Stereotypes and Perecptions of Gender

Stereotypes and Perceptions of Gender

Do Stereotypes Affect Perceptions?

I intend to demonstrate that different stereotypes of any gender affect people's perceptions of those genders. The stereotype can be a specific sex role as in women who shop or men who use power tools; it can also be an emotion or a personality trait such as happy or easily angered. These stereotypes that were probably created long ago still affect people's perceptions of men and women, especially in the lab setting.

Angry Men and Happy Women

In the journal article The Confounded Nature of Angry Men and Happy Women, Becker, Kenrick, Neuberg, Blackwell, and Smith founded a study in which participants were to assert the gender of a gender-non-specific cartoon face. According to the article, every different species has the inherent ability to be able to recognize their own kind and in addition identify gender, age, and mating possibilities. The researchers also point out the fact that in our species males and females pose different threats and offer different things. For example, males are generally more aggressive and more likely to hurt another person. This, the researchers believe, could be enough for someone to declare that angry facial expressions belong to males. On the flip side, females are generally regarded as nonviolent and nurturing, which would likely cause one to find the happier faces to be more feminine (Becker, Kenrick, Neuberg, Blackwell, & Smith, 2007). An occurrence such as this can be explained in psychological terms as well.

Evaluative Priming Technique

The phrase 'evaluative priming technique' refers to the social psychological idea that the assessment of a stereotype-consistent word or, in this case, facial expression, is made a lot quicker after the presentation of a prime of the group. In layman's terms, people are faster to identify words with social groups when a stereotype of that association comes to mind. In an example from the Social Psychology book used in class, people were faster to evaluate the word 'lazy' with the picture of an African-American and slower when presented with a white person; vice-versa, 'hard-working' was more easily identified to be a Caucasian than an African-American (Taylor, Peplau, & Sears, 196).

Outcome

Just as in the example above, this study used word association tasks, as well as reaction time tasks and identifying tasks, showing a series of rather androgynous faces to the participants. After seven different procedures including both words and faces, the researchers found that more participants delegated angry faces to males and happy faces to females. The reaction time to make these two assertions was much quicker than to make the angry female or happy male decision (Becker et al. 2007). Stereotypes go much deeper than just emotions like 'happy' and 'angry.' These stereotypes are often seen in in-group/out-group situations.

In-Group/Out-Group Stereotypes

In a 2003 study, Eckes, Trautner, and Behrendt conducted a study among German high school students between the ages of 16 and 19. The goal was to determine the connections to an in-group, to a gender, or to an out-group. Each of the students classified themselves as either male or female and then classified themselves again according to a specific in-group that they belonged to within their gender (i.e. athlete, prissy, macho, et cetera). After that, the teenagers would answer different questions based on their group and other groups, including other-gendered in-groups and out-groups (Eckes, Trautner, & Behrendt, 2003).

The researchers based this study on the in-group/out-group effect, which states that people tend to favor their own group over groups to which they don't belong. This favoritism is also called 'intergroup bias' or 'ethnocentrism.' Eckes et al. (2003) also looked at the out-group homogeneity effect which basically states that people often view out-group members as more similar than their own in-group. There have been numerous studies on these two phenomena with adults but very few regarding adolescents. Another facet of the study that had not been incorporated into many studies before was the gender-bias and whether or not this would affect the intergroup bias (Eckes et al. 2003).

According to the Social Identity Theory, once children learn that there are two genders and that they belong to only one, they begin to favor their own gender and start to be reluctant to, or even despise, the opposite gender. As adolescence slowly creeps into the picture, sexual and romantic feelings for the other gender (in heterosexual children) begin to confuse the gender-bias further. This study was organized to diffuse as much confusion about gender-bias and intergroup bias as possible (Eckes et al. 2003).

Procedure

The students in this study had many tasks to complete. First, they had to create a list of female and male sub-groups, both ones that they would like to associate with, and ones that they would not. Next, the participants were asked to rank each of the sub-groups on a scale of -3 to 3 on 'good-bad,' 'positive-negative,' 'pleasant-unpleasant,' 'popular-unpopular,' and 'attractive-unattractive.' Third, the students had to pick attributes from a list and associate them with the different sub-groups; then they had to estimate what percentage of the members of each group mirrored each specific attribute. On the same -3 to 3 point scale, students were asked to rate each attribute. Lastly, the students had to choose the sub-group to which they belonged (Eckes et al. 2003).

Results

The results that followed this intensive test were very interesting. The researchers were correct about ambivalent attitudes toward own-gender and other-gender out-groups. When measuring the correlation between the number of positive attributes of an out-group and the number of negative attributes, they found a strangely positive correlation. Another interesting fact is the students showed higher ambivalence to other-gender out-groups than to own-gender out-groups. Just as the researchers had hypothesized, the adolescents favored their in-group over any other group, and favored the other-gender out-groups to out-groups of their own gender (Eckes et al. 2003).

Why We Stereotype

In an article from The Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Krueger, Hasman, Acevedo, and Villano attempt to discover how and why people stereotype each other based on perceptions of gender. One of the first reasons discussed in this article is the Salience Effect. According to this principle of social psychology, when a member of a group does something salient or vivid (such as vicious cursing), we tend to remember this fact and apply it to all members of that specific group. The downside of this is that it is completely automatic, not a greater mental feat, which causes us to make assumptions about people that may not be true at all (Krueger, Hasman, Acevedo, & Villano, 2003).

Another explanation for why stereotypes are prevalent among all humans is called the Self-Categorization Theory. This theory assumes that people stereotype both themselves and other people by minimizing differences between themselves and their in-group, and maximizing differences between theirs and all other groups. Although both of these theories hold true with most in-groups and out-groups, the researchers of this study were not sure if they would explain stereotypes between genders, since there are only two (Krueger et al. 2003). The study continued on studying only gender stereotypes.

Methods

The researchers recruited about the same number of male and female participants from one university in America and another university in Italy. Each of the students was given a list of 10 masculine words, 10 feminine words, and 10 gender neutral words from the Bem Sex Role Inventory. In each gender, the students were asked to estimate the percentage of the specific gender could be described by the trait, a rating (1-9) of how typical the trait was of the target gender in the student's personal opinion, and a rating (1-9) of how typical the trait was of the specific gender in terms of cultural stereotype (Krueger et al. 2003).

Results

The results were more or less what the authors had hypothesized. As predicted, the percentage that the students estimated of each specific trait for both genders was the main predictor of the estimate of trait typicality. For example, if a student estimated that a high percentage of men were 'independent,' that same student was more likely to estimate that it is very typical of men to be independent. Raters in both the American and the Italian samples emphasized gender differences as far as percentages go, but not where the estimates of typicality are concerned (Krueger et al. 2003).

The authors of this study also believe that stereotypes of genders may just be a type of classical conditioning. They relate this to greater dislike for a particular country, if a person continually sees negative words associated with a certain country, they are more likely to dislike it. According to Krueger et al. the same classical conditioning may go for genders, causing greater negativity towards a particular one (Krueger et al. 2003).

In the Lives of Professionals

Krueger and others may be correct in their assumption that classical conditioning may affect stereotypes, but does their assumption extend to only commonplace people or to professionals as well? According to an article in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, mental health trainees were found to overestimate sex differences between 50 and 67 percent of the time (Vogel, Wester, Heesacker, Boysen, & Seeman, 2006). This is an issue because if the mental health professionals are using stereotypes to assess certain clients, those clients may not be getting the help that they need.

In the study performed by Vogel, Wester, Heesacker, Boysen, and Seeman, mental health trainees were asked to make assertions about how willing different men and women were to talk about their feelings. These beliefs of the trainees were then compared to what each of the men and women from the study actually said. The researchers found that the mental health trainees assumed that the women were more comfortable talking about their feelings and the men less comfortable (Vogel et al. 2006). This study shows that even people who are professionals and whose job is to remain unbiased are likely to revert to stereotypes when dealing with different genders.

Conclusion

Stereotypes based on gender are everywhere. People may learn them from hearing other people talk, from making assumptions that span an entire gender, or just from classical conditioning. Either way, stereotypes that people hold affect the perceptions that they have, whether they are professionals or otherwise. Hopefully, we can try to remain aware of these stereotypes and not let them interfere with our lives.

References

Becker, D. Vaughn, Kenrick, Douglas T., Neuberg, Steven L., Blackwell, K.C., & Smith, Dylan

M. (2007). The Confounded Nature of Angry Men and Happy Women. Journal of

Personality and Social Psychology, 92(2), 179-190.

Eckes, Thomas, Trautner, Hanns M., & Behrendt, Regina (2005). Gender Subgroups and

Intergroup Perception: Adolescents' Views of Own-Gender and Other-Gender Groups.

Journal of Social Psychology, 145(1), 85-112.

Krueger, Joachim I., Hasman, Julie F., Acevedo, Melissa, & Villano, Paola (2003). Perceptions

of Trait Typicality in Gender Stereotypes: Examining the Role of Attribution and

Categorization Processes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29(1). 108-116.

Taylor, Shelley E., Peplau, Letitia Anne, & Sears, David O. (2006). Social Psychology. Upper

Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall. (Original work published 1994)

Vogel, David L., Wester, Steven R., Heesacker, Martin, Boysen, Guy A., & Seeman, Joann

(2006). Gender Differences in Emotional Expression: Do Mental Health Trainees

Overestimate the Magnitude? Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 25(3), 305-333.