Goldberg revisited: What's in an author's name

The present research was a replication and extension of Goldberg's 1968 study of performance evaluation. 360 college students (180 male; 180 female) were asked to evaluate an academic article in the fields of politics, psychology of women or education (judged masculine, feminine, and neutral, respectively) that was written either by a male, female, or an author whose name was initialized. Results indicated that the articles were differentially perceived and evaluated according to the name of the author. An article written by a male was evaluated more favorably than if the author was not male. Subjects' bias against women was stronger when they believed the author with the initialized name was female.