Behavioral assimilation and nested social categories: exploring gender stereotype priming and stereotype threat
Year: 2007
Type: article
Abstract: The present research examines the influence of level of social categorization on behavioral assimilation to gender stereotypes.Specifically, this research examines both superordinate gender categories (men, women) and prototypical gender subgroups (businessmen, homemakers) to determine whether the level of categorization differentially affects behavioral assimilation.This research also examines whether stereotype threat or category stereotype priming best explains the influence of gender group primes at the two levels.Study 1 primed participants with superordinate gender categories or prototypical gender subgroups to determine the effect of these primes upon performance on a gender-stereotyped task.Results showed that the performance of male participants was influenced by subgroup primes such that performance was lowered when the participants had been primed to think about "homemakers" as a social category, compared with other gender primes.No priming effects were detected for superordinate gender primes or for female participants.Study 2 examined the relationship between the relevant stereotype and the task by framing the same task either as one on which males or females are stereotypically expected to succeed.Again, male participants were influenced by the gender subgroup primes, with the direction of priming effects on performance depending on which gender stereotype was activated.As in Study 1, no assimilation effects were observed for female participants.Study 3 focused on female iii performance, replicating the priming conditions from Study 1, while explicitly making primes more self-involving .For female participants, the only demonstration of priming effects occurred in this third study, when the essay primes were made explicitly selfinvolving by invoking an interaction context.Category stereotype priming, not stereotype threat, better explains the pattern of results observed across these three studies, although stereotype threat cannot be conclusively ruled out.Finally, implications of this research and questions for future research are discussed.iv This work is dedicated to my parents, who were my first teachers, and all of the other teachers that taught me to love learning.
Author: Martha Leslie Wade
Institution: The Ohio State University
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2595706253