Teaching gender-related material: The effect of group sex composition on perceptions of a female instructor

This study investigated how group sex composition affects female and male students' perceptions of female instructors who teach in the area of counseling women. Three components of person perception were assessed: cognitive, affective, and behavioral. The cognitive domain included evaluations of the instructor and the subject matter presented; the affective domain included emotional responses to the instructor and the subject matter; and the behavioral domain included actions in response to the instructor, operationalized as the number of questions asked by students. Students with some interest in a career in the helping professions viewed one of two videotapes either with a group of same-sex peers or in a group in which they were the only male or female. One tape described a gender-neutral topic (psychology and the law) and the other described a female gender-related topic (sex bias in counseling women). The same female instructor made both presentations. Students then completed the measures. As predicted, the sex composition of the student group affected person perception, especially in the affective and behavior domains. Recommendations are made for future research.This study was supported by a small grant from the University Research Institute, University of Texas at Austin. Appreciation is expressed to Sherry Fowler, Bob Haverstick, and Kathy Thomas for help with data collection and to Carolyn Bates and Ken Wilgus for coding the open-ended responses. A paper based on this research was presented at the meetings of the American Psychological Association, August 1987.