Sociocultural Approach: Effect of Stereotypes Flashcards
What is a stereotype threat?
- occurs when one is in a situation where there is a threat of being judged or treated stereotypically or a fear of doing something that would inadvertently confirm that stereotype
Steele and Aronson (1995) can be used for…
- effect of stereotypes and research methods
Steele and Aronson (1995) - aim
- to see the effect of stereotype threat on performance
Steele and Aronson (1995) - procedure
- gave a verbal test made up of very difficult multiple-choice questions
- when one group was told it was a genuine test of their verbal abilities, African American participants scored significantly lower than European American participants
- in another group that was presented with the same test but told that it was not diagnostic of their ability, African American students scored higher than the first group, and their performance was not significantly different from the European American students
- however since it’s not possible to argue that awareness of racial stereotyping was the actual cause of the difference, they did 1 more version of the experiment where the participants had to fill in a personal information questionnaire
- half of the questionnaires asked the participants to identify their race
Steele and Aronson (1995) - findings & conclusion
- African Americans who had to identify their race did poorly; those that did not did just as well as their European American peers
- researchers argue that you don’t need to believe in a stereotype for it to affect your behavior
- stereotype threat turns on spotlight anxiety, which causes emotional distress and pressure that may undermine performance
- students under the stereotype threat often underperform and this can naturally limit their educational prospects
Steele and Aronson (1995) - evaluation
strengths:
- study made use of an independent samples design - verbal scores from participants’ SATs were collected prior to the study
- participant variability was minimized
limitations:
- sample: Stanford University students - may not be representative and thus difficult to generalize the findings
- a matched-pairs design may have been a better approach than an independent samples design
- although there is a difference between the two average scores, it does not necessarily mean that the participants experienced stereotype threat
- their salience about their racial identity and their levels of stress during the exam were not measured in this first variation of the experiment
- later variations of the experiment showed, however, that this was most probably the case
What is gender schema theory?
- a cognitive theory that uses an information-processing approach to explain how gender development occurs
- argues that children are active information processors and gender schemas influence children’s behavior
What are the 2 types of gender-related schemas? (Martin & Halverson)
- superordinate schemas: helps children categorize objects, characteristics, and traits into basic male and female categories
- own-sex schemas: used to identify and learn information consistent with a child’s own sex
Martin and Halverson (1983) can be used for…
- schema theory, the effect of stereotypes on behaviour, research methods in cultural influences on behaviour, enculturation, or social roles
Martin and Halverson (1983) - aim
- to investigate how schema plays a role in how children understand and learn about gender roles
Martin and Halverson (1983) - procedure
- sample: children
- given a test to assess their level of gender stereotyping prior to the experiment
- children were presented with pictures of males and females in activities that were either in line with gender role schemas (ie. a girl playing with a doll) - or inconsistent with gender role schemas - (ie. a girl playing with a toy gun)
- children were asked to identify the sex of the person in the picture (man, woman, boy, or girl) - they were not told that they would have to remember the images
- a week later, the children were asked to remember what they had seen in the pictures
- researchers carried out a probed recall procedure
- they were also asked about pictures they had not seen to test for response bias
- children were asked, “Do you remember seeing a picture of something doing (activity) in the pictures I showed you last week?”
- they were then asked if the person they remember seeing was a girl, a boy, a man, a woman, or “don’t remember”
- they were also asked to rate their level of confidence on a four-point scale
Martin and Halverson (1983) - findings & conclusion
- for pictures with female actors, those activities consistent with gender stereotypes were more often remembered than inconsistent activities, whereas for pictures with male actors, those activities inconsistent with the stereotype were remembered better
- this may indicate that male stereotyping as to what is “allowed” for males is more defined and rigid than for females in this population
- regardless of their level of stereotyping, children had distorted memories of pictures that were not consistent with gender role schemas - they remembered the picture of a girl holding a hammer as a picture of a boy holding a hammer
- children were more confident and demonstrated less distortion of memory when the stories were consistent with gender schema
- supports the theory that stereotypes affect both the encoding and retrieval of information - evidence of distortion in encoding
- when they were asked to identify the sex of the person in the picture in the first phase of the study, children sometimes made errors that made the sex consistent with gender stereotypes
- they also made errors in the recall or retrieval of the information
Martin and Halverson (1983) - evaluation
strengths:
- study is highly standardized and can be replicated to determine its level of reliability
- study controlled for response bias - first, they asked them about images that were not seen in the initial part of the study - they asked them about their level of confidence
- those that claimed to remember images that were not seen tended to have very low levels of confidence
- researchers avoided a “forced choice” response of “boy” or “girl” and gave the children five choices to choose from: man, woman, boy, girl, “I don’t know”
limitations:
- low ecological validity - task is very artificial
- study is highly controlled - may not reflect how children process information about gender in the real world
- scores on the test were not correlated with memory distortion - questions how schema was operationalized
- cross-sectional and not longitudinal
- does not provide empirical support for the assumption that information is actively pursued by children and that their behavior develops as a result of schema development
