POW Chapter 3: Gender Stereotypes and Gender Differences

Gender stereotypes: a set of shared cultural beliefs about men’s and women’s behavior, appearance, interests, personality, and so on.

Beliefs of Americans: According to Americans, men and women differ psychologically in many ways.

Stereotypical characteristics of women: emotional, caring, soft, care about appearance, talkative, submissive, feminine, manipulative, etc.

Stereotypical characteristics of men: tall, physically strong, respected, leaders, sexist, like sports, providers, aggressive, unfaithful, etc.

Despite these stereotypes, attitudes about gender roles have changed considerably over the past 30 years in American culture.

Gender stereotypes considered harmless among Americans, despite American society’s deep commitment to the principles of equality and justice,,, and they are actually very powerful.

Basic goals of social psychologists:

• Comprehension: tendency to fill in a lot of assumed information about a person to understand him/her until having more actual information. Stereotyping for comprehension can be either positive or negative. → This means that people try to understand more about the person than they actually know and may make errors in the process.

• Self-enhancement: Purposes tend to be negative, this means that people make themselves feel better by denigrating another group

Attitudes towards stereotypes are changing now but stereotypes still exist to some extent.

Implicit stereotypes: learned, automatic associated between social categories, measured through reaction time.

Implicit Association Test (IAT): method used to measure implicit stereotypes.

• Measures individuals’ relative strength of association between different pairs of concepts.

• Reaction time will be fast for items one associates more strongly, and slower for items one associated together less.

  • Advantage of reaction time: people can’t fake their reaction time, Ex: inability to hide socially unacceptable stereotyped ideas.

• Findings of a study: Implicit stereotyping is stronger in some nations than others; to the extent that people in a country stereotype boys and men as better at science, boys in that country perform better than girls do on standardized science tests; Implicit stereotypes held by adults and youth in a country discourage girls from studying science.

Intersectionality: essential principles of feminist theory.

Intersectional approach: the idea that gender stereotypes may not be the same in different ethnic groups, not every gender stereotype applies to every ethnic group.

Elements of gender-ethnic stereotypes:

• Do not represent adding gender stereotypes to ethnic stereotypes, or ethnic stereotypes to gender stereotypes.

• Example: Black women are stereotyped as athletic rather than Middle Eastern women, Latinx women, White women, or Asian American women.

Within an ethnic group, men and women have both common and different stereotyped traits.

• Both Latinx men and Latinx women are described as hardworking, but Latinx men are described as arrogant whereas Latinx women are not.

• White women and Asian American women are stereotyped as intelligent, but women from the other ethnic groups are not.

Stereotype threat: a situation in which there is a negative stereotype about a person’s group, and the person is concerned about being judged or treated negatively on the basis of that stereotype.

• Underperformance due to extra pressure to succeed

• Underperformance due to threats to self-integrity and belonging.

Intersection of intelligence and ethnicity: Evidence from meta analyses:

• The size of the stereotype threat effect on women’s math performance ranges between d = 0.17 and d = 0.36.

• The size of the stereotype threat effect for African Americans and Latinx on intellectual tests is somewhat larger, around d = 0.50.

Intersection of gender and ethnicity: Evidence from research:

• When Asian American women’s ethnic identity is primed, they perform better on math problems.

• When their gender identity is primed, they perform worse, compared with a control group that has had neither identity primed.

Underperformance due to extra pressure to succeed: People in a stereotype threat situation are usually motivated to disconfirm the negative stereotype about their group. → This leads to extra pressure to perform well which in turn leads people to exert more effort, and sometimes that helps their performance (e.g., on easy tasks), but in other cases (e.g., difficult tasks), the pressure becomes highly stressful and hurts performance.

• The pressure can also deplete working memory capacity, which is needed for difficult intellectual tasks.

Underperformance due to threats to self-integrity and belonging: To protect themselves, people may engage in various kinds of self-handicapping, such as setting lower goals for themselves so that they don’t fail, which only makes them reach lesser goals. Stereotype threat can also reduce a person’s sense of belonging, reducing their motivation and perhaps leading them to withdraw from the situation.

Ways to counteract stereotype threat: Reconstrue (think differently about) a threatening situation as less threatening. Use coping strategies to deal with threatening situations and to maintain their self-integrity.

Stereotypes about trans people: A study on stereotypes of transgender individuals identified a stereotype that trans individuals are gay or lesbian. Some people who conflate sexual orientation and gender identity may not even be aware of gender diversity, and they react to a trans individual with anti-gay prejudice.

• Gender-binary privilege and stereotypes can be highly salient for transgender individuals.

• Trans individuals: mentally ill: Research has shown that trans individuals are stereotyped as mentally ill.

• Prejudice against trans people because they violate traditional gender stereotypes.

  • Evidence from research: In a study by Broussard and Warner, participants read a vignette depicting either a transgender or cisgender character who presents as either gender conforming or gender nonconforming. → The researchers found that liking for transgender characters was lower among participants who held traditional gender-role beliefs.

  • Second research: In a series of experiments, researchers first demonstrated bias against transgender individuals in hiring. → They found that transgender and cisgender applicants were perceived as equally competent, but the transgender applicants were rated as less likeable and less hireable.

Intergroup Contact Theory: classic theory in social psychology that asserts that, under certain conditions, contact between members of different social groups can reduce stereotyping and prejudice, this intervention can reduce bias but does not eliminate it completely.

Assumption of gender binary: assumption that there are only two genders, female and male.

Complications in studies of gender differences: (1) The results of different studies often contradict each other. (2) Sometimes a single study that finds a gender difference will be picked up by the media and included in textbooks, and other studies of the same behavior that found no gender difference will be ignored.

Meta-analysis: a statistical technique that allows researchers to combine the results of multiple research studies on a particular question.

• Steps: compute difference between male and female participants using d = (M1 - M2)/s ,,, then average all the d values over all the studies.

Steps in conducting a meta-analysis:

• Locate all previous studies using databases: The researcher locates all previous studies on the question being investigated using computerized searches of databases such as PsycINFO or Web of Science.

• Compute difference between male and female participants: The researcher computes a statistic that measures how big the difference between male participants and female participants was and what the direction of the difference was.

  • This statistic is called d. The formula for it is 𝑑=(𝑀_𝑀−𝑀_𝐹)/𝑠, where:

  • M_M: mean or average score for male participants,

  • M_F: mean score for female participants, and

  • s: average standard deviation of the male scores and the female scores.

• Average all the d values over all the studies: When all studies are combined, this average d value tells what the direction of the gender difference is and how large the difference is.

Aggression: behavior intended to harm another person

Gender difference: males being more aggressive than females

• This gender difference appears about as early as children begin playing with each other, around the age of 2.

• The difference continues consistently throughout the school years and as people get older they become less aggressive.

• The idea of mean girls: Girls do not express their aggression physically the way boys do but rather are mean to each other, spreading degrading rumors or excluding someone from a social group.

Indirect or relational aggression: Behavior intended to hurt others by damaging their peer relationships → ex: spreading degrading rumors or excluding someone from a social group

Causes of gender difference in aggression:

• Nature: males are bigger and stronger and more testosterone so biologically more aggressive

• Nurture: environmental forces: aggressiveness is a key part of the male role in our society, whereas aggressiveness is a violation of the female role. Second, boys imitate men, who are aggressive, and girls imitate women, who are unaggressive. Third, boys receive more rewards for aggression and less punishment for it than girls do.

Deindividuation: a state in which a person has become anonymous and has therefore lost their individual identity-- and therefore the pressure to conform to gender roles.

• Experiment: Tested the hypothesis that gender roles are a powerful force creating gender differences in aggression.

  • Removal of influences of gender roles: The technique of deindividuation was used to produce a situation that removed the influences of gender roles.

  • Disappearance of gender differences in aggression: The results of the experiment indicated that the significant gender differences in aggression disappeared when the influences of gender roles were removed.

Impulsivity: the tendency to act spontaneously and without careful thoughts.

• Stereotype is that men are more impulsive risk takers vs women who are less likely to do so.

• Aspects of impulsivity: Reward sensitivity: being especially likely to do something because it will feel good right now, Sensation seeking, Risk taking, and Impulse control: being able to control one’s actions.

• Findings of meta-analysis: Men scored higher than women on risk taking and sensation seeking. There were no gender differences in reward sensitivity or impulse control.

Stereotypes that males have higher activity levels: meta-analysis found that there is a moderate gender difference, with boys and men having the higher activity level. A small difference is present from infancy, and the difference gets larger with age, at least among children.

• Causes of gender difference in activity level: Social interactions (Small difference in infancy is magnified by social interactions, especially when boys increasingly play actively with other boys and not with girls; Boys egg each other on to more and more active play) and Development of precocity of girls (Girls are ahead of boys in development, including brain development. As children grow older, they learn to control their activity more. Lower activity level of girls represents a greater ability to control activity because of being more mature than boys.)

Self-esteem: the level of global positive regard that one has for oneself.

• Self-esteem problems in adolescent girls: Elementary school girls may have self-esteem equal to that of boys, but the problems begin in early adolescence. To test this hypothesis, effect sizes were computed by age group in a meta-analysis. → The results showed that in early adolescence the gender difference is small, and it grows larger in high school.

  • The gender difference is close to zero in adulthood.

• Small gender difference in self-esteem is present for White Americans, whereas it is not found for Black Americans.

Self-confidence: a person’s belief that they can be successful at a particular task or in a particular domain such as athletics or academics.

• Study found that men are somewhat over-confident while women are somewhat under-confident

Men as more likely to help others: A meta-analysis of studies of gender differences in helping behavior found that men, on average, helped others more than women did. The gender difference is somewhere in the small to moderate range.

• Examination by Eagly and Crowley: Alice Eagly and Maureen Crowley examined the situations that produced more helping by men and those that produced more helping by women. They noted that some kinds of helping are part of the male role and some are part of the female role. → Example: Helping that is heroic or chivalrous falls within the male role, whereas nurturance and caretaking fall within the female role.

Narcissism: a personality trait characterized by an excessive focus on oneself, along with a grandiose, exaggerated sense of one’s own talents, an extreme need for admiration, and a lack of empathy for others.

Result of gender difference in helping: gender differences are highly dependent on the situation or context in which they are observed.

Females: more anxious than males: Studies show that girls and women are more fearful and anxious than boys and men, although the difference is not large. One large, cross-national study found d = –0.38 for self-reports of general anxiety. This means that girls and women are more willing to admit that they have anxieties and fears. Possible causes of self-reports of anxiety: Higher levels of anxiety in female respondents than in male respondents. High willingness of women to admit anxiety.

Differences model: belief that women and men are very different from each other.

Gender similarities hypothesis: hypothesis that men and women are similar on most, but not all, psychological variables.

• Evidence from meta-analyses: 78% of the gender differences were small or smaller.

• Exception of the statement of hypothesis: Aggressive behavior: Gender difference is moderate in size, although not large.

  • Some aspects of sexuality.

• Powerful evidence against gender binary: The gender similarities hypothesis implies that, psychologically, males and females are not in two separate, non-overlapping categories as assumed by the gender binary. Instead, the distributions of scores for females and males on psychological traits are close together and overlap a great deal.

Emergence of new models of human behavior: In the advent of 1970s, feminist psychologists sought to create new models of human behavior that would overcome gender stereotypes.

• Androgyny: The combination of masculine and feminine psychological characteristics in an individual.

Traditional scale: unidimensional (one-dimensional) bipolar (two opposite ends) continuum:

• It is a test on which you respond true or false about yourself to a series of items such as “I am somewhat afraid of the dark”.

• A score is computed, over all the items, that places you at some point along the bipolar continuum.

  • Women would be more likely to say true to “I am somewhat afraid of the dark”, so the item is placed on the scale.

  • Implicit Assumption: “femininity” is the quality of women that differentiates them from men.

Criticisms of masculinity-femininity scales: Feminist psychologists raised the issue of whether femininity and masculinity are really opposites of each other.

Concept of androgyny: having both masculine and feminine psychological characteristics.

Based on two-dimensional model: The concept of androgyny is based on a two-dimensional model of masculinity-femininity. One of the dimensions is femininity, ranging from low to high, and the other is masculinity ranging from low to high.

• A person who has a high score on both femininity and masculinity will be androgynous.

Classification of people based on scales:

• A person who scores high on both the masculinity and the femininity scales is classified as androgynous

• high on femininity and low on masculinity = feminine

• low on femininity and high on masculinity = masculine

• low on both scales = undifferentiated

Advantages of androgyny: acknowledges that people might be both highly masculine and highly feminine.

Criticisms of androgyny: scale of androgyny is now over 40 years old. Cultural ideals of masculinity and femininity have changed a lot over those decades.

Androgyny of 1970s: it might be seen as a forerunner of the concept of genderqueer today. Androgynous individual blends masculinity and femininity as the genderqueer individual does.

Androgyny: personality traits, behaviors: androgyny is about personality traits and behaviors (independent, forceful, etc)

Genderqueer: identity: Genderqueer & transgender are about identity (I identify as a man, I identify as a woman, or I identify as neither or both)