Ch. 5 The contents and origins of gender stereotypes Flashcards
Week 1 (20 cards)
What are gender stereotypes?
shared beliefs about the traits, qualities, and tendencies associated with different sex categories.
What is communion?
traits such as warmth, connectedness, kindness, nurturing, and emotional sensitivity. traditionally feminine traits.
What is agency?
traits such as competence, assertiveness, competitiveness, and status. traditionally masculine traits.
Are gender stereotypes consistent?
often based off communion and agency traits and are fairly consistent across cultures and has remained mostly unchanged in the past 30 yrs, possibly due to unchanging social roles delineated by gender.
What is the stereotype content model?
theory proposing that stereotypes about social groups fall along communion and agency dimensions and that groups may be seen as high or low in both dimensions.
What is the women-are-wonderful effect?
the tendency for ppl to view stereotypes about women more favourably than those about men. so women have more ‘pos’ stereotypes.
What is the think manager-think male effect?
stereotypes of men and managers overlap more than stereotypes of women and managers.
What is gender prescription?
traits that ppl believe women and men should have.
What is gender proscription?
traits that ppl believe women and men should not have.
What are the social consequences of violating prescriptive and proscriptive gender stereotypes?
gender stereotypes prescribe how ppl are expected to behave socially. women are expected to act in a warm manner and men in a self-reliant manner. there’s also proscribed or restricted social behaviours such that women are punished socially for acting assertive, and men for expressing emotions.
What are the theories about the origin of gender stereotypes?
evolutionary theory: gender stereotypes emerge from genetically coded sex differences. Social role theory and biosocial constructionist theories: propose that divisions of labour and occupation btwn genders is responsible for creating gender stereotypes.
What are the perspectives on the accuracy of gender stereotypes?
not necessarily inaccurate, some gender diffs are empirically observed like, communication tendencies, helpfulness and personality traits. but many of these observations may be driven by the procedures and methods used to test them and may not reflect true gender diffs. gender vs statistical beliefs and the diff kinds of accuracy are relevant.
What are generic beliefs?
beliefs about categories as wholes without reference to numbers or proportions.
What are statistical beliefs?
beliefs about categories that involve numbers or proportions.
What is direction accuracy?
refers to which group has more of a given quality. so accuracy regarding the direction of a sex difference. (which sex exceeds the other)
What is discrepancy accuracy?
how close to or far from reality is the stereotype. so accuracy regarding the specific size and direction of a sex difference. (how large is the sex difference)
What is rank-order accuracy?
accuracy regarding the relative sizes of sex differences across different dimensions. so which sex differences are larger than others.
What is an individualistic culture?
north america or western europe. value independence and self-reliance and prioritize individual goals and needs over group goals and needs.
What is a collectivistic culture?
south america, asia, africa, middle east. value fitting in and group solidarity and prioritize group goals and needs over individual goals and needs.
