated written accounts of candidates who did or did not initiate negotiations for higher compensation. Evaluators penalized female candidates more than male candidates for initiating negotiations. In Experiment 3, participants evaluated videotapes of candidates who accepted compensation offers or initiated negotiations. Male evaluators penalized female candidates more than male candidates for initiating negotiations; female evaluators penalized all candidates for initiating negotiations. Perceptions of niceness and demandingness explained resistance to female negotiators. In Experiment 4, participants adopted the candidate’s perspective and assessed whether to initiate negotiations in same scenario used in Experiment 3. With male evaluators, women were less inclined than men to negotiate, and nervousness explained this effect. There was no gender difference when evaluator was female.