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Research Article

Twenty Years of Stereotype Threat Research: A Review of Psychological Mediators

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Department of Psychology, Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, Lancashire, England, United Kingdom

  • Charlotte R. Pennington, 
  • Derek Heim, 
  • Andrew R. Levy, 
  • Derek T. Larkin

PLOS

  • Published: January 11, 2016
  • https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0146487
  • Reader Comments

Table 1

This systematic literature review appraises critically the mediating variables of stereotype threat. A bibliographic search was conducted across electronic databases between 1995 and 2015. The search identified 45 experiments from 38 articles and 17 unique proposed mediators that were categorized into affective/subjective ( n = 6), cognitive ( n = 7) and motivational mechanisms ( n = 4). Empirical support was accrued for mediators such as anxiety, negative thinking, and mind-wandering, which are suggested to co-opt working memory resources under stereotype threat. Other research points to the assertion that stereotype threatened individuals may be motivated to disconfirm negative stereotypes, which can have a paradoxical effect of hampering performance. However, stereotype threat appears to affect diverse social groups in different ways, with no one mediator providing unequivocal empirical support. Underpinned by the multi-threat framework, the discussion postulates that different forms of stereotype threat may be mediated by distinct mechanisms.

Citation: Pennington CR, Heim D, Levy AR, Larkin DT (2016) Twenty Years of Stereotype Threat Research: A Review of Psychological Mediators. PLoS ONE 11(1): e0146487. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0146487

Editor: Marina A. Pavlova, University of Tuebingen Medical School, GERMANY

Received: June 23, 2015; Accepted: December 17, 2015; Published: January 11, 2016

Copyright: © 2016 Pennington et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.

Funding: The authors acknowledge support toward open access publishing by the Graduate School and the Department of Psychology at Edge Hill University. The funders had no role in the systematic review, data collection or analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

The present review examines the mediators of stereotype threat that have been proposed over the past two decades. It appraises critically the underlying mechanisms of stereotype threat as a function of the type of threat primed, the population studied, and the measures utilized to examine mediation and performance outcomes. Here, we propose that one reason that has precluded studies from finding firm evidence of mediation is the appreciation of distinct forms of stereotype threat.

Stereotype Threat: An Overview

Over the past two decades, stereotype threat has become one of the most widely researched topics in social psychology [ 1 , 2 ]. Reaching its 20 th anniversary, Steele and Aronson’s [ 3 ] original article has gathered approximately 5,000 citations and has been referred to as a 'modern classic' [ 4 , 5 , 6 ]. In stark contrast to theories of genetic intelligence [ 7 , 8 ] (and see [ 9 ] for debate), the theory of stereotype threat posits that stigmatized group members may underperform on diagnostic tests of ability through concerns about confirming a negative societal stereotype as self-characteristic [ 3 ]. Steele and Aronson [ 3 ] demonstrated that African American participants underperformed on a verbal reasoning test when it was presented as a diagnostic indicator of intellectual ability. Conversely, when the same test was presented as non-diagnostic of ability, they performed equivalently to their Caucasian peers. This seminal research indicates that the mere salience of negative societal stereotypes, which may magnify over time, can impede performance. The theory of stereotype threat therefore offers a situational explanation for the ongoing and intractable debate regarding the source of group differences in academic aptitude [ 1 ].

Stereotype threat has been used primarily to explain gaps in intellectual and quantitative test scores between African and European Americans [ 3 , 10 ] and women and men respectively [ 11 ]. However, it is important to acknowledge that many factors shape academic performance, and stereotype threat is unlikely to be the sole explanation for academic achievement gaps [ 12 ]. This is supported by research which has shown “pure” stereotype threat effects on a task in which a gender-achievement gap has not been previously documented [ 13 ], thus suggesting that performance decrements can be elicited simply by reference to a negative stereotype. Furthermore, stereotype threat effects may not be limited to social groups who routinely face stigmatizing attitudes. Rather, it can befall anyone who is a member of a group to which a negative stereotype applies [ 3 ]. For example, research indicates that Caucasian men, a group that have a relatively positive social status, underperform when they believe that their mathematical performance will be compared to that of Asian men [ 14 ]. White men also appear to perform worse than black men when motor tasks are related to 'natural athletic ability' [ 15 , 16 ]. From a theoretical standpoint, stereotype threat exposes how group stereotypes may shape the behavior of individuals in a way that endangers their performance and further reinforces the stereotype [ 10 ].

Over 300 experiments have illustrated the deleterious and extensive effects that stereotype threat can inflict on many different populations [ 17 ]. The possibility of confirming a negative stereotype about one’s group is found to contribute to underperformance on a range of diverse tasks including intelligence [ 3 , 13 ], memory [ 18 , 19 ], mental rotation [ 20 – 23 ], and math tests [ 11 , 24 , 25 ], golf putting [ 26 ], driving [ 27 , 28 ] and childcare skills [ 29 ]. Given the generality of these findings, researchers have turned their efforts to elucidating the underlying mechanisms of this situational phenomenon.

Susceptibility to Stereotype Threat

Research has identified numerous moderators that make tasks more likely to elicit stereotype threat, and individuals more prone to experience it [ 30 , 31 ]. From a methodological perspective, stereotype threat effects tend to emerge on tasks of high difficulty and demand [ 32 , 33 ], however, the extent to which a task is perceived as demanding may be moderated by individual differences in working memory [ 34 ]. Additionally, stereotype threat may be more likely to occur when individuals are conscious of the stigma ascribed to their social group [ 32 , 35 ], believe the stereotypes about their group to be true [ 36 , 37 ], for those with low self-esteem [ 38 ], and an internal locus of control [ 39 ]. Research also indicates that individuals are more susceptible to stereotype threat when they identify strongly with their social group [ 40 , 41 , 42 ] and value the domain [ 10 , 13 , 15 , 33 , 43 ]. However, other research suggests that domain identification is not a prerequisite of stereotype threat effects [ 44 ] and may act as a strategy to overcome harmful academic consequences [ 45 , 46 ].

Mediators of Stereotype Threat

There has also been an exPLOSion of research into the psychological mediators of stereotype threat (c.f. [ 2 , 47 ] for reviews). In their comprehensive review, Schmader et al. [ 2 ] proposed an integrated process model, suggesting that stereotype threat heightens physiological stress responses and influences monitoring and suppression processes to deplete working memory efficiency. This provides an important contribution to the literature, signaling that multiple affective, cognitive and motivational processes may underpin the effects of stereotype threat on performance. However, the extent to which each of these variables has garnered empirical support remains unclear. Furthermore, prior research has overlooked the existence of distinct stereotype threats in the elucidation of mediating variables. Through the lens of the multi-threat framework [ 31 ], the current review distinguishes between different stereotype threat primes, which target either the self or the social group to assess the evidence base with regards to the existence of multiple stereotype threats that may be accounted for by distinct mechanisms.

A Multi-threat Approach to Mediation

Stereotype threat is typically viewed as a form of social identity threat: A situational predicament occurring when individuals perceive their social group to be devalued by others [ 48 , 49 , 50 ]. However, this notion overlooks how individuals may self-stigmatize and evaluate themselves [ 51 , 52 , 53 ] and the conflict people may experience between their personal and social identities [ 54 ]. More recently, researchers have distinguished between the role of the self and the social group in performance-evaluative situations [ 31 ]. The multi-threat framework [ 31 ] identifies six qualitatively distinct stereotype threats that manifest through the intersection of two dimensions: The target of the threat (i.e., is the stereotype applicable to one’s personal or social identity?) and the source of threat (i.e., who will judge performance; the in-group or the out-group?). Focusing on the target of the stereotype, individuals who experience a group-as-target threat may perceive that underperformance will confirm a negative societal stereotype regarding the abilities of their social group. Conversely, individuals who experience a self-as-target threat may perceive that stereotype-consistent performance will be viewed as self-characteristic [ 31 , 55 ]. Individuals may therefore experience either a self or group-based threat dependent on situational cues in the environment that heighten the contingency of a stereotyped identity [ 2 ].

Researchers also theorize that members of diverse stigmatized groups may experience different forms of stereotype threat [ 31 , 56 ], and that these distinct experiences may be mediated by somewhat different processes [ 31 , 57 ]. Indeed, there is some indirect empirical evidence to suggest that this may be the case. For example, Pavlova and colleagues [ 13 ] found that an implicit stereotype threat prime hampered women’s performance on a social cognition task. Conversely, men’s performance suffered when they were primed with an explicit gender-related stereotype. Moreover, Stone and McWhinnie [ 58 ] suggest that subtle stereotype threat cues (i.e., the gender of the experimenter) may evoke a tendency to actively monitor performance and avoid mistakes, whereas blatant stereotype threat cues (i.e., stereotype prime) create distractions that deplete working memory resources. Whilst different stereotype threat cues may simultaneously exert negative effects on performance, it is plausible that they are induced by independent mechanisms [ 58 ]. Nonetheless, insufficient evidence has prevented the multi-threat framework [ 31 ] to be evaluated empirically to date. It therefore remains to be assessed whether the same mechanisms are responsible for the effects of distinct stereotype threats on different populations and performance measures.

The current article offers the first systematic literature review aiming to: 1), identify and examine critically the proposed mediators of stereotype threat; 2), explore whether the effects of self-as-target or group-as-target stereotype threat on performance are the result of qualitatively distinct mediating mechanisms; and 3), evaluate whether different mediators govern different stereotyped populations.

Literature Search

A bibliographic search of electronic databases, such as PsycINFO, PsycARTICLES, Web of Knowledge, PubMed, Science Direct and Google Scholar was conducted between the cut-off dates of 1995 (the publication year of Steele & Aronson’s seminal article) and December 2015. A search string was developed by specifying the main terms of the phenomenon under investigation. Here, the combined key words of stereotype and threat were utilized as overarching search parameters and directly paired with either one of the following terms; mediator , mediating , mediate(s) , predictor , predicts , relationship or mechanism(s) . Additional references were retrieved by reviewing the reference lists of relevant journal articles. To control for potential publication bias [ 59 , 60 , 61 ], the lead author also enquired about any ‘in press’ articles by sending out a call for papers through the European Association for Social Psychology. The second author conducted a comparable search using the same criteria to ensure that no studies were overlooked in the original search. Identification of relevant articles and data extraction were conducted in line with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Statement (PRISMA; See S1 Table ) [ 62 ]. A literature search was conducted separately in each database and the records were exported to citation software, after which duplicates were removed. Relevant articles were screened by examining the title and abstract in line with the eligibility criteria. The remaining articles were assessed for eligibility by performing a full text review [ 63 , 64 ].

Eligibility Criteria.

Studies were selected based on the following criteria: 1), researchers utilized a stereotype threat manipulation; 2), a direct mediation analysis was conducted between stereotype threat and performance; 3), researchers found evidence of moderated-mediation, and 4), the full text was available in English. Articles were excluded on the following basis: 1), performance was not the dependent variable, 2), investigations of “stereotype lift”; 3), doctorate, dissertation and review articles (to avoid duplication of included articles); and 4), moderating variables. Articles that did not find any significant results in relation to stereotype threat effects were also excluded in order to capture reliable evidence of mediation [ 65 ]. See Table 1 for details of excluded articles.

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0146487.t001

Distinguishing Different Stereotype Threats.

The current review distinguished between different experiences of stereotype threat by examining each stereotype threat manipulation. Self-as-target threats were categorized on the basis that participants focused on the test as a measure of personal ability whereas group-as-target threats were classified on the basis that participants perceived performance to be diagnostic of their group’s ability [ 31 ].

A total of 45 studies in 38 articles were qualitatively synthesized, uncovering a total of 17 distinct proposed mediators. See Fig 1 for process of article inclusion (full details of article exclusion can be viewed in S1 Supporting Information ). These mediators were categorized into affective/subjective ( n = 6), cognitive ( n = 7) or motivational mechanisms ( n = 4). Effect sizes for mediational findings are described typically through informal descriptors, such as complete , perfect , or partial [ 66 ]. With this in mind, the current findings are reported in terms of complete or partial mediation. Complete mediation indicates that the relationship between stereotype threat ( X ) and performance ( Y ) completely disappears when a mediator ( M ) is added as a predictor variable [ 66 ]. Partial mediation refers to instances in which a significant direct effect remains between stereotype threat and performance when controlling for the mediator, suggesting that additional variables may further explain this relationship [ 67 ]. Instances of moderated mediation are also reported, which occurs when the strength of mediation is contingent on the level of a moderating variable [ 68 ]. The majority of included research utilized a group-as-target prime ( n = 36, 80%) compared to a self-as-target prime ( n = 6; 13.33%). Three studies (6.66%) were uncategorized as they employed subtle stereotype threat primes, for example, manipulating the group composition of the testing environment.

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0146487.g001

Affective/Subjective Mechanisms

Researchers have conceptualized stereotype threat frequently as a fear, apprehension or anxiety of confirming a negative stereotype about one’s group [ 3 , 69 , 70 ]. Accordingly, many affective and subjective variables such as anxiety, individuation tendencies, evaluation apprehension, performance expectations, explicit stereotype endorsement and self-efficacy have been proposed to account for the stereotype threat-performance relationship.

Steele and Aronson’s [ 3 ] original study did not find self-reported anxiety to be a significant mediator of the effects of a self-relevant stereotype on African American’s intellectual performance. Extending this work, Spencer et al. (Experiment 3, [ 11 ]) found that anxiety was not predictive of the effects that a negative group stereotype had on women’s mathematical achievement, with further research confirming this [ 14 , 44 , 71 ]. Additional studies have indicated that self-reported anxiety does not influence the impact of self-as-target stereotype elicitation on African American’s cognitive ability [ 72 ], white students’ athletic skills [ 15 ], and group-as-target stereotype threat on older adults’ memory recall [ 18 , 32 ].

Research also suggests that anxiety may account for one of multiple mediators in the stereotype threat-performance relationship. In a field study, Chung and colleagues [ 73 ] found that self-reported state anxiety and specific self-efficacy sequentially mediated the influence of stereotype threat on African American’s promotional exam performance. This finding is supported by Mrazek et al. [ 74 ] who found that anxiety and mind-wandering sequentially mediated the effects of stereotype threat on women’s mathematical ability. Laurin [ 75 ] also found that self-reported somatic anxiety partially mediated the effects of group-as-target stereotype threat on women’s motor performance. Nevertheless, it is viable to question whether this finding is comparable to other studies as stereotype threat had a facilitating effect on performance.

The mixed results regarding anxiety as a potential mediator of performance outcomes may be indicative of various boundary conditions that enhance stereotype threat susceptibility. Consistent with this claim, Gerstenberg, Imhoff and Schmitt (Experiment 3 [ 76 ]) found that women who reported a fragile math self-concept solved fewer math problems under group-as-target stereotype threat and this susceptibility was mediated by increased anxiety. This moderated-mediation suggests that women with a low academic self-concept may be more vulnerable to stereotype threat, with anxiety underpinning its effect on mathematical performance.

Given that anxiety may be relatively difficult to detect via self-report measures [ 3 , 29 ], researchers have utilized indirect measures. For instance, Bosson et al. [ 29 ] found that physiological anxiety mediated the effects of stereotype threat on homosexual males’ performance on an interpersonal task. Nevertheless, this effect has not been replicated for the effects of group-as-target stereotype threat on older adults’ memory recall [ 32 ] and self-as-target threat on children’s writing ability [ 77 ].

Individuation tendencies.

Steele and Aronson [ 3 ] proposed that stereotype threat might occur when individuals perceive a negative societal stereotype to be a true representation of personal ability. Based on this, Keller and Sekaquaptewa [ 78 ] examined whether gender-related threats (i.e., group-as-target threat) influenced women to individuate their personal identity (the self) from their social identity (female). Results revealed that participants underperformed on a spatial ability test when they perceived that they were a single in-group representative (female) in a group of males. Moreover, stereotype threat was partially mediated by ‘individuation tendencies’ in that gender-based threats influenced women to disassociate their self from the group to lessen the applicability of the stereotype. The authors suggest that this increased level of self-focused attention under solo status conditions is likely related to increased levels of anxiety.

Evaluation apprehension.

Steele and Aronson [ 3 ] also suggested that individuals might apprehend that they will confirm a negative stereotype in the eyes of out-group members. Despite this, Mayer and Hanges [ 72 ] found that evaluation apprehension did not mediate the effects of a self-as-target stereotype threat on African American’s cognitive ability. Additional studies also indicate that evaluation apprehension does not mediate the effects of group-as-target stereotype threat on women’s mathematical performance [ 11 , 79 ].

Performance expectations.

Under stereotype threat, individuals may evaluate the subjective likelihood of success depending on their personal resources. As these personal resources are typically anchored to group-level expectations, in-group threatening information (i.e., women are poor at math) may reduce personal expectancies to achieve and diminish performance [ 80 ]. Testing this prediction, Cadinu et al. (Experiment 1 [ 80 ]) found that women solved fewer math problems when they were primed with a negative group-based stereotype relative to those who received a positive or no stereotype. Furthermore, performance expectancies partially mediated the effect of group-as-target threat on math performance, revealing that negative information was associated with lower expectancies. A second experiment indicated further that performance expectancies partially mediated the effects of group-as-target threat on Black participants’ verbal ability. Research by Rosenthal, Crisp and Mein-Woei (Experiment 2 [ 81 ]) also found that performance expectancies partially mediated the effects of self-based stereotypes on women’s mathematical performance. However, rather than decreasing performance expectancies, women under stereotype threat reported higher predictions for performance relative to a control condition.

Research has extended this work to examine the role of performance expectancies in diverse stigmatized populations. For example, Hess et al. [ 32 ] found evidence of moderated-mediation for the effects of a group-as-target stereotype threat on older adults’ memory recall. Here, the degree to which performance expectancies mediated stereotype threat effects was moderated by participants’ education. That is, elderly individuals with higher levels of education showed greater susceptibility to stereotype threat. These findings add weight to the assertion that lowered performance expectations may account for the effects of stereotype threat on performance, especially among individuals who identify strongly with the ability domain. Conversely, Appel et al. [ 43 ] found that performance expectancies do not mediate the effects of group-based stereotype threat among highly identified women in the domains of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Further research suggests that stereotype threat can be activated through subtle cues in the environment rather than explicit stereotype activation [ 58 , 82 ]. It is therefore plausible that expectancies regarding performance may be further undermined when stigmatized in-group members are required to perform a stereotype-relevant task in front of out-group members. Advancing this suggestion, Sekaquaptewa and Thompson [ 82 ] examined the interactive effects of solo status and stereotype threat on women’s mathematical performance. Results revealed that women underperformed when they completed a quantitative examination in the presence of men (solo status) and under stereotype threat. However, whilst performance expectancies partially mediated the relationship between group composition and mathematical ability, they did not mediate the effects of stereotype threat on performance.

Explicit stereotype endorsement.

Research has examined whether targeted individuals’ personal endorsement of negative stereotypes is associated with underperformance. For example, Leyens and colleagues [ 83 ] found that men underperformed on an affective task when they were told that they were not as apt as women in processing affective information. Against predictions, however, stereotype endorsement was not found to be a significant intermediary between stereotype threat and performance. Other studies also indicate that stereotype endorsement is not an underlying mechanism of the effects of self-as-target [ 3 ] and group-as-target stereotype threat on women’s mathematical aptitude [ 11 , 84 ].

Self-efficacy.

Research suggests that self-efficacy can have a significant impact on an individual’s motivation and performance [ 85 , 86 , 87 ], and may be influenced by environmental cues [ 88 ]. Accordingly, it has been proposed that the situational salience of a negative stereotype may reduce an individual’s self-efficacy. As mentioned, Chung et al. [ 73 ] found that state anxiety and specific self-efficacy accounted for deficits in African American’s performance on a job promotion exam. However, additional studies indicate that self-efficacy does not mediate the effects of self-as-target threat on African American’s cognitive ability [ 72 ] and group-as-target threat on women’s mathematical performance [ 11 ].

Cognitive Mechanisms

Much research has proposed that affective and subjective variables underpin the harmful effects that stereotype threat exerts on performance [ 89 ]. However, other research posits that stereotype threat may influence performance detriments through its demands on cognitive processes [ 2 , 89 , 90 ]. Specifically, researchers have examined whether stereotype threat is mediated by; working memory, cognitive load, thought suppression, mind-wandering, negative thinking, cognitive appraisals and implicit stereotype endorsement.

Working memory.

Schmader and Johns [ 89 ] proposed that performance-evaluative situations might reduce working memory capacity as stereotype-related thoughts consume cognitive resources. In three studies, they examined whether working memory accounted for the influence of a group-as-target threat on women’s and Latino American’s mathematical ability. Findings indicated that both female and Latino American participants solved fewer mathematical problems compared to participants in a non-threat control condition. Furthermore, reduced working memory capacity, measured via an operation span task [ 91 ], mediated the deleterious effects of stereotype threat on math performance. Supporting this, Rydell et al. (Experiment 3 [ 92 ]) found that working memory mediated the effects of a group-relevant stereotype on women’s mathematical performance when they perceived their performance to be evaluated in line with their gender identity. Here results also showed that these performance decrements were eliminated when women were concurrently primed with a positive and negative social identity (Experiment 2).

Further research has also examined how stereotype threat may simultaneously operate through cognitive and emotional processes. Across four experiments, Johns et al. [ 90 ] found that stereotype threat was accountable for deficits in women’s verbal, intellectual and mathematical ability. Moreover, emotion regulation − characterized as response-focused coping − mediated the effects of group-as-target stereotype threat on performance by depleting executive resources.

Nonetheless, executive functioning is made up of more cognitive processes than the construct of working memory [ 93 ]. Acknowledging this, Rydell et al. [ 93 ] predicted that updating (i.e., the ability to maintain and update information in the face of interference) would mediate stereotype threat effects. They further hypothesized that inhibition (i.e., the ability to inhibit a dominant response) and shifting (i.e., people’s ability to switch between tasks) should not underpin this effect. Results indicated that women who experienced an explicit group-as-target threat displayed reduced mathematical performance compared to a control condition. Consistent with predictions, only updating mediated the stereotype threat-performance relationship. These results suggest that the verbal ruminations associated with a negative stereotype may interfere with women’s ability to maintain and update the calculations needed to solve difficult math problems.

The extent to which updating accounts for stereotype threat effects in diverse populations, however, is less straightforward. For example, Hess et al. [ 32 ] found that working memory, measured by a computational span task, did not predict the relationship between group-based stereotype threat and older participants’ memory performance.

Cognitive load.

There is ample evidence to suggest that stereotype threat depletes performance by placing higher demands on mental resources [ 89 , 93 ]. These demands may exert additional peripheral activity (i.e., emotional regulation) that can further interfere with task performance [ 90 ]. In order to provide additional support for this notion, Croizet et al. [ 94 ] examined whether increased mental load, measured by participants’ heart rate, mediated the effects of stereotype threat on Psychology majors’ cognitive ability. Here, Psychology majors were primed that they had lower intelligence compared to Science majors. Results indicated that this group-as-target stereotype threat undermined Psychology majors’ cognitive ability by triggering a psychophysiological mental load. Moreover, this increased mental load mediated the effects of stereotype threat on cognitive performance.

Thought suppression.

Research suggests that individuals who experience stereotype threat may be aware that their performance will be evaluated in terms of a negative stereotype and, resultantly, engage in efforts to disprove it [ 3 , 94 , 95 ]. This combination of awareness and avoidance may lead to attempts to suppress negative thoughts that consequently tax the cognitive resources needed to perform effectively. In four experiments, Logel et al. (Experiment 2 [ 95 ]) examined whether stereotype threat influences stereotypical thought suppression by counterbalancing whether participants completed a stereotype-relevant lexical decision task before or after a mathematical test. Results indicated that women underperformed on the test in comparison to men. Interestingly, women tended to suppress stereotypical words when the lexical decision task was administered before the math test, but showed post-suppression rebound of stereotype-relevant words when this task was completed afterwards. Mediational analyses revealed that only pre-test thought suppression partially mediated the effects of stereotype threat on performance.

Mind-wandering.

Previous research suggests that the anticipation of a stereotype-laden test may produce a greater proportion of task-related thoughts and worries [ 93 , 95 ]. Less research has examined the role of thoughts unrelated to the task in hand as a potential mediator of stereotype threat effects. Directly testing this notion, Mrazek et al. (Experiment 2 [ 74 ]) found that a group-as-target stereotype threat hampered women’s mathematical performance in comparison to a control condition. Furthermore, although self-report measures of mind-wandering resulted in null findings, indirect measures revealed that women under stereotype threat showed a marked decrease in attention. Mediation analyses indicated further that stereotype threat heightened anxiety which, in turn, increased mind-wandering and contributed to the observed impairments in math performance. Despite these findings, other studies have found no indication that task irrelevant thoughts mediate the effects of group-as-target stereotype threat on women’s mathematical performance [ 24 ] and African American participants’ cognitive ability [ 72 ].

Negative thinking.

Schmader and Johns’ [ 89 ] research suggests that the performance deficits observed under stereotype threat may be influenced by intrusive thoughts. Further research [ 74 ] has included post-experimental measures of cognitive interference to assess the activation of distracting thoughts under stereotype threat. However, the content of these measures are predetermined by the experimenter and do not allow participants to report spontaneously on their experiences under stereotype threat. Overcoming these issues, Cadinu and colleagues [ 96 ] asked women to list their current thoughts whilst taking a difficult math test under conditions of stereotype threat. Results revealed that female participants underperformed when they perceived a mathematical test to be diagnostic of gender differences. Moreover, participants in the stereotype threat condition listed more negative thoughts relative to those in the control condition, with intrusive thoughts mediating the relationship between stereotype threat and poor math performance. It seems therefore that negative performance-related thoughts may consume working memory resources to impede performance.

Cognitive appraisal.

Other research suggests that individuals may engage in coping strategies to offset the performance implications of a negative stereotype. One indicator of coping is cognitive appraisal, whereby individuals evaluate the significance of a situation as well as their ability to control it [ 97 ]. Here, individuals may exert more effort on a task when the situational presents as a challenge, but may disengage from the task if they evaluate the situation as a threat [ 98 , 99 ]. Taking this into consideration, Berjot, Roland-Levy and Girault-Lidvan [ 100 ] proposed that targeted members might be more likely to perceive a negative stereotype as a threat to their group identity rather than as a challenge to disprove it. They found that North African secondary school students underperformed on a visuospatial task when they perceived French students to possess superior perceptual-motor skills. Contrary to predictions, threat appraisal did not mediate the relation between stereotype threat and performance. Rather, perceiving the situation as a challenge significantly mediated the stereotype threat-performance relationship. Specifically, participants who appraised stereotype threat as a challenge performed better than those who did not. These results therefore suggest that individuals may strive to confront, rather than avoid, intellectual challenges and modify the stereotype held by members of a relevant out-group in a favorable direction [ 101 ].

Implicit stereotype endorsement.

Situational cues that present as a threat may increase the activation of automatic associations between a stereotyped concept (i.e., female), negative attributes (i.e., bad), and the performance domain (i.e., math; [ 102 ]). Implicit measures may be able to detect recently formed automatic associations between concepts and stereotypical attributes that are not yet available to explicitly self-report [ 103 ]. In a study of 240 six-year old children, Galdi et al. [ 103 ] examined whether implicit stereotype threat endorsement accounted for the effects of stereotype threat on girls’ mathematical performance. Consistent with the notion that automatic associations can precede conscious beliefs, results indicated that girls acquire implicit math-gender stereotypes before they emerge at an explicit level. Specifically, girls showed stereotype-consistent automatic associations between the terms ‘boy-mathematics’ and ‘girl-language’, which mediated stereotype threat effects.

Motivational Mechanisms

Most of the initial work on the underlying mechanisms of stereotype threat has focused on affective and cognitive processes. More recently, research has begun to examine whether individuals may be motivated to disconfirm a negative stereotype, with this having a paradoxical effect of harming performance [ 104 , 105 , 106 ]. To this end, research has elucidated the potential role of effort, self-handicapping, dejection, vigilance, and achievement goals.

Effort/motivation.

Underpinned by the “mere effort model” [ 104 ], Jamieson and Harkins [ 105 ] examined whether motivation plays a proximal role in the effect of stereotype threat on women’s math performance. Here they predicted that stereotype threat would lead participants to use a conventional problem solving approach (i.e., use known equations to compute an answer), which would facilitate performance on ‘solve’ problems, but hamper performance on ‘comparison’ problems. Results supported this hypothesis, indicating that stereotype threat debilitated performance on comparison problems as participants employed the dominant, but incorrect, solution approach. Furthermore, this incorrect solving approach mediated the effect of stereotype threat on comparison problem performance. This suggests that stereotype threat motivates participants to perform well, which increases activation of a dominant response to the task. However, as this dominant approach does not always guarantee success, the work indicates that different problem solving strategies may determine whether a person underperforms on a given task [ 105 , 107 ].

Stereotype threat may have differential effects on effort dependent on the prime utilized [ 27 ]. For example, Skorich et al. [ 27 ] examined whether effort mediated the effects of implicit and explicit stereotypes on provisional drivers’ performance on a hazard perception test. Participants in the implicit prime condition ticked their driving status (provisional, licensed) on a questionnaire, whereas participants in the explicit prime condition were provided with stereotypes relating to the driving ability of provisional licensees. Results revealed that participants detected more hazards when they were primed with an explicit stereotype relative to an implicit stereotype. Mediational analyses showed that whilst increased effort mediated the effects of an implicit stereotype on performance, decreased effort mediated the effects of an explicit stereotype prime. Research also indicates that reduced effort mediates the effects of an explicit stereotype on older adults’ memory recall [ 18 ]. Taken together, these results suggest that implicit stereotype primes may lead to increased effort as participants aim to disprove the stereotype, whereas explicit stereotype threat primes may lead to decreased effort as participants self-handicap [ 27 ]. Nevertheless, other studies utilizing self-reported measures of effort have resulted in non-significant findings (Experiment 1 & 2 [ 14 ]; Experiment 4 [ 44 ]; Experiment 2 [ 77 ]; Experiment 2, 4 & 5, [ 108 ]).

Self-handicapping.

Individuals may engage in self-handicapping strategies to proactively reduce the applicability of a negative stereotype to their performance. Here, people attempt to influence attributions for performance by erecting barriers to their success. Investigating this notion, Stone [ 15 ] examined whether self-handicapping mediated the effects of stereotype threat on white athletes’ sporting performance. Self-handicapping was measured by the total amount of stereotype-relevant words completed on a word-fragment task. Results indicated that white athletes practiced less when they perceived their ability on a golf-putting task to be diagnostic of personal ability, thereby confirming a negative stereotype relating to ‘poor white athleticism’. Moreover, these athletes were more likely to complete the term ‘awkward’ on a word fragment completion test compared to the control condition. Mediation analyses revealed that the greater accessibility of the term ‘awkward’ partially mediated the effects of stereotype threat on psychological disengagement and performance. The authors suggest that stereotype threat increased the accessibility of thoughts related to poor athleticism to inhibit athletes' practice efforts. However, a limitation of this research is that analyses were based on single-item measures (i.e., the completion of the word ‘awkward’) rather than total of completed words on the word-fragment test.

Keller [ 109 ] also tested the hypothesis that the salience of a negative stereotype is related to self-handicapping tendencies. Results showed that women who were primed with a group-as-target stereotype underperformed on a mathematical test relative to their control group counterparts. Furthermore, they expressed stronger tendencies to search for external explanations for their weak performance with this mediating the effects of stereotype threat on performance. Despite these preliminary findings, Keller and Dauenheimer [ 44 ] were unable to provide support for the notion that self-reported self-handicapping is a significant intermediary between stereotype threat and women’s mathematical underperformance.

Research on performance expectations suggests that stereotype threat effects may be mediated by goals set by the participants. Extending this work, Keller and Dauenheimer [ 44 ] hypothesized that female participants may make more errors on a mathematical test due to an overly motivated approach strategy. Results indicated that women underperformed when a math test was framed as diagnostic of gender differences (a group-as-target threat). Furthermore, their experiences of dejection were found to mediate the relation between stereotype threat and performance. The authors suggest that individuals may be motivated to disconfirm the negative stereotype and thus engage in a promotion focus of self-regulation. However, feelings of failure may elicit an emotional response that resultantly determines underperformance.

In contrast to Keller and Dauenheimer [ 44 ], Seibt and Förster (Experiment 5; [ 108 ]) proposed that under stereotype threat, targeted individuals engage in avoidance and vigilance strategies. They predicted that positive stereotypes should induce a promotion focus, leading to explorative and creative processing, whereas negative stereotypes should induce a prevention focus state of vigilance, with participants avoiding errors. Across five experiments, male and female participants were primed with a group-as-target stereotype suggesting that women have better verbal abilities than men. However, rather than showing a stereotype threat effect, results indicated a speed-accuracy trade off with male participants completing an analytical task slower but more accurately than their counterparts in a non-threat control condition. Furthermore, this prevention focus of vigilance was found to partially mediate the effects of stereotype threat on men’s analytical abilities (Experiment 5). The authors conclude that the salience of a negative group stereotype elicits a vigilant, risk-averse processing style that diminishes creativity and speed while bolstering analytic thinking and accuracy.

Achievement goals.

Achievement goals theory [ 110 ] posits that participants will evaluate their role in a particular achievement context and endorse either performance-focused or performance-avoidance goals. In situations where the chances of success are low, individuals engage in performance-avoidance goals, corresponding to a desire to avoid confirming a negative stereotype. Accordingly, Chalabaev et al. [ 111 ] examined whether performance avoidance goals mediated the effects of stereotype threat on women’s sporting performance. Here, the impact of two self-as-target stereotypes (i.e., poor athletic and soccer ability) on performance were assessed relative to a control condition. Results indicated that women in the athletic ability condition performed more poorly on a dribbling task, but not in the soccer ability condition. Furthermore, although these participants endorsed a performance-avoidance goal, this did not mediate the relationship between stereotype threat and soccer performance.

Highlighting the possible interplay between affective, cognitive and motivation mechanisms, Brodish and Devine [ 112 ] proffered a multi-mediator model, proposing that anxiety and performance-avoidance goals may mediate the effects of group-as-target stereotype threat on women’s mathematical performance. Achievement goals were measured by whether participants endorsed performance-avoidant (the desire to avoid performing poorly) or approach goals (trying to outperform others). Results indicated that women under stereotype threat solved fewer mathematical problems relative to those in a control condition. Mediation analyses revealed that performance avoidance goals and anxiety sequentially mediated women’s mathematical performance. That is, stereotype threatened women were motivated to avoid failure, which in turn heightened anxiety and influenced underperformance. Table 2 summarizes the articles reviewed and details their key findings and respective methodologies. See S2 Table for overview of significant mediational findings.

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0146487.t002

The current review evaluated empirical support for the mediators of stereotype threat. Capitalizing on the multi-threat framework [ 31 ], we distinguished between self-relevant and group-relevant stereotype threats to examine the extent to which these are mediated by qualitatively distinct mechanisms and imperil diverse stigmatized populations. On the whole, the results of the current review indicate that experiences of stereotype threat may increase individuals’ feelings of anxiety, negative thinking and mind-wandering which deplete the working memory resources required for successful task execution. Research documents further that individuals may be motivated to disconfirm the negative stereotype and engage in efforts to suppress stereotypical thoughts that are inconsistent with task goals. However, many of the mediators tested have resulted in varying degrees of empirical support. Below we suggest that stereotype threat may operate in distinct ways dependent on the population under study, the primes utilized, and the instruments used to measure mediation and performance.

Previous research has largely conceptualized stereotype threat as a singular construct, experienced similarly by individuals and groups across situations [ 31 , 55 ]. Consequently, research has overlooked the possibility of multiple forms of stereotype threats that may be implicated through concerns to an individual’s personal or social identity [ 31 ]. This is highlighted in the present review, as the majority of stereotype threat studies employed a group-as-target prime. Here stereotype threat is typically instantiated to highlight that stereotype-consistent performance may confirm, or reinforce, a negative societal stereotype as being a true representation of one’s social group [ 48 ]. This has led to a relative neglect of situations in which individuals may anticipate that their performance may be indicative of personal ability [ 31 , 55 ].

Similar processes such as arousal, deficits in working memory, and motivation may be triggered by self-as-target and group-as-target stereotype threats. However, it is important to note that the experiences of these stereotype threats may be fundamentally distinct [ 31 ]. That is, deficits in working memory under self-as-target stereotype threat may be evoked by negative thoughts relating to the self (i.e., ruining one’s opportunities, letting oneself down). Conversely, group-based intrusive thoughts may mediate the effects of group-as-target threat on performance as individuals view their performance in line with their social group (i.e., confirming a societal stereotype, letting the group down) [ 31 ]. Moreover, research suggests that when a group-based stereotype threat is primed, individuals dissociate their sense of self from the negatively stereotyped domain [ 78 ]. Yet, this may be more unlikely when an individual experiences self-as-target stereotype threat as their personal ability is explicitly tied to a negative stereotype that governs their ingroup. As such, the activation of a group-based stereotype may set in motion mechanisms that reflect a protective orientation of self-regulation, whereas self-relevant knowledge may heighten self-consciousness. To date, however, research has not explicitly distinguished between self-as-target and group-as-target stereotype threat in the elucidation of mediating variables. Future research would therefore benefit from a systematic investigation of how different stereotype threats may hamper performance in qualitatively distinguishable ways. One way to investigate the hypotheses set out here would be to allow participants to spontaneously report their experiences under self-as-target and group-as-target stereotype threat, and to examine differences in the content of participants’ thoughts as a function of these different primes.

In a similar vein, different mechanisms may mediate the effects of blatant and subtle stereotype threat effects on performance [ 27 , 58 , 111 ]. Blatant threat manipulations explicitly inform participants of a negative stereotype related to performance (e.g., [ 3 , 11 ]), whereas placing stigmatized group members in a situation in which they have minority status may evoke more subtle stereotype threat [ 78 , 82 ]. Providing evidence consistent with this notion, Sekaquaptewa and Thompson [ 82 ] found that performance expectancies partially mediated the effects of solo status, but not stereotype threat on performance. These results suggest that women may make comparative judgments about their expected performance when they are required to undertake an exam in the presence of out-group members, yet may not consciously recognize how a negative stereotype can directly impair performance. Further research suggests that working memory may mediate the effects of subtle stereotype threat cues on performance as individuals attend to situational cues that heighten the salience of a discredited identity [ 88 , 94 ]. Alternatively, motivation may mediate the effects of blatant stereotype threat as individuals strive to disprove the negative stereotype [ 27 , 44 , 58 , 108 ]. Although stereotype threat effects appear to be robust [ 30 ], it is plausible that these distinct manipulations diverge in the nature, the focus, and the intensity of threat they produce and may therefore be mediated by different mechanisms [ 31 ].

It is also conceivable that different groups are more susceptible to certain types of stereotype threat [ 13 , 31 , 56 ]. For example, research indicates that women’s performance on a social cognition task was influenced to a greater extent by implicit gender-related stereotypes, whereas men were more vulnerable to explicit stereotype threat [ 13 ]. Further research suggests that populations who tend to have low group identification (e.g., those with a mental illness or obesity) are more susceptible to self-as-target threats. Conversely, populations with high group identification, such as individuals of a certain ethnicity, gender or religion are more likely to experience group-as-target threats [ 56 ]. Whilst this highlights the role of moderating variables that heighten individuals’ susceptibility to stereotype threat, it also suggests that individuals may experience stereotype threat in different ways, dependent on their stigmatized identity. This may explain why some variables (e.g., anxiety, self-handicapping) that have been found to mediate the effects of stereotype threat on some groups have not emerged in other populations.

Finally, it is conceivable that diverse mediators account for the effects of stereotype threat on different performance outcomes. For example, although working memory is implicated in tasks that typically require controlled processing, it is not required for tasks that rely more on automatic processes [ 24 , 58 , 93 ]. In line with this notion, Beilock et al. [ 24 ] found that experts’ golf putting skills were harmed under stereotype threat when attention was allocated to automatic processes that operate usually outside of working memory. This suggests that well-learned skills may be hampered by attempts to bring performance back under step-by-step control. Conversely, skills such as difficult math problem solving appear to involve heavy processing demands and may be harmed when working memory is consumed by a negative stereotype. As such, distinct mechanisms may underpin different threat-related performance outcomes.

Limitations of Stereotype Threat Research

We now outline methodological issues in current stereotype threat literature with a view to inform the design of future research. First, researchers have predominantly utilized self-report measures in their efforts to uncover the mediating variables of stereotype threat. However, it has long been argued that individuals have limited access to higher order mental processes [ 113 , 114 ], such as those involved in the evaluation and initiation of behavior [ 115 , 116 ]. Resultantly, participants under stereotype threat may be unable to observe and explicitly report the operations of their own mind [ 29 , 114 , 117 , 118 , 119 ]. Consistent with this assertion, Bosson et al. [ 29 ] found that although stereotype threat heightened individuals’ physiological anxiety, the same individuals did not report an awareness of increased anxiety on self-report measures. Participants may thus be mindful of the impression they make on others and engage in self-presentational behaviors in an effort to appear invulnerable to negative stereotypes [ 29 ]. This is supported by research suggesting that stereotype threatened participants tend not to explicitly endorse stereotypes [ 29 , 37 , 83 , 84 ] and are more likely to claim impediments to justify poor performance [ 3 , 14 , 109 ]. Moreover, it is possible that stereotype threat processes are non-conscious [ 119 ] with research indicating that implicit–but not explicit–stereotype endorsement mediates stereotype threat effects [ 103 ]. This suggests that non-conscious processing of stereotype-relevant information may influence the decrements observed in individuals’ performance under stereotype threat. Furthermore, this research underscores the greater sensitivity of indirect measures for examining the mediators of stereotype threat. From this perspective, future research may benefit from the use of physiological measures, such as heart rate, cortisol and skin conductance to examine anxiety (c.f., [ 94 , 120 , 121 ]), the IAT to measure implicit stereotype endorsement [ 103 ] and the sustained response to attention task to measure mind-wandering [ 74 ].

In the investigation of stereotype threat, self-report measures may be particularly susceptible to order effects. For example, Brodish and Devine [ 112 ] found that women reported higher levels of anxiety when they completed a questionnaire before a mathematical test compared to afterwards. This suggests that pre-test anxiety ratings may have reflected participants’ uneasiness towards the upcoming evaluative test, with this apprehension diminishing once the test was completed. Research by Logel and colleagues [ 95 ] provides support for this notion, indicating that women who completed a lexical decision task after a math test were quicker to respond to stereotype-relevant words compared to women who subsequently completed the task. These results exhibit the variability in individuals’ emotions under stereotype threat and suggest that they may be unable to retrospectively report on their feelings once the threat has passed. This emphasizes the importance of counterbalancing test instruments in the investigation of stereotype threat, purporting that the order in which test materials are administered may influence mediational findings.

This review highlights that, in some studies, individuals assigned to a control condition may have also experienced stereotype threat, thus potentially preventing reliable evidence of mediation. For instance, Chalabaev et al. [ 111 ] primed stereotype threat by presenting a soccer ability test as a diagnostic indicator of personal factors related to athletic ability. Nevertheless, participants in the control condition received information that the aim of the test was to examine psychological factors in athletic ability. Consequently, these participants may have also been apprehensive about their performance being evaluated, and this may have precluded evidence that achievement goals mediate the stereotype threat-performance relationship. Furthermore, research has manipulated the salience of stereotype threat by stating that gender differences in math performance are equal [ 82 ]. However, other research has utilized this prime within control conditions (e.g., [ 94 , 105 , 119 ]), underpinned by the rationale that describing a test as ‘fair’ or non-diagnostic of ability eliminates stereotype threat [ 122 ]. It is therefore possible that, in some instances, researchers have inadvertently induced stereotype threat. This outlines the importance of employing a control condition in which individuals are not made aware of any negative stereotypes, and are told that the test is non-diagnostic of ability, in order to detect possible mediators.

Two decades of research have demonstrated the harmful effects that stereotype threat can exert on a wide range of populations in a broad array of performance domains. However, findings with regards to the mediators that underpin these effects are equivocal. This may be a consequence of the heterogeneity of primes used to instantiate stereotype threat and the methods used to measure mediation and performance. To this end, future work is likely to benefit from the following directions: First, account for the existence of multiple stereotype threats; Second, recognize that the experiences of stereotype threat may differ between stigmatized groups, and that no one mediator may provide generalized empirical support across diverse populations; Third, utilize indirect measures, in addition to self-report measures, to examine reliably mediating variables and to examine further the convergence of these two methods; Fourth, counterbalance test instruments to control for order effects; and finally, ensure that participants in a control condition do not inadvertently encounter stereotype threat by stating explicitly that the task is non-diagnostic of ability.

Supporting Information

S1 supporting information. list of excluded studies and rationale for exclusion..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0146487.s001

S1 Table. PRISMA Checklist.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0146487.s002

S2 Table. Summary of affective, cognitive and motivational mechanisms that have been found to mediate stereotype threat effects.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0146487.s003

Author Contributions

Analyzed the data: CRP DH. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: CRP DH ARL DTL. Wrote the paper: CRP. Developed the review design and protocol: CRP DH AL DL. Reviewed the manuscript: DH AL DL. Cross-checked articles in systematic review: CRP DH.

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

The multiple dimensions of gender stereotypes: a current look at men’s and women’s characterizations of others and themselves.

\r\nTanja Hentschel,*

  • 1 TUM School of Management, Technische Universität München, Munich, Germany
  • 2 Amsterdam Business School, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • 3 Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, NY, United States

We used a multi-dimensional framework to assess current stereotypes of men and women. Specifically, we sought to determine (1) how men and women are characterized by male and female raters, (2) how men and women characterize themselves, and (3) the degree of convergence between self-characterizations and charcterizations of one’s gender group. In an experimental study, 628 U.S. male and female raters described men, women, or themselves on scales representing multiple dimensions of the two defining features of gender stereotypes, agency and communality: assertiveness, independence, instrumental competence, leadership competence (agency dimensions), and concern for others, sociability and emotional sensitivity (communality dimensions). Results indicated that stereotypes about communality persist and were equally prevalent for male and female raters, but agency characterizations were more complex. Male raters generally descibed women as being less agentic than men and as less agentic than female raters described them. However, female raters differentiated among agency dimensions and described women as less assertive than men but as equally independent and leadership competent. Both male and female raters rated men and women equally high on instrumental competence. Gender stereotypes were also evident in self-characterizations, with female raters rating themselves as less agentic than male raters and male raters rating themselves as less communal than female raters, although there were exceptions (no differences in instrumental competence, independence, and sociability self-ratings for men and women). Comparisons of self-ratings and ratings of men and women in general indicated that women tended to characterize themselves in more stereotypic terms – as less assertive and less competent in leadership – than they characterized others in their gender group. Men, in contrast, characterized themselves in less stereotypic terms – as more communal. Overall, our results show that a focus on facets of agency and communality can provide deeper insights about stereotype content than a focus on overall agency and communality.

Introduction

There is no question that a great deal of progress has been made toward gender equality, and this progress is particularly evident in the workplace. There also is no question that the goal of full gender equality has not yet been achieved – not in pay ( AAUW, 2016 ) or position level ( Catalyst, 2016 ). In a recent interview study with female managers the majority of barriers for women’s advancement that were identified were consequences of gender stereotypes ( Peus et al., 2015 ). There is a long history of research in psychology that corroborates this finding (for reviews see Eagly and Sczesny, 2009 ; Heilman, 2012 ). These investigations support the idea that gender stereotypes can be impediments to women’s career advancement, promoting both gender bias in employment decisions and women’s self-limiting behavior ( Heilman, 1983 ).

This study is designed to investigate the current state of gender stereotypes about men and women using a multi-dimensional framework. Much of the original research on the content of gender stereotypes was conducted several decades ago (e.g., Rosenkrantz et al., 1968 ), and more recent research findings are inconsistent, some suggesting that there has been a change in traditional gender stereotypes (e.g., Duehr and Bono, 2006 ) and others suggesting there has not (e.g., Haines et al., 2016 ). Measures of stereotyping in these studies tend to differ, all operationalizing the constructs of agency and communality, the two defining features of gender stereotypes ( Abele et al., 2008 ), but in different ways. We propose that the conflict in findings may derive in part from the focus on different facets of these constructs in different studies. Thus, we seek to obtain a more complete picture of the specific content of today’s gender stereotypes by treating agency and communality, as multi-dimensioned constructs.

Gender stereotypes often are internalized by men and women, and we therefore focus both on how men and women are seen by others and how they see themselves with respect to stereotyped attributes. We also plan to compare and contrast charcterizations of men or women as a group with charcterizations of self, something not typically possible because these two types of characterizations are rarely measured in the same study. In sum, we have multiple objectives: We aim to develop a multi-dimensional framework for assessing current conceptions of men’s and women’s characteristics and then use it to consider how men and women are seen by male and female others, how men and women see themselves, and how these perceptions of self and others in their gender group coincide or differ. In doing so, we hope to demonstrate the benefits of viewing agency and communality as multidimensional constructs in the study of gender stereotypes.

Gender Stereotypes

Gender stereotypes are generalizations about what men and women are like, and there typically is a great deal of consensus about them. According to social role theory, gender stereotypes derive from the discrepant distribution of men and women into social roles both in the home and at work ( Eagly, 1987 , 1997 ; Koenig and Eagly, 2014 ). There has long been a gendered division of labor, and it has existed both in foraging societies and in more socioeconomically complex societies ( Wood and Eagly, 2012 ). In the domestic sphere women have performed the majority of routine domestic work and played the major caretaker role. In the workplace, women have tended to be employed in people-oriented, service occupations rather than things-oriented, competitive occupations, which have traditionally been occupied by men (e.g., Lippa et al., 2014 ). This contrasting distribution of men and women into social roles, and the inferences it prompts about what women and men are like, give rise to gender stereotypical conceptions ( Koenig and Eagly, 2014 ).

Accordingly, men are characterized as more agentic than women, taking charge and being in control, and women are characterized as more communal than men, being attuned to others and building relationships (e.g., Broverman et al., 1972 ; Eagly and Steffen, 1984 ). These two concepts were first introduced by Bakan (1966) as fundamental motivators of human behavior. During the last decades, agency (also referred to as “masculinity,” “instrumentality” or “competence”) and communality (also referred to as “communion,” “femininity,” “expressiveness,” or “warmth”) have consistently been the focus of research (e.g., Spence and Buckner, 2000 ; Fiske et al., 2007 ; Cuddy et al., 2008 ; Abele and Wojciszke, 2014 ). These dual tenets of social perception have been considered fundamental to gender stereotypes.

Stereotypes can serve an adaptive function allowing people to categorize and simplify what they observe and to make predictions about others (e.g., Devine and Sharp, 2009 ; Fiske and Taylor, 2013 ). However, stereotypes also can induce faulty assessments of people – i.e., assessments based on generalization from beliefs about a group that do not correspond to a person’s unique qualities. These faulty assessments can negatively or positively affect expectations about performance, and bias consequent decisions that impact opportunities and work outcomes for both men and women (e.g., Heilman, 2012 ; Heilman et al., 2015 ; Hentschel et al., 2018 ). Stereotypes about gender are especially influential because gender is an aspect of a person that is readily noticed and remembered ( Fiske et al., 1991 ). In other words, gender is a commonly occurring cue for stereotypic thinking ( Blair and Banaji, 1996 ).

Gender stereotypes are used not only to characterize others but also to characterize oneself ( Bem, 1974 ). The process of self-stereotyping can influence people’s identities in stereotype-congruent directions. Stereotyped characteristics can thereby be internalized and become part of a person’s gender identity – a critical aspect of the self-concept ( Ruble and Martin, 1998 ; Wood and Eagly, 2015 ). Young boys and girls learn about gender stereotypes from their immediate environment and the media, and they learn how to behave in gender-appropriate ways ( Deaux and LaFrance, 1998 ). These socialization experiences no doubt continue to exert influence later in life and, indeed, research has shown that men’s and women’s self-characterizations differ in ways that are stereotype-consistent ( Bem, 1974 ; Spence and Buckner, 2000 ).

Measurement of Gender Stereotypes

Gender stereotypes, and their defining features of agency and communality, have been measured in a variety of ways ( Kite et al., 2008 ). Researchers have investigated people’s stereotypical assumptions about how men and women differ in terms of, for example, ascribed traits (e.g., Williams and Best, 1990 ), role behaviors (e.g., Haines et al., 2016 ), occupations (e.g., Deaux and Lewis, 1984 ), or emotions (e.g., Plant et al., 2000 ). Researchers also have distinguished personality, physical, and cognitive components of gender stereotypes ( Diekman and Eagly, 2000 ). In addition, they have investigated how men’ and women’s self-characterizations differ in stereotype-consistent ways ( Spence and Buckner, 2000 ).

Today, the most common measures of gender stereotypes involve traits and attributes. Explicit measures of stereotyping entail responses to questionnaires asking for descriptions of men or women using Likert or bi-polar adjective scales (e.g., Kite et al., 2008 ; Haines et al., 2016 ), or asking for beliefs about the percentage of men and women possessing certain traits and attributes (e.g., McCauley and Stitt, 1978 ). Gender stereotypes have also been studied using implicit measures, using reaction time to measure associations between a gender group and a stereotyped trait or attribute (e.g., Greenwald and Banaji, 1995 ). Although implicit measures are used widely in some areas of research, our focus in the research reported here builds on the longstanding tradition of measuring gender stereotypes directly through the use of explicit measures.

Contemporary Gender Stereotypes

Researchers often argue that stereotypes are tenacious; they tend to have a self-perpetuating quality that is sustained by cognitive distortion ( Hilton and von Hippel, 1996 ; Heilman, 2012 ). However, stereotype maintenance is not only a product of the inflexibility of people’s beliefs but also a consequence of the societal roles women and men enact ( Eagly and Steffen, 1984 ; Koenig and Eagly, 2014 ). Therefore, the persistence of traditional gender stereotypes is fueled by skewed gender distribution into social roles. If there have been recent advances toward gender equality in workforce participation and the rigid representation of women and men in long-established gender roles has eased, then might the content of gender stereotypes have evolved to reflect this change?

The answer to this question is not straightforward; the degree to which there has been a true shift in social roles is unclear. On the one hand, there are more women in the workforce than ever before. In 1967, 36% of U.S. households with married couples were made up of a male provider working outside the home and a female caregiver working inside the home, but now only 19% of U.S. households concur with this division ( Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2017 ). Moreover, women increasingly pursue traditionally male careers, and there are more women in roles of power and authority. For example, today women hold almost 40% of management positions in the United States ( Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2017 ). In addition, more men are taking on a family’s main caretaker role ( Ladge et al., 2015 ). Though families with only the mother working are still rare (5% in 2016 compared to 2% in 1970), the average number of hours fathers spent on child care per week increased from 2.5 to 8 h in the last 40 years ( Pew Research Center, 2018 ). In addition, the majority of fathers perceive parenting as extremely important to their identity ( Pew Research Center, 2018 ).

On the other hand, role segregation, while somewhat abated, has by no means been eliminated. Despite their increased numbers in the labor force, women still are concentrated in occupations that are perceived to require communal, but not agentic attributes. For example, the three most common occupations for women in the U.S. involve care for others (elementary and middle school teacher, registered nurse, and secretary and administrative assistant; U.S. Department of Labor, 2015 ), while men more than women tend to work in occupations requiring agentic attributes (e.g., senior management positions, construction, or engineering; Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2016b ). Sociological research shows that women are underrepresented in occupations that are highly competitive, inflexible, and require high levels of physical skill, while they are overrepresented in occupations that place emphasis on social contributions and require interpersonal skills ( Cortes and Pan, 2017 ). Moreover, though men’s home and family responsibilities have increased, women continue to perform a disproportionate amount of domestic work ( Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2016a ), have greater childcare responsibilities ( Craig and Mullan, 2010 ; Kan et al., 2011 ), and continue to be expected to do so ( Park et al., 2008 ).

Thus, there is reason both to expect traditional gender stereotypes to dominate current conceptions of women and men, and to expect them to not. Relevant research findings are conflicting. For example, a large investigation found that over time managers have come to perceive women as more agentic ( Duehr and Bono, 2006 ). However, other investigations have found gender stereotypes to have changed little over time ( Heilman et al., 1989 ) or even to have intensified ( Lueptow et al., 2001 ). A recent study replicating work done more than 30 years ago found minimal change, with men and women still described very differently from one another and in line with traditional stereotyped conceptions ( Haines et al., 2016 ).

There also have been conflicting findings concerning self-charcterizations, especially in women’s self-views of their agency. Findings by Abele (2003) suggest that self-perceived agency increases with career success. Indeed, there has been indication that women’s self-perceived deficit in agency has abated over time ( Twenge, 1997 ) or that it has abated in some respects but not others ( Spence and Buckner, 2000 ). However, a recent meta-analysis has found that whereas women’s self-perceptions of communality have decreased over time, their self-perceptions of agency have remained stable since the 1990s ( Donnelly and Twenge, 2017 ). Yet another study found almost no change in men’s and women’s self-characterizations of their agency and communality since the 1970s ( Powell and Butterfield, 2015 ).

There are many possible explanations for these conflicting results. A compelling one concerns the conceptualization of the agency and communality constructs and the resulting difference in the traits and behaviors used to measure them. In much of the gender stereotypes literature, agency and communality have been loosely used to denote a set of varied attributes, and different studies have operationalized agency and communality in different ways. We propose that agency and communality are not unitary constructs but rather are comprised of multiple dimensions, each distinguishable from one another. We also propose that considering these dimensions separately will enhance the clarity of our understanding of current differences in the characterization of women and men, and provide a more definitive picture of gender stereotypes today.

Dimensions of Communality and Agency

There has been great variety in how the agency construct has been operationalized, and the specific terms used to measure agency often differ from study to study (e.g., McAdams et al., 1996 ; Rudman and Glick, 2001 ; Abele et al., 2008 ; Schaumberg and Flynn, 2017 ). Furthermore, distinctions between elements of agency have been identified: In a number of studies competence has been shown to be distinct from agency as a separate factor ( Carrier et al., 2014 ; Koenig and Eagly, 2014 ; Abele et al., 2016 ; Rosette et al., 2016 ), and in others, the agency construct has been subdivided into self-reliance and dominance ( Schaumberg and Flynn, 2017 ). There also has been great variety in how the communality construct has been operationalized ( Hoffman and Hurst, 1990 ; Fiske et al., 2007 ; Abele et al., 2008 ; Brosi et al., 2016 ; Hentschel et al., 2018 ). Although there have been few efforts to pinpoint specific components of communality, recent work focused on self-judgments in cross-cultural contexts has subdivided it into facets of warmth and morality ( Abele et al., 2016 ).

The multiplicity of items used to represent agency and communality in research studies involving stereotyping is highly suggestive that agentic and communal content can be decomposed into different facets. In this research we seek to distinguish dimensions underlying both the agency and the communality constructs. Our aim is to lend further credence to the idea that the fundamental constructs of agency and communality are multifaceted, and to supply researchers with dimensions of each that may be useful for study of stereotype evaluation and change.

While we are proposing that agency and communality can be broken down into components, we are not claiming that the use of these overarching constructs in earlier research has been an error. In the vast majority of studies in which communality or agency has been measured the scale reliabilities have been high and the items highly correlated. However, internal consistency does not necessarily indicate that the individual items included are unidimensional ( Schmitt, 1996 ; Sijtsma, 2008 ), or that the entirety of the construct is being captured in a particular measure. Moreover, there are multiple meanings included in these constructs as they have been discussed and operationalized in gender research. Therefore, we propose that breaking them down into separate dimensions will provide finer distinctions about contemporary characterizations of men and women.

Perceiver Sex

Findings often demonstrate that male and female raters are equally likely to characterize women and men in stereotypic terms ( Heilman, 2001 , 2012 ). This suggests that stereotypes outweigh the effects of evaluators’ gender identities and, because men and women live in the same world, they see the world similarly. However, the steady shift of women’s societal roles and its different implications for men and women may affect the degree to which men and women adhere to traditional gender stereotypes.

On the face of it, one would expect women to hold traditional gender stereotypes less than men. The increase of women in the workforce generally, and particularly in domains typically reserved for men, is likely to be very salient to women. Such changes have distinct implications for them – implications that can impact their expectations, aspirations, and actual experiences. As a result, women may be more attentive than men to shifts in workplace and domestic roles, and more accepting of these roles as the new status quo. They consequently may be more amenable to incorporating updated gender roles into their understanding of the world, diminishing stereotypic beliefs.

Unlike women, who may be likely to embrace recent societal changes, men may be prone to reject or dismiss them. The same societal changes that present new opportunities for women can present threats to men, who may see themselves as losing their rightful place in the social order (see also Sidanius and Pratto, 1999 ; Knowles and Lowery, 2012 ). Thus, men may be less willing to accept modern-day changes in social roles or to see these changes as definitive. There may be little impetus for them to relinquish stereotypic beliefs and much impetus for them to retain these beliefs. If this is the case, then men would be expected to adhere more vigorously to traditional gender stereotypes than women.

Self-Stereotyping Versus Stereotyping of One’s Gender Group

Although gender stereotypes impact charcterizations of both self and others, there may be a difference in the degree to which stereotypes dominate in self- and other-characterizations. That is, women may see themselves differently than they see women in general and men may see themselves differently than they see men in general; although they hold stereotypes about their gender groups, they may not apply them to themselves. Indeed, attribution theory ( Jones and Nisbett, 1987 ), which suggests that people are more prone to attribute behavior to stable personality traits when viewing someone else than when viewing oneself, gives reason to argue that stereotypes are more likely to be used when characterizing others in one’s gender group than when characterizing oneself. A similar case can be made for construal level theory ( Trope and Liberman, 2010 ), which suggests that psychological distance promotes abstraction rather than attention to individuating information. Moreover, the impact of societal changes that affect adherence to gender stereotypes is apt to have greater immediacy and personal impact for self, and therefore be more reflected in self-characterizations than in characterizations of others.

Some studies have compared the use of stereotypes in characterizing self and others. In an early study ( Rosenkrantz et al., 1968 ), each participating student was asked to rate men, women, and self on a number of characteristics. The researchers found that self-characterizations of men and women showed less evidence of stereotypes than characterizations of others. Similar results were found in studies on accuracy of stereotyping ( Martin, 1987 ; Allen, 1995 ). Using instrumenal (i.e., agentic) and expressive (i.e., communal) attributes from the BSRI and PAQ scales, Spence and Buckner (2000) found very little relation between stereotypes about others and self-characterizations.

There is reason to think that some dimensions of gender stereotypes are more likely than others to be differentially subscribed to when characterizing self than when characterizing others. For example, there is a tendency to boost self-esteem and adopt descriptors that are self-enhancing when describing oneself ( Swann, 1990 ), and this may have conseqences whether these descriptors are consistent or inconsistent with gender stereotypes. If this is so, gender may be an important factor; there are likely particular aspects of gender stereotypes that are more (or less) acceptable to women and men, affecting the degree to which they are reflected in men’s and women’s self-descriptions as compared to their description of their gender group. However, there also is reason to believe that individuals will embrace positive stereotypes and reject negative stereotypes as descriptive not only of themselves but also of their close in-groups ( Biernat et al., 1996 ), suggesting that there will be little difference between characterizations of oneself and one’s gender group. Therefore, to obtain a full picture of the current state of gender stereotypes and their impact on perceptions, we believe it important to compare self-characterizations and characterizations of one’s gender group on specific dimensions of gender stereotypes.

Overview of the Research

In this study, we develop a multidimensional framework for measuring different elements of agency and communality to provide an assessment of contemporary gender stereotypes and their impact on charcterizations about others and self. Using the multidimensional framework, we sought to determine (1) if men and women differ in their gender stereotypes; (2) if men and women differ in their self-characterizations; and (3) if men’s and women’s self-characterizations differ from their characterizations of their gender groups. In each instance we compare the results using the traditional unidimensional framework for measuring agency and communality with the results using the newly formulated multidimensional framework.

Materials and Methods

Participants.

Six hundred and twenty-nine participants (61% female, all U.S. residents) were recruited online via Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), providing a more representative sample of the U.S. population than student samples. MTurk samples tend to be slightly more diverse than and similarly reliable as other types of internet samples used in psychological research ( Paolacci et al., 2010 ; Buhrmester et al., 2011 ), but nonetheless are convenience samples rather than true representative samples based on demographic data (see e.g., Pew Research Center, 2017 ). In our sample, ages ranged from 19 to 83, with a mean age of 34.5 years ( SD = 13.1). In addition, education ranged from those who had not attended college (17%), had some college education (33%), had graduated from college (37%), to those who had graduate degrees (13%). 77.6% self-identified as White, 8.4% Asian, 7.0% African American, 4.8% Hispanic, and 2.2% other. 1 The survey link was visible only to U.S. residents who had a greater than 95% acceptance rate of previous MTurk work, an indication that their earlier work had been handled responsibly. In addition, we included a question asking participants to indicate whether they filled out the questionnaire honestly (we assured them that their answer on this question would not have any consequences for their payment). One person indicated that he had not filled out the survey honestly and was excluded from the analyses.

We conducted an experiment with two independent variables: rater gender (male or female) and target group (men in general, women in general, or self). The target group manipulation was randomly assigned to male and female raters. Subsets of this overall design were used to address our specific research questions.

Participants were told that we were interested in people perception, and they were asked either to rate men in general ( N = 215) women in general ( N = 208) or themselves ( N = 205) on an attribute inventory representing various dimensions of agency and communality 2 . The attributes were presented in differing orders to participants, randomized by the survey tool we used. Ratings were made using a 7-point scale with responses ranging from 1 (“not at all”) to 7 (“very much”).

Scale Construction

Using an inductive procedure, scale development proceeded in four steps. In the first step, we identified a set of 74 attributes, representative of how agency and communality have been measured by researchers in the past (consisting of adjectives, traits, and descriptors; see Appendix Tables A , B for the full list). The attributes were chosen from earlier investigations of gender stereotypes, including those of Broverman et al. (1972) , Schein (1973) , Spence and Helmreich (1978) , Heilman et al. (1995) , Fiske et al. (1999) , Diekman and Eagly (2000) , and Oswald and Lindstedt (2006) . They were selected to represent a broad array of agentic and communal attributes with a minimal amount of redundancy.

In the second step, three judges (the first two authors and another independent researcher) sorted the descriptive attributes into categories based on their conceptual similarity. The total set of attributes measured was included in the sorting task, and there was no limit placed on the number of categories to be created and no requirements for the number of attributes to be included within each created category. Specifically, the instructions were to use as many categories as needed to sort the attributes into conceptually distinct groupings. The sorting results were then discussed by the judges and two additional researchers. During the discussion, agreement was reached about the number of categories necessary to best capture the distinct dimensions of the sorted attributes. Attributes for which no consensus was reached about category placement were omitted. Then decisions were made about how each of the categories should be labeled. Seven categories were identified, four of which represented dimensions of agency – instrumental competence, leadership competence, assertiveness, independence – and three of which represented dimensions of communality – concern for others, sociability, emotional sensitivity.

In the third step, we had a different set of three independent judges (all graduate students in a psychology program) do a sorting of the retained attributes into the labeled categories. This was done to make sure that their sorting conformed to the identified categories; items that were misclassified by any of the judges were eliminated from the item set.

Finally, in a fourth step, we used confirmatory factor analysis procedures to further hone our categories. Following standard procedures on increasing model fit (e.g., Byrne, 2010 ), we eliminated all items that showed a low fit to the created categories. We later conducted a conclusive confirmatory factor analysis, for which the results are reported in the next section.

As a result of these steps, we created seven scales, each composed of the attributes remaining in one of the seven designated categories. The scales ranged from 3 to 4 items, the coefficient alphas all surpassed 0.75, and all corrected item-scale correlations surpassed 0.40 ( Field, 2006 ). Table 1 presents the attributes comprising each of the scales as well as the Cronbach alphas and corrected-item-scale correlations.

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Table 1. Dimension scales, scale items, and reliability information.

The four scales composed of agentic attributes and denoting dimensions of agency were: instrumental competence, leadership competence, assertiveness, and independence. Thus, the sorting process not only distinguished between competence and other elements of agency (as has been suggested by others like Carrier et al., 2014 ), but further decomposed the non-competence elements of agency into dimensions of assertiveness and independence. Assertiveness concerns acting on the world and taking charge. Independence connotes self-reliance and acting on one’s own, free of the influence of others. Furthermore, competence was subdivided into two separate dimensions – one focused on performance execution (instrumental competence), and the other focused on capability to perform as a leader (leadership competence). Both leadership competence and assertiveness imply high social power whereas instrumental competence and independence are not typically associated with power relations.

The three scales composed of communal attributes and denoting dimensions of communality were: concern for others, sociability, and emotional sensitivity. Concern for others and sociability both entail a focus on others, but the former involves a one-way relationship of giving and nurturance while the latter involves a transactional relationship focused on relationship building. Emotional sensitivity implies an orientation that focuses on feelings as an antecedent or consequence of interactions with others.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis

We conducted a confirmatory factor analysis using the R package lavaan ( Rosseel, 2012 ) to test the factor structure of the four final agency scales and the three final communality scales. Results revealed that for agency, the theoretically assumed four-factor model (i.e., instrumental competence, leadership competence, assertiveness, and independence as first-order factors) provided adequate fit (χ 2 = 370.224, df = 84, p < 0.001, χ 2 /df = 4.41, CFI = 0.947, RMSEA = 0.076, SRMR = 0.045) and also was more suitable than a one-factor model in which all agency items loaded on a single factor (χ 2 = 813.318, df = 90, p < 0.001, χ 2 /df = 9.04, CFI = 0.866, RMSEA = 0.116, SRMR = 0.068). A comparison of the two models showed that the four-factor agency model differed significantly from the one-factor model and was thus preferable (Δχ 2 = 443.09, df = 6, p < 0.001). Similarly, for communality the theoretically posited three-factor model (i.e., concern for others, sociability, and emotional sensitivity as first-order factors) provided acceptable fit (χ 2 = 326.000, df = 41, p < 0.001, χ 2 /df = 7.95, CFI = 0.931, RMSEA = 0.108, SRMR = 0.048) 3 and was more suitable than the one-factor model in which all communality items loaded on a single factor (χ 2 = 359.803, df = 44, p < 0.001, χ 2 /df = 7.95, CFI = 0.924, RMSEA = 0.110, SRMR = 0.048). A comparison of the two models showed that the three-factor communality model differed significantly from the one-factor model and was therefore preferable (Δχ 2 = 33.80, df = 3, p < 0.001). Overall, these results indicated that even though there were high correlations among the agency scales and also among the communality scales (as we would expect given our idea that in each case the multiple scales are part of the same construct; see Table 2 ), the four scales for agency and the three scales for communality represent different dimensions of these constructs.

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Table 2. Descriptive statistics and intercorrelations of agentic and communal dimension scales.

Overall Measures

To provide a point of comparison for our multi-dimensional framework, we also determined scales for overall agency and overall communality. In other words, the 15 agency items were combined into one overall agency scale (α = 0.93) and the 11 communality items were combined into one overall communality scale (α = 0.93).

Preliminary Analyses: Rater Age and Education Level

Because of potential consequences of raters’ age and education level on the use of gender stereotypes (younger and more educated people might be less likely to adhere to them), we conducted initial analyses to identify their independent and interactive effects. We did not have the opportunity to do the same for race because our subsamples of Asian, African American, and Hispanic participants were not large enough. To determine whether there were differences in the pattern of responses depending upon the age of the rater, we chose the age of 40 as a midlife indicator, divided our sample into two age groups (39 years and younger, 40 years and older), and included age as an additional independent variable in our analyses. Results indicated no main effects or interactions involving age in the ANOVAs conducted. We also divided our sample into two education level groups (those who had graduated from college or had advanced degrees and those who had not graduated from college), and included educational level as an additional independent variable in our analyses. We found no main effects or interactions involving educational level in the ANOVAs. As a consequence we combined data from both younger and older participants and from those who were and were not college educated in the analyses reported below.

Main Analyses

To address our research questions, we conducted a series of ANOVAs on subsets of our participant sample. For each question, we first conducted ANOVAs on the overall agency scale and the overall communality scale. Then, to determine whether the results differed for different agency and communality dimensions, we conducted mixed-model ANOVAs that included either agency dimension (instrumental competence, leadership competence, assertiveness, independence) or communality dimension as a within-subjects factor (concern for others, sociability, and emotional sensitivity). Fisher’s least significant difference (LSD) method was used to test the question-relevant planned comparisons.

Do Men and Women Differ in Their Gender Stereotypes?

We used a 2 × 2 ANOVA, with rater gender (male, female) and target group (men in genereal, women in general) to assess differences in men’s and women’s gender stereotypes. We first analyzed the overall agency and communality ratings, and then conducted a 2 × 2 × 4 mixed-model ANOVA including the agency dimensions, and a 2 × 2 × 3 mixed-model ANOVA including the communality dimensions. The mixed-model ANOVA results are presented in Table 3 . We followed up with LSD comparisons (see Table 4 ).

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Table 3. Results of 2 × 2 × 4 Agency ANOVA and 2 × 2 × 3 Communality ANOVA for stereotype ratings.

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Table 4. Means, standard deviations, and LSD results of stereotype ratings.

The 2 × 2 ANOVA results for the overall agency ratings indicated a main effect for both rater gender, F (1,418) = 15.10, p < 0.001, η p 2 = 0.04, and target group, F (1,418) = 5.52, p = 0.019, η p 2 = 0.01. The results of the 2 × 2 × 4 mixed-model ANOVA, including the four agency dimensions as a within-subject factor, repeated the main effects for rater gender and target group and also indicated a main effect for agency dimension and an interaction between agency dimension and target group (see Table 3 ), suggesting that there were differences in ratings depending on the agency dimension.

Differences in ratings of men in general and women in general

LSD comparisons (see Table 4 ) of the overall agency ratings indicated that male raters rated women in general as lower in overall agency than men in general. They further indicated that female raters rated women in general and men in general as equally agentic. LSD comparisons of the individual agency scales indicated that this result held true for most of the agency dimensions. With the exception of the instrumental competence dimension (on which there were no differences in ratings of women and men in general whether the rater was male or female), male raters rated women in general lower than men in general on the agency dimensions (leaderhip competence, assertiveness, and independence). In contrast to the ratings of male raters but in line with the overall agency result, female raters rated women in general no differently than they rated men in general in leadership competence and independence. Yet, in contrast to the results of the overall agency ratings, female raters differentiated between women and men in ratings of assertiveness. That is, much like male raters, female raters rated women in general as less assertive than men in general. Figure 1 displays the results for the agency dimensions.

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Figure 1. Ratings of agency dimensions (instrumental competence, leadership competence, assertiveness, independence) of men in general and women in general by male and female raters.

Rater gender differences in target group characterizations

Additional LSD comparisons (again see Table 4 ) lent further insight into the source of the gender discrepancy in the comparative ratings of women and men in general. Comparisons of the overall agency ratings indicated that ratings of men in general did not differ as a result of rater gender, but women in general were rated lower by male as compared to female raters. LSD comparisons of the agency dimensions were in line with the overall agency result in ratings of women in general – they were rated lower by male raters as compared to female raters on all four agency dimensions. However, comparisons of the agency dimensions in ratings of men in general were not uniform and deviated from the overall agency results. Although men in general were rated no differently by male and female raters on the instrumental competence, assertiveness, or independence dimensions, female as compared to male raters rated men in general higher in leadership competence (again see Figure 1 ).

Communality

A 2 (rater gender: male, female) × 2 (target group: men in general, women in general) ANOVA of the overall communality ratings indicated only a main effect for target group, F (1,418) = 88.68, p < 0.001, η p 2 = 0.18. The 2 × 2 × 3 mixed-model ANOVA (see Table 3 ), including the three communality dimensions as a within-subject factor, indicated main effects for target group, rater gender, and communality dimension as well as significant interactions between target group and rater gender, between communality dimension and target group, between communality dimension and rater type, and a three-way interaction.

LSD comparisons (see Table 4 ) for overall communality indicated that men in general were rated lower in communality than women in general by both male and female raters. In line with this overall finding, results of the LSD comparisons indicated that both female and male raters rated men in general as lower than women in general on all three communality dimensions: concern for others, sociability, and emotional sensitivity. Thus, using the overall measure yielded the same information as did the multidimensional measure.

Additional LSD comparisons (again see Table 4 ) of the communality ratings indicated that both male and female raters rated men in general similarly in communality, but female raters rated women in general higher in communality than male raters did. LSD comparisons of male and female raters rating men in general using the three communality dimensions were aligned with the overall communality result: male and female raters did not differ in ratings of concern for others, sociability, or emotional sensitivity. However, when rating women in general, results of the LSD comparisons of male and female raters were aligned with the overall measure result for only two of the communality dimensions: Female raters rated women in general higher in concern for others and emotional sensitivity than male raters did. On the dimension of sociability, male and female raters did not differ in their ratings of women in general.

Do Men and Women Differ in Their Self-Characterizations?

We used a one-way ANOVA to assess differences in men’s and women’s self-characterizations. We first analyzed the overall agency and communality ratings, and then conducted a mixed-model 2 × 4 ANOVA including the agency dimensions, and a 2 × 3 mixed-model ANOVA including the communality dimensions as a within-subject variable (see Table 5 ). We again followed up with LSD comparisons (see Table 6 ).

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Table 5. 2 × 4 Agency ANOVA and 2 × 3 Communality ANOVA for self-ratings.

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Table 6. Means (and standard deviations) and LSD results of self-ratings.

ANOVA results of the self-ratings of male and female raters on the overall measure of agency indicated no significant effect for rater gender, F (1,204) = 1.67, p = 0.198, η p 2 = 0.01. However, results of the 2 × 4 mixed model ANOVA, with agency dimensions as the within-subject factor, indicated a main effect for agency dimension and an interaction between agency dimension and rater gender, suggesting that self-ratings differed depending on the agency dimension in question (see Table 5 ). LSD comparisons (see Table 6 ) of overall agency showed that, as was indicated by the non-significant gender main effects, women rated themselves as equally agentic as men. Yet, the results for the analyses including the four agency dimensions indicated that only findings for instrumental competence and independence were consisent with the pattern of results for the overall agency ratings (there were no differences in the self-ratings of female and male raters). There were, however, significant differences in ratings of leadership competence and in ratings of assertiveness. For both of these dimensions of agency, women rated themselves lower than men did (see Figure 2 ).

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Figure 2. Ratings of agency dimensions (instrumental competence, leadership competence, assertiveness, independence) by male and female self-raters.

Results of the ANOVA of the self-ratings of male and female raters indicated a rater gender main effect, F (1,204) = 5.42, p = 0.021, η p 2 = 0.03. Results of a 2 × 3 mixed-model ANOVA (again see Table 5 ) with communality dimension as the within-subjects factor, indicated significant main effects for rater gender and communality dimensions. LSD comparisons (again see Table 6 ), in line with the main effect for rater gender, indicated that men rated themselves lower on overall communality than women. LSD comparisons on the dimension scales indicated that, consistent with the overall communality results, men rated themselves as less concerned for others and less emotionally sensitive than women. However, in contrast to the results for overall communality, there was no difference in how men and women characterized themselves in terms of sociability (see Figure 3 ).

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Figure 3. Ratings of communality dimensions (concern for others, emotional sensitivity, sociability) by male and female self-raters.

Do Men’s and Women’s Self-Characterizations Differ From Their Characterizations of Their Gender Groups?

We used a 2 × 2 ANOVA, with rater gender (male, female) and target group (self, men in general when rater was male or women in general when rater was female) to assess differences in men’s and women’s self characterizations and same-sex others‘ characterizations of their gender groups. We first analyzed the overall agency and communality ratings, and then again conducted a 2 × 2 × 4 mixed-model ANOVA including our agency dimensions, and a 2 × 2 × 3 mixed-model ANOVA including our communality dimensions (see Table 7 ) and once more followed up with LSD comparisons (see Table 8 ).

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Table 7. 2 × 2 × 4 Agency ANOVA and 2 × 2 × 3 Communality ANOVA for self-ratings versus target group ratings.

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Table 8. LSD comparisons of self-ratings versus target group ratings.

The 2 × 2 ANOVA results for the overall agency measure indicated no significant main effect for rater gender, F (1,397) = 2.19, p = 0.139, η p 2 = 0.00, or target group, F (1,397) = 0.013, p = 0.909, η p 2 = 0.00, but a marginally signicant interaction between them, F (1,397) = 2.77, p = 0.097, η p 2 = 0.01. The 2 × 2 × 4 mixed-model ANOVA including the agency dimensions as a within-subjects factor also indicated no significant main effects for rater gender or for target group and again a marginally significant interaction between them. It also indicated a significant main effect for agency dimension and significant interactions of dimension with both rater gender and target group, as well as a three-way interaction between rater gender, target group, and agency dimension (see Table 7 ).

Men’s self-ratings versus ratings of men in general

LSD comparisons (see Table 8 , means and standard deviations are displayed in Tables 4 , 6 ) of overall agency indicated that male raters rated themselves as more agentic than male raters rated men in general. Results for the agency dimensions were more varied: For the independence and instrumental competence dimensions results were in line with the overall agency result, but male raters rated themselves no differently in leadership competence or assertiveness than male raters rated men in general (see Figure 4 ).

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Figure 4. Ratings of agency dimensions (instrumental competence, leadership competence, assertiveness, independence) by male raters rating self and men in general.

Women’s self-ratings versus ratings of women in general

LSD comparisons (see Table 8 , means and standard deviations are displayed in Tables 4 , 6 ) of the overall agency ratings indicated that female raters rated themselves no differently than female raters rated women in general. However, comparisons of the four agency dimensions depicted a different pattern. Although ratings of independence were in line with the overall agency result, female raters rated themselves higher in instrumental competence than female raters rated women in general. Most striking, however, were the differences in ratings on the leadership competence and assertiveness dimensions. In contrast to the findings for overall agency, in each of these cases female raters‘ ratings of themselves were significantly lower than female raters‘ ratings of women in general (see Figure 5 ). The differences in self-ratings of assertiveness and leadership competence marked the only instance in which there was a more negative characterization of self than of one’s gender group.

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Figure 5. Ratings of agency dimensions (instrumental competence, leadership competence, assertiveness, independence) by female raters rating self and women in general.

The 2 × 2 ANOVA results for the overall communality measure indicated a main effect for rater gender, F (1,397) = 19.03, p < 0.001, η p 2 = 0.01, and target group, F (1,397) = 42.92, p < 0.001, η p 2 = 0.10 as well as a significant interaction, F (1,397) = 10.51, p = 0.001, η p 2 = 0.03. The 2 × 2 × 3 mixed-model ANOVA including the communality dimensions as a within-subjects factor indicated significant main effects for rater gender, for target group, and communality dimension as well as a significant interaction between rater gender and target group, between rater gender and communality dimension, and between target group and communality dimension (see Table 7 ).

LSD comparisons (see Table 8 , means and standard deviations are displayed in Tables 4 , 6 ) of overall communality indicated that male raters rated themselves as more communal than male raters rated men in general. LSD comparisons of the three communality dimension scales were consistent with the finding for overall communality. Male raters rated themselves significantly higher than male raters rated men in general in concern for others, sociability and emotional sensitivity (see Figure 6 ).

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Figure 6. Ratings of communality dimensions (concern for others, emotional sensitivity, sociability) by male raters rating self and men in general.

Women’s Self-Ratings Versus Ratings of Women in General

LSD comparisons (see Table 8 , means and standard deviations are displayed in Tables 4 , 6 ) of the overall communality ratings indicated that there was no difference in how female raters rated themselves and how female raters rated women in general. LSD comparisons for sociability and emotional sensitivity were consistent with this finding. However, female raters rated themselves higher in concern for others than they rated women in general (see Figure 7 ).

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Figure 7. Ratings of communality dimensions (concern for others, emotional sensitivity, sociability) by female raters rating self and women in general.

It was the objective of this research to investigate gender stereotyping of others and self. To do so, we aimed to take into account multiple dimensions of the agency and communality constructs. It was our contention that perceptions on some of these dimensions of agency and communality would differ from one another, and that there would be a benefit in viewing them separately. Our results support this idea. While there were overall findings for agency and communality, analyses of individual aspects of them were not always consistent with these findings. What often appeared to be a general effect when using the overall measures of agency and communality in fact proved to be more textured and differentiated when the multidimensional framework was used. These results support the idea that distinguishing between different agency and communality facets can offer a deeper, more nuanced understanding of gender stereotypes today. Indeed, some important information appears to get lost by only focusing on the overall constructs.

Answers to Our Research Questions

Current stereotypes.

Our results clearly indicate that gender stereotypes persist. They also indicate that stereotypes about agency were more prevalent for male than for female raters. Specifically, male raters described women in general as lower in most aspects of agency than men in general, and also rated women in general lower on each of the agency dimensions than female raters did. Nonetheless, female raters were not stereotype-free with respect to agency: they described women in general as less assertive than men in general and rated men in general as more leadership competent than male raters did. These findings were masked by the overall measure of agency, which indicated no differences in agency ratings.

Stereotypes about communality also were strongly indicated by our data, but their strength did not tend to differ greatly between male and female raters. All participants rated women higher than men on the three communality dimensions.

Self-Stereotyping

Our results showed that men’s and women’s self-characterizations differed in line with gender stereotypes. Despite the overall agency measure indicating no difference in self-ratings of agency, the analyses incorporating dimensions of agency painted a different picture. Whereas there was no difference in the self-characterizations of men and women in instrumental competence or independence, women rated themselves lower than men in leadership competence and assertiveness. There also were differences in communality self-ratings. Though men tended to rate themselves as generally less communal than women did (as less concerned for others and less emotionally sensitive), their ratings of sociability did not differ from women’s.

Self-Characterizations Versus Characterizations of One’s Gender Group

Self-characterizations were often found to differ from characterizations of one’s gender group. Male raters rated themselves as higher in independence and instrumental competence, but no different in assertiveness or leadership competence than they rated men in general. Female raters rated themselves higher in instrumental competence but lower in assertiveness and leadership competence than they rated women in general. These findings are at odds with the results of the overall agency ratings, which imply that male raters consistently rated themselves higher in agency, and that female raters consistently rated themselves no differently than they rated their gender group.

There also were differences between self-ratings and characterizations of one’s gender group on the communality dimensions. While female raters only rated themselves higher than they rated women in general in concern for others, male raters rated themselves as higher than they rated men in general on all three dimensions of communality.

Implications

What does our analysis of current stereotypes tell us? On the one hand, our results indicate that despite dramatic societal changes many aspects of traditional gender stereotypes endure. Both male and female respondents viewed men in general as being more assertive than women in general, and also viewed women in general as more concerned about others, sociable and emotionally sensitive than men in general. On the other hand, our results indicate important departures from traditional views. This can be seen in the findings that unlike male respondents, female respondents indicated no gender deficit in how independent or how competent in leadership they perceived other women to be.

Self-descriptions also tended to conform to traditional gender stereotypes, with men describing themselves as more assertive and more competent in leadership than women did, and women describing themselves as more concerned about others and more emotional than men did. However, there were aspects of agency and communality for which self-characterizations of men and women did not differ. Women’s self-ratings of independence and instrumental competence were as high as men’s self-ratings, and men’s self-ratings of sociability were as high as women’s self-ratings. Together with the findings about characterizations of men and women in general, these results attest not only to the possible changing face of stereotypes, but also highlight the importance of considering specific dimensions of both agency and communality in stereotype assessment.

It should be noted that our results suggest a greater differentiation between the multidimensional results for agency characterizations than for communality characterizations. That is, the multidmenstional results more often aligned with the results of the overall measure when the focus of measurement was communality than when it was agency. It is not clear at this point whether this is because of the particular items included in our scales or because communality is a more coherent construct. But, based on our results, it would appear that the use of a multidimensional framework is of particular value when the measurement of agency is the focus – something that should be noted by those involved in studying stereotype assessment and change.

Competence Perceptions

The lack of similarity in the pattern of results for the two competence dimensions (instrumental competence and leadership competence) is interesting. Although there were differences in ratings on the leadership competence dimension, ratings on the instrumental competence dimension did not differ when comparing ratings of men and women in general or when comparing male and female raters’ self-characterizations. It thus appears that there is an aspect of competence on which women are rated as highly as men – the wherewithal to get the work done. However, caution is urged in interpreting this finding. The attributes comprising the instrumental competence scale can be seen as indicative of conscientiousness and willingness to work hard, attributes often associated with women as well as men. Thus there is a question about whether instrumental competence is really a component of the agency construct, a question also prompted by its pattern of correlations with the other dependent measure scales (see also Carrier et al., 2014 ).

The leadership competence ratings paint a different picture. The consistent perception by men that leadership competence was more prevalent in men than in women suggests that, at least as far as men are concerned, women still are not seen as “having what it takes” to adequately handle traditionally male roles and positions. Whatever the interpretation, however, the different pattern of results found for these two scales indicates that we as researchers have to be very precise in designating what we are measuring and how we are measuring it. It also indicates that we have to keep close to the construct we actually have measured when drawing conclusions from our data.

Women and Contemporary Gender Stereotypes

Our results show that women do not entirely embrace the stereotypic view of women as less agentic than men. They did not make distinctions between men and women in general when rating their independence and instrumental competence, nor were their self-ratings on the independence and instrumental competence scales lower than the self-ratings made by men. These findings are noteworthy: one of the key aspects of agency is independence, and it appears that women do not see themselves or other women to be lacking it more than men. Women also did not make distinctions between men and women in general when rating their leadership competence, another key component of agency. These findings suggest that, for modern day women, some important aspects of the agency stereotype no longer apply.

However, our results suggest that women have not moved as far along as one would hope in separating themselves from gender stereotypic constraints. In particular, their self-perceptions of assertiveness and leadership competence – dimensions of agency associated with social power – do not seem to deviate from traditional gender conceptions. Our findings indicate that women not only characterized themselves as less assertive and less competent in leadership than men characterized themselves, but they also described themselves significantly more negatively on these two scales than they described women in general. This means that women rated themselves as more deficient in several central aspects of agency than they rated women as a group, adhering more strongly to traditional gender stereotypes when describing themselves than when describing others. These results seem inconsistent with attribution theory ( Jones and Nisbett, 1987 ) and construal level theory ( Trope and Liberman, 2010 ), and challenge the idea that because people differentiate more when viewing themselves as compared to others they are less apt to use stereotypes in self-description. They also raise questions about differences in aspects of agency that do and do not involve power relations. These findings are in need of further exploration.

Men and Contemporary Gender Stereotypes

Our results indicate that men continue to accept the stereotyped conception of men lacking communal qualities. They, along with women, rated men in general lower than women in general on all three communality dimensions. It therefore is particularly interesting that in their self-ratings on one dimension of communality – sociability – they did not differ from women. This finding suggests that men conceive of sociability differently when they characterize themselves than when they charcterize others. Other research suggests that whereas women are more social than men in close relationships, men are more social than women in group contexts ( Baumeister and Sommer, 1997 ; Gabriel and Gardner, 1999 ). Thus, men might have rated themselves as equally sociable as women rated themselves, but for a different reason: because they conceptualized sociability with regard to their groups (rather than close relationships). If so, then clarification is needed about why this potentially different conception of sociability takes hold for men only when they characterize themselves.

Furtherore, it is of note that when comparing themselves with men in general, men’s ratings of themselves were significantly higher on all communal dimensions. This finding suggests that although they strongly adhere to traditional stereotypes in their characterizations of men as a group, there is a tendency for men to be less stereotype-bound when they characterize themselves. It also suggests that they are more self-aggrandizing when rating themselves than when rating other men – ascribing to themselves more of the “wonderful” traits traditionally associated with women ( Eagly and Mladinic, 1989 ). This result contrasts with that found for women, for whom traditional gender stereotypes often appeared to exert more influence in self-characterizations than in characterizations of others, even when the result was self-deprecating rather than self-enhancing. Why there are differences in discrepancies in self-ratings versus other-ratings of women and men raises interesting questions for future research – questions about whether these differential effects are due to the gender of the rater or to the nature of the particular descriptors involved.

Limitations

Our results indicate that breaking down agency and communality into dimensions was often of benefit when assessing stereotyped perceptions. Though many of our scales were highly correlated, the confirmatory factor analyses provided support that they were distinct facets. Our choice to analyze the scales separately despite high correlations is in line with other researchers, who argue that doing so can enhance results interpretation ( Luthar, 1996 ; Tabachnik and Fidell, 2007 ). However, we do not claim that the dimensions we derived are the only way to differentiate among the elements of communality and agency, nor do we claim that our scales are the best way to measure them. Indeed, we chose a top–down procedure, using expert judges to derive our scales. This had the advantage that the judges knew about gender research and could effectively represent the literature on gender stereotypes. Nevertheless, if non-experts had done the initial sorting, they may have come to different conclusions about the number or content of items in the different scales or may have generated different scales altogether, ones that perhaps would have been more representative of everyday categories that are consensual in our culture.

Furthermore, our scale construction may have been constrained because our initial pool of items relied exclusively on existing items from past scales, which, although broadly selected, may have been limited by particular ways of thinking about stereotypes. Recent findings by Abele et al. (2016) , for example, included a morality facet in their breakdown of communality, and found it to be a robust facet of communality in ratings within and between a large number of countries in both Eastern and Western cultures. We, however, did not include many items that measured morality in our original list of attributes. Whereas we scoured the gender stereotyping literature focused on social perception to compile the most frequently used items for our initial item pool, Abele and colleagues went through a similar process, but with literature focused primarily on self-perception. Items focusing on the morality component of communality should no doubt be incorporated in future research. In addition, there might also be additional items relating to other facets of agency, such as a cognitive agency facet (e.g., being rational). Moreover, and more generally, a process by which the attributes comprising the scales are generated in a free-form manner and the categorization tasks are performed by a broad-ranging set of judges would serve as a check on our measures and provide guidance about how to modify and improve them.

There are other methodological limitations that are suggestive of follow-up research. We found no differences as a result of the rater’s age and education, attesting to the generality of the effects we uncovered, but there no doubt are other possible moderating factors to be explored, such as race and socio-economic level. Moreover, although we were able to tap into a wide-ranging population, it is important to replicate our study with a more representative U.S. sample to assess the full scope of our findings. In addition, our study was restricted to a sample of U.S. citizens, and it would be interesting to replicate this research with samples that are not exclusively from the U.S. Such cross-cultural replications would help not only to assess generalizability to other cultures, but also to assess the extent to which the nature and degree of change in social roles influences the way people currently conceive of men and women, and men and women conceive of themselves. Finally, it would be useful to conduct research using our measure to describe more differentiated targets to determine whether our results would be similar or different when intersectionality is taken into account and when particular subtypes of women and men are the focus.

Going Forward

Our findings stimulate several questions for future research. Not only would it be useful to further investigate the competence component of agency, clarifying what it does and does not entail, but also to consider another aspect of competence that has recently been identified as being strongly male gender-typed – intellectual brilliance ( Leslie et al., 2015 ). Exploring the effects of the apparently contradictory view women have of themselves in terms of agency (self-views of their independence and instrumental competence versus self-views of their assertiveness and leadership competence) on women’s attitudes and behavior in a variety of spheres also would be valuable. In addition, it would be advantageous to determine whether the greater communality men ascribe to themselves than to other men reflects actual beliefs or is merely self-enhancing, and if it has implications for men’s approach to traditionally female roles and positions.

Finally, it is important that in future research attempts are made to demonstrate the usefulness of distinguishing among the dimensions of agency and communality we have identified, and to do so for both self and other characterizations. While for some research questions an overall agency and overall communality measure will likely be sufficient, there no doubt are instances in which finer distinctions will be beneficial. It is possible, for example, that different dimensions of gender stereotypes are more strongly associated with selection decisions, performance evaluations, or reward distributions. Indeed, other researchers have already begun to demonstrate the value of considering distinct facets of agency in assessing gender differences in leader evaluations, but with a less differentiated set of dimensions including only self-reliance and dominance ( Schaumberg and Flynn, 2017 ). It also is possible that different dimensions of self-stereotypes are more strongly associated with career aspirations and choices, or support for gender-related organizational policies. Demonstrating that different dimensions of agency and communality predict different outcomes would add support to our multidimensional framework. In addition to increasing our understanding, such discoveries could provide valuable information about leverage points for intervention to ease the negative consequences of gender stereotyping and the bias they promote.

In this study we have demonstrated the value of subdividing the agency and communality construct in the study of gender stereotypes, and shown that making global statements about agency and communality runs the risk of distorting rather than clarifying our understanding.

Our goal with this paper was to further the conversation in the field about different aspects of both agency and communality and their potentially different effects on self and other characterizations. An underlying theme is that we may be losing information by generalizing to two super constructs and not attending to their components. Our findings demonstrate the complexity of the agency and communality constructs and the potential benefits of thinking about them with greater specificity. This can have consequences not only for understanding stereotypes and gender bias, but also for intervention and change efforts.

What are the implications of our findings for understanding the persistence of gender inequality? Although the results signal easing in some dimensions of traditional gender stereotypes, they make clear that in many ways they persist. Of particular importance is men’s unrelenting image of women as deficient in attributes considered to be essential for success in many traditionally male fields – an image that forms the basis of gender bias in many evaluative decisions. But women are not exempt from the influence of gender stereotypes; even though they view women as equal to men in several key agentic qualities, they see themselves as more deficient than men do in both leadership competence and assertiveness, and more deficient in these agency dimensions than women in general. These findings, which result from consideration of multiple aspects of the agency construct, augur ill for the tempering of women’s tendency to limit their opportunities. Evidently we still have a way to go before all the components of traditional gender stereotypes fully dissipate and recede, allowing men and women to be judged, and to judge themselves, on the basis of their merits, not their gender.

Ethics Statement

This study was carried out in accordance with the recommendations of the Institutional Review Board, University Committee on Activities Involving Human Subjects, New York University. The protocol was approved by the University Committee on Activities Involving Human Subjects, New York University.

Author Contributions

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct and intellectual contribution to the work, and approved it for publication.

This project was supported in part by an ADVANCE Diversity Science Research Grant awarded to the second author funded by the National Science Foundation ADVANCE-PAID award (HRD-0820202). This project was further supported by the Research Grant “Selection and Evaluation of Leaders in Business and Academia” awarded to the third author and funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the European Social Fund (ESF) (FKZ 01FP1070/71). This publication was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in the framework of the Open Access Publishing Program.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

We thank Suzette Caleo, Francesca Manzi, Susanne Braun, and Jennifer Ray for their insights and feedback in the development of this study. We thank Armin Pircher Verdorfer for his support in calculting the CFA. Portions of this study were presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.

  • ^ The median age of the U.S. population is 37.9 years ( United States Census Bureau, 2017c ); Levels of education of the U.S. population 25 years and older in 2017: 39.2% did not attend college, 16.3% had some college, 31.6% had graduated college, 12.9% have graduate degrees ( United States Census Bureau, 2017a ); Race/ethnicity percentages in the general U.S. population are as follows: 60.7% White, 18.1% Hispanic, 13.4% African American, 5.8% Asian, 2% other ( United States Census Bureau, 2017b ).
  • ^ The attributes in the inventory included the communal and agentic attributes of interest as well as a group of attributes measuring other constructs that were included for exploratory purposes but not used in this study.
  • ^ The relatively large RMSEA is likely due to violation of multivariate normality assumptions (joint multivariate kurtosis = 76.55 with a critical ratio of 55.30). The most important implication of non-normality is that chi-square values are inflated, whereas parameter estimates are still fairly accurate ( Kline, 2011 ).

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www.frontiersin.org

Table A. List of agentic attributes measured.

www.frontiersin.org

Table B. List of communal attributes measured.

Keywords : gender stereotypes, self-stereotyping, communality, communion, agency, men, women, gender identity

Citation: Hentschel T, Heilman ME and Peus CV (2019) The Multiple Dimensions of Gender Stereotypes: A Current Look at Men’s and Women’s Characterizations of Others and Themselves. Front. Psychol. 10:11. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00011

Received: 20 March 2018; Accepted: 04 January 2019; Published: 30 January 2019.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2019 Hentschel, Heilman and Peus. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Tanja Hentschel, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Documentary and Stereotypes pp 23–52 Cite as

Why Do Stereotypes Exist?

  • Catalin Brylla 2  
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This chapter forms the basis for our exploration of how stereotypes contribute to stigmatisation. It is essential to understand the mechanisms by which stereotypes are formed to conceptualise rigorous—yet pragmatic—methodologies for the reduction of stigma in on-screen representations. Our exploration is grounded in social identity theory, which explains why and how we categorise, evaluate and behave towards others as we encounter them both in real life and via media content. Social identity theory was first formulated in the 1970s by social psychologists Henri Tajfel and John Turner. A Polish Jew, Tajfel’s immediate family and many of his friends were victims of the Holocaust. These losses were no doubt instrumental in guiding Tajfel’s professional interest in prejudice and intergroup relations (Brown, 2019). He observed that individuals categorise themselves as belonging to various groups based on gender, ethnicity, profession, religion or indeed any other significant affiliation, thereby making group belonging an essential aspect of a person’s sense of their own social identity, by contrast with the social identities of others (Tajfel & Turner, 1979).

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The neuroscience of prejudice and stereotyping

  • David M. Amodio 1  

Nature Reviews Neuroscience volume  15 ,  pages 670–682 ( 2014 ) Cite this article

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Prejudice is a fundamental component of human social behaviour that represents the complex interplay between neural processes and situational factors. Hence, the domain of intergroup bias, which encompasses prejudice, stereotyping and the self-regulatory processes they often elicit, offers an especially rich context for studying neural processes as they function to guide complex social behaviour.

The sociocognitive processes involved in prejudice, stereotyping and the regulation of intergroup responses engage different sets of neural structures that seem to comprise separate functional networks.

Prejudice is an evaluation of, or an emotional response towards, a social group based on preconceptions. Prejudiced responses range from the rapid detection of threat or coalition and subjective visceral responses to deliberate evaluations and dehumanization — processes that are supported most directly by the amygdala, orbital frontal cortex, insula, striatum and medial prefrontal cortex.

Stereotypes represent the cognitive component of intergroup bias — the conceptual attributes associated with a particular social group. Stereotyping involves the encoding of group-based concepts and their influence on impression formation, social goals and behaviour. These processes are primarily underpinned by the anterior temporal lobes and the medial and dorsolateral prefrontal cortices.

Expressions of prejudice and stereotyping are often regulated on the basis of personal beliefs and social norms. This regulatory process involves neural structures that are typically recruited for cognitive control, such as the dorsal anterior cingulate and lateral prefrontal cortices, as well as structures supporting mentalizing and perspective taking, such as the rostral anterior cingulate and medial prefrontal cortices.

Situated at the interface of the natural and social sciences, the neuroscience of prejudice offers a unique context for understanding complex social behaviour and an opportunity to apply neuroscientific advances to pressing social issues.

Despite global increases in diversity, social prejudices continue to fuel intergroup conflict, disparities and discrimination. Moreover, as norms have become more egalitarian, prejudices seem to have 'gone underground', operating covertly and often unconsciously, such that they are difficult to detect and control. Neuroscientists have recently begun to probe the neural basis of prejudice and stereotyping in an effort to identify the processes through which these biases form, influence behaviour and are regulated. This research aims to elucidate basic mechanisms of the social brain while advancing our understanding of intergroup bias in social behaviour.

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Acknowledgements

Work on this article was supported by a National Science Foundation grant (BCS 0847350). The author thanks members of the NYU Social Neuroscience Laboratory, J. Freeman, K. Ratner and the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback on earlier versions of this article.

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Motives that operate in social contexts and satisfy basic, often universal, goals and aspirations, such as to affiliate (for example, form relationships and communities) or to achieve dominance (for example, within a social hierarchy).

Conceptual attributes associated with a group and its members (often through over-generalization), which may refer to trait or circumstantial characteristics.

Evaluations of or affective responses towards a social group and its members based on preconceptions.

The process of responding in an intentional manner, often involving the inhibition or overriding of an alternative response tendency.

The visual encoding of a face in terms of its basic structural characteristics (for example, the eyes, nose, mouth and the relative distances between these elements). Configural encoding may be contrasted with featural encoding, which refers to the encoding of feature characteristics that make an individual's face unique.

Actions performed to achieve a desired outcome (that is, goal-directed responses).

Prejudiced or stereotype-based perceptions or responses that operate without conscious awareness.

Judgements that result from thoughtful considerations (often involving cognitive control) as opposed to rapid, gut-level, 'snap' judgements.

(ERP). An electrical signal produced by summated postsynaptic potentials of cortical neurons in response to a discrete event, such as a stimulus or a response in an experimental task. Typically recorded from the scalp in humans, ERPs can be measured with extremely high temporal resolution and can be used to track rapid, real-time changes in neural activity.

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Amodio, D. The neuroscience of prejudice and stereotyping. Nat Rev Neurosci 15 , 670–682 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn3800

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Published : 04 September 2014

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn3800

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research paper about stereotypes

July 8, 2020

Stereotypes Harm Black Lives and Livelihoods, but Research Suggests Ways to Improve Things

Management researcher Modupe Akinola explains on how stereotypes hurt Black Americans and what we can do to counter them

By Katy Milkman & Kassie Brabaw

research paper about stereotypes

Modupe Akinola speaks on stage at the New York Times 2015 DealBook Conference at the Whitney Museum of American Art on November 3, 2015, in New York City.

Neilson Barnard Getty Images

The Black Lives Matter protests shaking the world have thankfully brought renewed attention not just to police brutality but to the broader role of racism in our society. Research suggests some roots of racism lie in the stereotypes we hold about different groups. And those stereotypes can affect everything from the way police diagnose danger to who gets interviewed for jobs to which students get attention from professors. Negative stereotypes harm Black Americans at every turn. To reduce their pernicious effects, it’s important to first understand how stereotypes work and just how pervasive they are.

Modupe Akinola , an associate professor at Columbia Business School, studies racial bias, workforce diversity and stress. Recently, Katy Milkman , a professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, got to chat with Akinola about how stereotypes are formed, how they affect consequential decisions and how we can combat negative stereotypes .

[ An edited transcript of the interview follows. ]

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Let’s start at the beginning. What is a stereotype?

A stereotype is a snap judgment we make about a person or about a thing that can influence our decision-making. Every day we get millions and millions of bits of information in our head that associate good and bad with certain people or groups or things. And anytime we then see those people, groups or things, that association comes immediately to our mind.

Why do you think we do this?

We’re processing so much information all the time; we need these mental shortcuts to allow us to navigate the world. If not, we wouldn’t be able to function, quite frankly. We have to make quick judgments to make life easier and to simplify. But any type of shortcut can have its pros and cons.

Could you talk about some of the research connecting stereotyping with racism?

One of my favorite sets of studies examines stereotyping as it relates to policing. I grew up in New York City. And we heard a lot about Amadou Diallo, who was an unarmed Black man who was shot by police, because they thought he was carrying a gun—when in actuality, he raised his hand, and he had a wallet.

Joshua Correll, [now at the University of Colorado Boulder], and his colleagues wanted to look at whether the stereotypes associating Black people with danger could play a role in how a mistake like that could be made. The news we see regularly shows crime rates being higher for certain populations, mostly minority populations,. And so this creates an automatic stereotype that a Black man would be more linked to danger than a white man, because you don’t see those same associations for white people.

Correll came up with a computerized shooter bias exercise that showed pictures of targets, Black and white men, carrying objects, either weapons or regular objects like a Coke can or a wallet. When you saw a person and the object, you had to click on whether or not to shoot. He found that civilians were more likely to shoot unarmed Black men, relative to unarmed white men and even armed white men, which was attributed to the stereotypes associating Black people with danger.

I found that study fascinating, because it showed just how powerful these associations can be. I did some follow-up research, because I wanted to see if stress affects that decision-making process. I stressed out police officers and had them engage in the shooting exercise.

The interesting thing is: I saw that under stress, officers were more accurate. They were able to discern whether to shoot an armed Black man and did that better in terms of not shooting unarmed Black men. However, they were less likely to shoot armed white men, which I think demonstrates the power of stereotypes, because there isn’t a stereotype of white and danger.

Stereotypes work in two ways: they can harm some groups, and they can protect others.

Are there any other studies about stereotyping that you think people might find illuminating?

My favorite are audit studies, where you observe real-world behavior. There have been audit studies where people go to car dealerships to see if people are treated differently and about who gets mortgages and things like that.

One audit study was testing ads in the newspaper, which were advertising entry-level positions. [The researchers] sent candidate résumés to these job ads, which were identical, and changed the names on the résumés to signal race. “Lakisha” and “Jamal” were Black-sounding names that were tested and pretested to ensure they would signal race versus a name like “Catherine,” which would be a more white-sounding name. They waited to see who called back for which candidates. The Lakishas and Jamals received fewer callbacks for an interview than the white-sounding names.

Again, this behavior is attributed to stereotypes. We make presumptions and snap judgments about who might be more qualified for a job, who might do well in a job, even in the context of identical information.

Would you be willing to describe a little bit of the work we’ve done together on the role of stereotyping in academia?

Certainly. We—you, I and Dolly Chugh [of the Stern School of Business at New York University]—wanted to see if racial or gender stereotypes impact the pathway to academia. As you’re applying or thinking about getting a Ph.D., often you’ll reach out to a professor and ask, “Are you taking graduate students?” or “Can I learn more about your research?” We get these e-mails, all the time, asking for time on our schedule. And we wanted to see if professors would differentially respond to these requests, depending on the race and gender of the requester.

We sent e-mails to around 6,500 professors across the country, at both private and public universities. We sent these e-mails that were identical, except we varied the race and gender of the name of the applicant.

These e-mails said, “Dear professor so-and-so, I’ll be on campus on XYZ day, on a Monday or Tuesday, and was wondering if I could take some time to learn about your research.” The names on these e-mails were Chinese names, Indian names, African-American-, Latino- and white-sounding names. We pretested all these names to ensure that they did signal the race and gender we thought they would.

We expected to see more stereotyping or discrimination (i.e., fewer responses) to nonwhite males when asked to meet next week versus today. Why? Today everyone’s pretty busy, and so there’s no time for the stereotypes or snap judgments to come into your mind about who might be a more qualified student, who you might want to respond to and meet with.

However, in a meeting request for next week, you might go through more scrutiny about whether the candidate is worthy of your time. We thought that’s when stereotypes would set in. Maybe for some categories, it’s “Do they have English-language proficiency?” For other categories, given the lack of minorities in academia in general, there might be the question of “Can they cut it?”

As we predicted, we did find fewer responses for all of the other categories, relative to the responses to white males, for a meeting request for next week. The question then was whether we’d see this when we matched the race and the gender of the professor with the race and the gender of the student. We still found that requests for next week, regardless of the race of the professor, are lower for candidates other than white males.

As an African-American professor, in the early days of my teaching, I’d often find myself setting up to teach a class, and somebody, usually a prospective student, would come in and say, “I’d like to sit in and learn more about this class. Where’s the professor?” They would say that to me as I was setting up, looking like the professor—on the computer, getting everything ready. That, for me, was a perfect example of how stereotypes can play a role.

The stereotype of what a professor looks like—an older white man with gray hair—is one of the factors that might make somebody come in, see a person at the podium preparing for work and wearing a suit, and ask who the professor is. I love those moments, in some ways, because one of the ways in which you change people’s stereotypes is by having counter-stereotypical exemplars.

Let’s talk more about that. How can we combat stereotypes or try to reduce the harm they cause?

I think one of the ways we can reduce the harm of stereotypes is just being aware. Sometimes you’ll be walking down the street, and you’ll make a snap judgment and not even realize it. But I think one of the critical aspects is noticing, “Oh wow, that came up for me. That’s interesting,” and thinking, “Where did that come from?” We can change our behavior when we’re more aware that our behavior is being influenced by stereotypes.

The other way is by being exposed to counter-stereotypical exemplars. As an African-American, female professor, a student’s mere exposure to me means that the next time they go into a classroom with an African-American woman setting up, or someone else who might defy the stereotype of what a professor looks like, they won’t automatically say, “Where’s the professor?”

I often tell my students they have a beautiful opportunity to be the walking, breathing and living counter-stereotypical exemplars in their work environments. I ask them to think about the stereotypes that exist about them, the stereotypes that exist about people around them, the stereotypes that exist about people on their teams— and to realize that, every day, they have the opportunity to defy those stereotypes.

Stereotyping: Forms And Theories of Stereotypes Research Paper

Introduction, forms of stereotypes, theories of stereotypes, works cited.

Human beings were born with billions and billions if inherent ideas. The uniqueness that we all posses are one shining example that we are all different and we all serve different roles. The word stereotype simply means to label a person. This is occasioned at times by real traits, and behaviours (Craig et al 110). This comes about when an individual, a group or a tribe continuously and repeatedly exhibits a trait to which others think or label as queer. The other side of the divide will naturally come from a different ethnic, cultural, social or economic back ground. The deepest rooted and the oldest form of stereotype is gender. This form is deeply rooted and entrenched in human behaviour since time immemorial. Men and women tend to look down upon other on many issues. This stereotype comes in two major divisions. According to Craig et al (112), there is the personality and the roles stereotype with the former being a psychological part while the latter taking the roles and activities. It is a common stereotype to hear men label women as poor drivers, while women will say that men are terrible in household chores. Such utterances are in no way meant to demean the other divide but it largely tends to portray the macho side of the one stereotyping. The aftermath of stereotyping; there emerged a division of labour, men assigned themselves duties and roles that they felt could perform better while assigning those they felt that were of lower status to women. One thing that must be noted is that those duties that they considered of lower cadre were not, men were only boosting their egos. In a family setup if a woman’s role is to clean, cook, bake and feed the children she should be said to be playing a lesser role than the man just because he pays house rent and other bills (Craig et al 112).

World wide, Stereotypes comes on two forms the positive and negative. In many stereotypes, the subject is always viewed negatively, while the ones issuing the stereotype feel superior on that particular field. As the world evolved this phenomenon led to gender imbalance, in many parts of the world women were looked down upon. In almost all sectors of the economy there were fewer chances for women as compared to those of men. If there were chances to be availed for women this were the lowly and the most demeaning whose working conditions were very hostile. This created a big imbalance in the social political economic map pitting women a distant second compared to their male counterparts. Stereotyping is not only confined to the poor and developing nations, during the 2008 United States General elections, there was a great debate raging all over the world on whether Americans were ready for a female president. This stereotype greatly affected the candidature of Hillary Clinton and she lost the race for the Democrat’s presidential ticket nomination. In the yester years, it was a common practice to deny girls formal education. This made them rate very poorly compared to their male counterparts. The stereotypes had it that education was for the boys and girls had other things to do. Still due to stereotyping girls were considered only good in the kitchen and family matters. In many African communities girls were married at a very tender age as early as nine years. Still in this African communities like the pokots and the marakwets of Kenya, young girls still undergo the de-humanising female genital mutilation (Burgess and Borgida 690). The male stereotype argues that for a girl to become mature she has to undergo the cut, they also argue that this helps to stem the woman’s sexual desires. In their argument a woman should only have sex when the husband wants; she is not supposed to have any sexual desires, in case she exhibited some urges she was branded as a prostitute (Eagly et al 87). This can be termed as one stereotype that proponents even want to defy nature. It is common knowledge that sexual desires either in men or women are beyond human stereotyping but rather a very natural and intricate occurrence.

There are several approaches that have been taken trying to explain why human beings will label other humans. Burgess and Borgida (672) argue that the origin of stereotypes have a heavy correlation negative culture education system and religion. In an attempt to justify some of the existing inequalities and at times injustices, these three institutions come up with stereotypes to justify their short comings. The manner in which this is preached and embraced, it gets deeply entangled in the in the minds of the recipients such that they not only follow and practice it faithfully, but they also preach and spread it far and wide. The negative aspects of these three major pillars of our society can be termed as the self denials in social beings. This is the refusal to acknowledge that either the stereotyped gender can be equal or even better at times. The parameters that are used to coin stereotypes are based on some very feeble arguments. Some of them are founded on baseless myths which cannot hold. There is one stereotype that bars women against slaughtering any animal, it is said if any woman attempts the dead animal will be so infuriated that the woman will be gored by bone from the dead animal and die.

Eagly et al (156) argue that the first and most important interface is what in naturally expected of men and women. Traditionally there was a very clear division of labour. Men always got the tasks that would depict them as great think tanks and innovators which lead to great success stories. During feasts only men were allowed to slaughter animals and there were parts that were women only. Again it is only men who were allowed to go hunting or fishing. This assigned them a very crucial role of providing food to the family. On the other hand women were put on tasks that were more of mandatory service to the community, the cooked cleaned toiled in farms and did almost all job that lead to daily sustainability. Despite the fact that this jobs were very crucial for the community they were not highly regarded and men looked down on them and branded them the woman job. Due to this career choice has been one sector that has been greatly affected by stereotyping, men and women are expected to choose careers that are commensurate with their gender (Burgess and Borgida 676).

Within the stereotypes there exists some subtypes a further division in human labelling humans. Burgess and Borgida (688) further shows that these subtypes will tend to categorize people on more informed lines. Women such as professionals, the sexy looking, and house makers amongst others will be categorised differently. Men also have the similar fate, entrepreneurs, sportsmen politicians and educationists will also be categorised differently. How ever this dose not provide the best categorised since it is common for both men and women to fall in the same category. There can be a male or female sports personality, at a first glance the stereotype will zero in on the gender stereotype but on the subtype they are at par. There can be no concrete argument on to whether the male athlete can be termed as better or superior than the female counterpart (Spencer et al 54). The sub types tend to water down the stereotyping. An example of family contexts the two parents from opposite genders are equally important and at no one point in time an argument can be floated that either is more superior to the other. One twist that is very important is that globally, both genders have different priorities while women will tend to lean to issues relating to community understanding and caring, men attribute things like power and self achievement as the most important.

Gender stereotyping has had a host of analysts trying to get a deeper insight of this habit. There has been an argument that this is a static occurrence that never changes and will never go away. Spencer et al (50) for example, says that masculinity compared to femininity is what results to gender stereotype. Each gender embarked on assigning in itself the roles it felt elevated it to the highest egoistic standing. Stereotyping comes in all sectors of life and it plays a major role in Politics, economics and social life. It influences major decision making and hence chats the course of the world affairs.

There are two words that will for ever go hand in hand, “division of labour” and “stereotyping”. Since time immemorial human beings tend to identify themselves with some class, they associate themselves with peers whom they feel that they share and have a lot in common. In these self made cocoons, they assign themselves roles and duties and status; at the end they will have finally filled all the slots on the social ladder. Stereotyping has had a very big impact on human expectations, women are expected to take up feminine role and perform well in them and on the other hand men are expected to go for masculine roles and excel in them. Despite the fact that the world is said to be getting more civilised, there seems to be unofficial barrier on career expectations. Women who take up careers which are traditionally said to belong to men, are perceived as likely to struggle and toil more as compared with if it was a man holding that similar position. They are expected to face more hurdles and challenges as compared to men. On the other hand men are expected to take up the biggest and the most challenging careers, they are expected to perform well to prove that they are truly macho. In the event of a man taking up a lesser job which is considered feminine, he is looked down upon and is seen as a wimp, he is considered as a weakling who is afraid of facing masculine tasks.

In a general over view, the ego is in human nature and it is the one that dictates what perception we take of others. We stereotype to satisfy our unfounded desires to see ourselves as the best in our settings and also those who are from our divide. Pundits have argued that there should be a clear role between stereotypes and gender roles. Burgess and Borgida (680) argue that men and women can be assigned similar role with similar opportunities but still we go back and stereotype them as male or female.

Burgess Diana & Borgida Eugene., Who women are who women should be: Descriptive gender and stereotypes sex and discrimination. Psychology public policy and law Vol 5 p 665-692. Columbia University, 1999.

Craig McGarty, Yzerbyt Vincent & Spears Russel., Stereotypes as Explanations, The formation of meaningful beliefs about social groups, Cambridge University Press New York 2002.

Eagly Alice et al, Explaining sex differences in social behaviours, Meta analytic perspective personality and social psychology bulleting. Texas Vol 17 No 3 Purdue University, 1991.

Spencer Janet Taylor et al, Instrumental and Expansive Traits, stereotypes and sexist attitudes. Psychology of women Quarterly, Vol 24, p 44-62. Nature publishing group Imperial College London, 2000.

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Gender and Media Representations: A Review of the Literature on Gender Stereotypes, Objectification and Sexualization

Media representations play an important role in producing sociocultural pressures. Despite social and legal progress in civil rights, restrictive gender-based representations appear to be still very pervasive in some contexts. The article explores scientific research on the relationship between media representations and gender stereotypes, objectification and sexualization, focusing on their presence in the cultural context. Results show how stereotyping, objectifying and sexualizing representations appear to be still very common across a number of contexts. Exposure to stereotyping representations appears to strengthen beliefs in gender stereotypes and endorsement of gender role norms, as well as fostering sexism, harassment and violence in men and stifling career-related ambitions in women. Exposure to objectifying and sexualizing representations appears to be associated with the internalization of cultural ideals of appearance, endorsement of sexist attitudes and tolerance of abuse and body shame. In turn, factors associated with exposure to these representations have been linked to detrimental effects on physical and psychological well-being, such as eating disorder symptomatology, increased body surveillance and poorer body image quality of life. However, specificities in the pathways from exposure to detrimental effects on well-being are involved for certain populations that warrant further research.

1. Introduction

As a social category, gender is one of the earliest and most prominent ways people may learn to identify themselves and their peers, the use of gender-based labels becoming apparent in infants as early as 17 months into their life [ 1 ]. Similarly, the development of gender-based heuristics, inferences and rudimentary stereotypes becomes apparent as early as age three [ 2 , 3 ]. Approximately at this age, the development of a person’s gender identity begins [ 4 ]—that is, the process through which a person tends to identify as a man, as a woman or as a vast spectrum of other possibilities (i.e., gender non-conforming, agender, genderfluid, etc.). These processes continue steadily throughout individuals’ lives as they receive and elaborate information about women and men and what it means to belong to either category, drawing from direct and indirect observations, social contact, personal elaborations and cultural representations [ 5 , 6 ]. As a result, social and mental representations of gender are extremely widespread, especially as a strictly binary construct, and can be argued to be ubiquitous in individual and social contexts.

Among the many sources of influence on gender representations, media occupies an important space and its relevance can be assessed across many different phenomena [ 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 ]. The ubiquity of media, the chronicity of individuals’ exposure to it and its role in shaping beliefs, attitudes and expectations have made it the subject of scientific attention. In fact, several theories have attempted to explore the mechanisms and psychological processes in which media plays a role, including identity development [ 12 , 13 , 14 ], scripts and schemas [ 15 ], cultivation processes [ 16 , 17 , 18 ] and socialization processes [ 5 , 6 ].

The public interest in the topic of gender has seen a surge in the last 10 years, in part due to social and political movements pushing for gender equality across a number of aspects, including how gender is portrayed in media representations. In the academic field as well, publications mentioning gender in their title, abstract or keywords have more than doubled from 2012 to 2022 [ 19 ], while publications mentioning gender in media representations have registered an even more dramatic increase, tripling in number [ 20 ]. Additionally, the media landscape has had a significant shift in the last decade, with the surge in popularity and subsequent addition of social media websites and apps to most people’s mediatic engagement [ 21 ].

The importance of media use in gender-related aspects, such as beliefs, attitudes, or roles, has been extensively documented. As reported in a recent review of the literature [ 22 ], several meta-analyses [ 17 , 23 , 24 ] showed support for the effects of media use on gender beliefs, finding small but consistent effect sizes. These effects appear to have remained present over the decades [ 25 ].

Particular attention has been given to stereotypical, objectifying and sexualizing representations, as portrayals that paint a restrictive picture of the complexity of human psychology, also producing sociocultural pressures to conform to gender roles and body types.

Gender stereotypes can be defined as an extremely simplified concept of attitudes and behaviors considered normal and appropriate for men and women in a specific culture [ 26 ]. They usually span several different areas of people’s characteristics, such as physical appearance, personality traits, behaviors, social roles and occupations. Stereotypical beliefs about gender may be divided into descriptive (how one perceives a person of a certain gender to be; [ 27 ]), prescriptive (how one perceives a person of a certain gender should be and behave; [ 28 , 29 ]) or proscriptive (how one perceives a person of a certain gender should not be and behave; [ 28 , 29 ]). Their content varies on the individual’s culture of reference [ 30 ], but recurring themes have been observed in western culture, such as stereotypes revolving around communion, agency and competence [ 31 ]. Women have stereotypically been associated with traits revolving around communion (e.g., supportiveness, compassion, expression, warmth), while men have been more stereotypically associated with agency (e.g., ambition, assertiveness, competitiveness, action) or competence (e.g., skill, intelligence). Both men and women may experience social and economic penalties (backlash) if they appear to violate these stereotypes [ 29 , 32 , 33 ].

Objectification can be defined as the viewing or treatment of people as objects. Discussing ways in which people may be objectified, Nussbaum first explored seven dimensions: instrumentality (a tool to be employed for one’s purposes); denial of autonomy (lacking self-determination, or autonomy); inertness (lacking in agency or activity); fungibility (interchangeable with others of the same type); violability (with boundaries lacking integrity and permissible to break into); ownership (possible to own or trade); denial of subjectivity (the person’s feelings or experiences are seen as something that does not need to be considered) [ 34 ].

In its initial definition by Fredrickson and Roberts [ 35 ], objectification theory had been offered as a framework to understand how the pervasive sexual objectification of women’s bodies in the sociocultural context influenced their experiences and posed risks to their mental health—a phenomenon that was believed to have uniquely female connotations. In their model, the authors theorized that a cultural climate of sexual objectification would lead to the internalization of objectification (viewing oneself as a sexual and subordinate object), which would in turn lead to psychological consequences (e.g., body shame, anxiety) and mental health risks (e.g., eating disorders, depression). Due to the pervasiveness of the cultural climate, objectification may be difficult to detect or avoid, and objectification experiences may be perceived as normative.

Sexual objectification, in which a person is reduced to a sexual instrument, can be construed to be a subtype of objectification and, in turn, is often defined as one of the types of sexualization [ 36 ]. As previously discussed by Ward [ 37 ], it should be made clear that the mere presence of sexual content, which may be represented in a positive and healthy way, should not be conflated with sexualized or objectifying representations.

The American Psychological Association’s 2007 report defines sexualization as a series of conditions that stand apart from healthy sexuality, such as when a person’s value is perceived to come mainly from sexual appeal or behavior, when physical attractiveness is equated to sexual attractiveness, when a person is sexually objectified or when sexuality is inappropriately imposed on a person [ 36 ]. Sexualization may involve several different contexts, such as personal, interpersonal, and cultural. Self-sexualization involves treating oneself as a sexual object [ 35 ]. Interpersonal contributions involve being treated as sexual objects by others, such as family or peers [ 38 , 39 ]. Finally, contributions by cultural norms, expectations and values play a part as well, including those spread by media representations [ 36 ]. After this initial definition, sexualization as a term has also been used by some authors (e.g., Zurbriggen & Roberts [ 40 ]) to refer to sexual objectification specifically, while others (e.g., Bigler and colleagues [ 41 ]) stand by the APA report’s broader meaning. In this section, we will explore scientific literature adopting the latter.

These portrayals have been hypothesized to lead to negative effects on people’s well-being on a mental and physical level, as well as bearing partial responsibility for several social issues, such as sexism, gender discrimination and harassment. However, the pathways that lead from an individual’s relationship with media to these detrimental effects can be complex. Furthermore, they seem to involve specificities for men and women, as well as for different sexual orientations. A wealth of publications has been produced on these themes and, to the authors’ knowledge, no recent review has attempted to synthesize their findings.

The present article aims to summarize the state of the art of research on stereotyping, sexualization and objectification in gender and media representations. A focus will be placed on the definitions of these concepts, the media where they occur, and verifying whether any changes over time are detectable or any specificities are present. The possible effects of these representations on people’s well-being will be explored as well.

A search of the literature was conducted on scientific search engines (APA PsycArticles, CINAHL Complete, Education Source, Family Studies Abstracts, Gender Studies Database, MEDLINE, Mental Measurements Yearbook, Sociology Source Ultimate, Violence & Abuse Abstracts, PUBMED, Scopus, Web of Science) to locate the most relevant contributions on the topic of media and gender representation, with a particular focus on stereotypes, objectification and sexualization, their presence in the media and their effects on well-being. Keywords were used to search for literature on the intersection of the main topics: media representation (e.g., media OR representation* OR portrayal*), gender (e.g., gender OR sex OR wom* OR m*n) and stereotypes, objectification and sexualization (e.g., stereotyp*, objectif*, sexualiz*). In some cases, additional keywords were used for the screening of studies on specific media (e.g., television, news, social media). When appropriate, further restrictions were used to screen for studies on effects or consequences (e.g., effect* OR impact* OR consequence* OR influence* OR outcome*). Inclusion criteria were the following: (a) academic articles (b) pertaining to the field of media representations (c) pertaining to gender stereotypes, objectification or sexualization. A dataset of 195 selected relevant papers was created. Thematic analysis was conducted following the guidelines developed by Braun and Clarke [ 42 ], in order to outline patterns of meaning across the reviewed studies. The process was organized into six phases: (1) familiarization with the data; (2) coding; (3) searching for themes; (4) reviewing themes; (5) defining and naming themes; and (6) writing up. After removing duplicates and excluding papers that did not meet the inclusion criteria, a total of 87 articles were included in the results of this review. The findings were discussed among researchers (LR, FS, MNP and TT) until unanimous consensus was reached.

2.1. Stereotypical Portrayals

Gender stereotypes appear to be flexible and responsive to changes in the social environment: consensual beliefs about men’s and women’s attributes have evolved throughout the decades, reflecting changes in women’s participation in the labor force and higher education [ 31 , 43 ]. Perceptions of gender equality in competence and intelligence have sharply risen, and stereotypical perceptions of women show significant changes: perceptions of women’s competence and intelligence have surpassed those relative to men, while the communion aspect appears to have shifted toward being even more polarized on being typical of women. Other aspects, such as perceptions of agency being more typical of men, have remained stable [ 31 ].

Despite these changes, gender representation in the media appears to be frequently skewed toward men’s representation and prominently features gender stereotypes. On a global scale, news coverage appears to mostly feature men, especially when considering representation as expert voices, where women are still underrepresented (24%) despite a rise in coverage in the last 5 years [ 44 ]. Underrepresentation has also been reported in many regional and national contexts, but exact proportions vary significantly in the local context. Male representation has been reported to be greater in several studies, with male characters significantly outnumbering female characters [ 45 ], doing so in male-led and mixed-led shows but not in female-led shows [ 46 ] in children’s television programming—a key source of influence on gender representations. Similar results have been found regarding sports news, whose coverage overwhelmingly focuses on men athletes [ 47 , 48 ] and where women are seldom represented.

Several analyses of television programs have also shown how representations of men and women are very often consistent with gender stereotypes. Girls were often portrayed as focusing more on their appearance [ 45 ], as well as being judged for their appearance [ 49 ]. The same focus on aesthetics was found in sports news coverage, which was starkly different across genders, and tended to focus on women athletes’ appearance, featuring overly simplified descriptions (vs. technical language on coverage of men athletes) [ 48 ]. In addition, coverage of women athletes was more likely in sports perceived to be more feminine or gender-appropriate [ 47 , 48 , 50 ]. Similarly, women in videogames appear to be both underrepresented and less likely to be featured as playable characters, as well as being frequently stereotyped, appearing in the role of someone in need of rescuing, as love interests, or cute and innocent characters [ 51 ]. In advertising as well, gender stereotypes have often been used as a staple technique for creating relatability, but their use may lead to negative cross-gender effects in product marketing [ 52 ] while also possibly furthering social issues. Hust and colleagues found that in alcohol advertisements, belief in gender stereotypes was the most consistent predictor of intentions to sexually coerce, showing significant interaction effects with exposure to highly objectifying portrayals [ 53 ]. Representation in advertising prominently features gender stereotypes, such as depicting men in professional roles more often, while depicting women in non-working, recreational roles, especially in countries that show high gender inequality [ 54 ]. A recent analysis of print ads [ 55 ] confirmed that some stereotypes are still prominent and, in some cases, have shown a resurgence, such as portraying a woman as the queen of the home; the study also found representations of women in positions of empowerment are, however, showing a relative increase in frequency. Public support, combined with market logic, appears to be successfully pushing more progressive portrayals in this field [ 56 ].

Both skewed representation and the presence of stereotypes have been found to lead to several negative effects. Gender-unequal representation has been found to stifle political [ 57 ] and career [ 58 ] ambition, as well as foster organizational discrimination [ 59 ]. Heavy media use may further the belief in gender stereotypes and has been found to be linked to a stronger endorsement of traditional gender roles and norms [ 60 ], which in turn may be linked to a vast number of detrimental health effects. In women, adherence and internalization of traditional gender roles have been linked to greater symptoms of depression and anxiety, a higher likelihood of developing eating disorders, and lower self-esteem and self-efficacy [ 36 , 61 , 62 , 63 ]. In men as well, adherence to traditional masculine norms has been linked to negative mental health outcomes such as depression, psychological distress and substance abuse [ 64 ], while also increasing the perpetration of risky behaviors [ 65 , 66 ] and intimate partner violence [ 65 , 67 ].

2.2. Objectifying Portrayals

Non-sexual objectifying representations appear to have been studied relatively little. They have been found to be common in advertising, where women are often depicted as purely aesthetic models, motionless and decorative [ 68 ]. They may also include using a woman’s body as a supporting object for the advertised product, as a decorative object, as an ornament to draw attention to the ad, or as a prize to be won and associated with the consumption of the advertised product [ 55 ].

The vast majority of the literature has focused on the sexual objectification of women. This type of representation has been reported to be very common in a number of contexts and across different media [ 69 ], and several studies (see Calogero and colleagues’ or Roberts and colleagues’ review [ 69 , 70 ]) have found support for the original model’s pathway [ 35 ]. Following experimental models expanded on the original (e.g., Frederick and colleagues or Roberts and colleagues [ 69 , 71 ]), highlighting the role of factors such as the internalization of lean or muscular ideals of appearance, finding evidence for negative effects on well-being and mental health through the increase in self-objectification and the internalization of cultural ideals of appearance [ 71 , 72 ].

Sexual objectification also appears to be consistently linked to sexism. For both women and men, the perpetration of sexual objectification was significantly associated with hostile and benevolent sexism, as well as the enjoyment of sexualization [ 73 ]. Enjoyment of sexualization, in turn, has been found to be positively associated with hostile sexism in both men and women, positively associated with benevolent sexism in women and negatively in men [ 74 ].

Exposure to objectifying media in men has been found to increase the tendency to engage in sexual coercion and harassment, as well as increasing conformity to gender role norms [ 75 ]. Consistently with the finding that perpetration of objectification may be associated with a greater men’s proclivity for rape and sexual aggression [ 76 ], a study conducted by Hust and colleagues found that exposure to objectifying portrayals of women in alcohol advertising was also a moderator in the relationship between belief in gender stereotypes and intentions to sexually coerce. Specifically, participants who had a stronger belief in gender stereotypes reported stronger intentions to sexually coerce when exposed to slightly objectifying images of women. Highly objectifying images did not yield the same increase—a result interpreted by the authors to mean that highly objectified women were perceived as sexually available and as such less likely to need coercion, while slightly objectified women could be perceived as more likely to need coercion [ 53 ].

Research on objectification has primarily focused on women, in part due to numerous studies suggesting that women are more subject to sexual objectification [ 73 , 77 , 78 , 79 , 80 ], as well as suffering the consequences of sexual objectification more often [ 81 ]. However, sexually objectifying portrayals seem to have a role in producing negative effects on men as well, although with partially different pathways. In men, findings about media appearance pressures on body image appear to be mixed. Previous meta-analyses found either a small average effect [ 82 ] or no significant effect [ 72 ]. A recent study found them to be significantly associated with higher body surveillance, poorer body image quality of life and lower satisfaction with appearance [ 71 ]. Another study, however, found differing relationships regarding sexual objectification: an association was found between experiences of sexual objectification and internalization of cultural standards of appearance, body shame and drive for muscularity, but was not found between experiences of sexual objectification and self-objectification or body surveillance [ 83 ]: in the same study, gender role conflict [ 84 ] was positively associated to the internalization of sociocultural standards of appearance, self-objectification, body shame and drive for muscularity, suggesting the possibility that different pathways may be involved in producing negative effects on men. Men with body-image concerns experiencing gender role conflict may also be less likely to engage in help-seeking behaviors [ 85 , 86 ]. This is possibly due to restrictive emotionality associated with the male gender role leading to more negative attitudes toward help-seeking, as found in a recent study by Nagai, [ 87 ], although this study finds no association with help-seeking behavior, conflicting with previous ones, and more research is needed.

Finally, specificities related to sexual orientation regarding media and objectification appear to be present. A set of recent studies by Frederick and colleagues found that gay men, lesbian women and bisexual people share with heterosexual people many of the pathways that lead from sociocultural pressures to internalization of thin/muscular ideals, higher body surveillance and a lower body image quality of life [ 71 , 88 ], leading the authors to conclude that these factors’ influence applies regardless of sexual orientation. However, their relationship with media and objectification may vary. Gay and bisexual men may face objectification in social media and dating apps rather than in mainstream media and may experience more objectification than heterosexual men [ 89 ]. In Frederick and colleagues’ studies, gay men reported greater media pressures, body surveillance, thin-ideal internalization, and self-objectification compared to heterosexual men; moreover, bisexual men appeared to be more susceptible to ideal internalization, displaying stronger paths from media appearance pressures to muscular-ideal internalization compared to heterosexual men; lesbian women, instead, demonstrated weaker relationships between media pressures and body image outcomes [ 71 , 88 ]. Consistently with previous studies suggesting a heightened susceptibility to social pressures [ 90 ], bisexual women appeared to be more susceptible to media pressures relative to other groups [ 88 ]. Another recent study of lesbian and bisexual women supported previous evidence for the pathway from the internalization of cultural appearance standards to body surveillance, body shame and eating disorder symptoms; however, it found no significant connection between experiences of objectification and eating disorder symptoms [ 91 ].

2.3. Sexualized Portrayals

Several studies have found sexualizing media representations to be commonplace across a number of different media contents and across different target demographics (i.e., children, adolescents or adults) and genres. Reports of common sexualized representations of women are found in contexts such as television programs [ 92 ], movies [ 93 , 94 , 95 , 96 ], music videos [ 97 , 98 ], advertising [ 54 , 55 ], videogames [ 51 , 99 , 100 ], or magazines [ 101 ].

Exposure to sexualized media has been theorized to be an exogenous risk factor in the internalization of sexualized beliefs about women [ 41 ], as well as one of the pathways to the internalization of cultural appearance ideals [ 102 ]. Daily exposition to sexualized media content has been consistently linked to a number of negative effects. Specifically, it has been found to lead to higher levels of body dissatisfaction and distorted attitudes about eating through the internalization of cultural body ideals (e.g., lean or muscular) in both men and women [ 71 ]. It has also been associated with a higher chance of supporting sexist beliefs in boys [ 103 ], and of tolerance toward sexual violence in men [ 104 ]. Furthermore, exposure to sexualized images has been linked to a higher tolerance of sexual harassment and rape myth acceptance [ 76 ]. Exposure to reality TV programs consistently predicted self-sexualization for both women and men, while music videos did so for men only [ 103 ]. Internalized sexualization, in turn, has been linked to a stronger endorsement of sexist attitudes and acceptance of rape myths [ 105 ], while also being linked to higher levels of body surveillance and body shame in girls [ 106 ]. Internalization of media standards of appearance has been linked to body surveillance in both men and women, as well as body surveillance of the partner in men [ 107 ].

As a medium, videogames have been studied relatively little and have produced less definite results. This medium can offer the unique dynamic of embodiment in a virtual avatar, which has been hypothesized to be able to lead to a shift in self-perception (the “Proteus effect”, as formulated by Yee & Bailenson, [ 108 ]). While some studies have partially confirmed this effect, showing that exposure to sexualized videogame representations can increase self-objectification [ 109 , 110 , 111 ], others [ 112 ] have not found the same relationship. Furthermore, while a study has found an association between sexualized representations in videogames, tolerance of sexual abuse of women and rape myth acceptance [ 113 ], and in another, it was linked to a decreased real-life belief in women’s competence [ 114 ], a recent meta-analysis [ 115 ] found no effect of the presence of sexualized content on well-being, sexism or misogyny.

Research on social media has also shown some specificities. Social media offers the unique dynamic of being able to post and disseminate one’s own content and almost always includes built-in mechanisms for user-generated feedback (e.g., likes), as well as often being populated by one’s peers, friends and family rather than strangers. Sites focusing on image- or video-based content (e.g., Instagram, TikTok) may be more prone to eliciting social comparison and fostering the internalization of cultural appearance ideals, resulting in more associations to negative body image when compared to others that have the same capabilities but offer text-based content as well (e.g., Facebook) [ 116 ]. Social media appears to foster social comparison, which may increase appearance-based concerns [ 117 ]. Consistently with previous research, exposure to sexualized beauty ideals on social media appeared to be associated with lower body satisfaction; exposure to more diverse standards of appearance, instead, was associated with increased body satisfaction and positive mood, regardless of image sexualization [ 116 , 118 ].

3. Discussion

3.1. critical discussion of evidence.

The reviewed evidence (summarized in Table 1 ) points to the wide-ranging harmful effects of stereotyping, objectifying and sexualizing media portrayals, which are reported to be still both common and pervasive. The links to possible harms have also been well documented, with a few exceptions.

Summary of findings.

These representations, especially but not exclusively pertaining to women, have been under social scrutiny following women’s rights movements and activism [ 119 ] and can be perceived to be politically incorrect and undesirable, bringing an aspect of social desirability into the frame. Positive attitudes toward gender equality also appear to be at an all-time high across the western world [ 120 , 121 ], a change that has doubtlessly contributed to socio-cultural pressure to reduce harmful representations. Some media contexts (e.g., advertising and television) seem to have begun reflecting this change regarding stereotypes, attempting to either avoid harmful representations or push more progressive portrayals. However, these significant changes in stereotypes (e.g., regarding competence) have not necessarily been reflected in women’s lives, such as their participation in the labor force, leadership or decision-making [ 31 , 122 , 123 ]. Objectifying or sexualizing representations do not seem to be drastically reduced in prevalence. Certainly, many influences other than media representations are in play in this regard, but their effect on well-being has been found to be pervasive and consistent. Despite widespread positive attitudes toward gender equality, the persistence of stereotypical, objectifying and sexualizing representations may hint at the continued existence of an entrenched sexist culture which can translate into biases, discrimination and harm.

Despite some conflicting findings, the literature also hints at the existence of differences in how media pressures appear to affect men and women, as well as gay, lesbian and bisexual people. These may point to the possibility of some factors (e.g., objectification) playing a different role across different people in the examined pathways, an aspect that warrants caution when considering possible interventions and clinical implications. In some cases, the same relationship between exposure to media and well-being may exist, but it may follow different pathways from distal risk factors to proximal risk factors, as in the case of gender role conflict for men or body shame for lesbian and bisexual women. However, more research is needed to explore these recent findings.

Different media also appear to feature specificities for which more research is needed, such as videogames and social media. The more interactive experiences offered by these media may play an important role in determining their effects, and the type of social media needs to be taken into consideration as well (image- or video-based vs. text-based). Moreover, the experiences of exposure may not necessarily be homogenous, due to the presence of algorithms that determine what content is being shown in the case of social media, and due to the possibility of player interaction and avatar embodiment in the case of videogames.

Past findings [ 37 , 69 ] about links with other social issues such as sexism, harassment and violence appear to still be relevant [ 67 , 73 , 103 , 105 ]. The increases in both tolerance and prevalence of sexist and abusive attitudes resulting from exposure to problematic media representations impact the cultural climate in which these phenomena take place. Consequently, victims of discrimination and abuse living in a cultural climate more tolerant of sexist and abusive attitudes may experience lower social support, have a decreased chance of help-seeking and adopt restrictive definitions for what counts as discrimination and abuse, indirectly furthering gender inequalities.

Exploring ways of reducing risks to health, several authors [ 22 , 41 , 75 ] have discussed media literacy interventions—that is, interventions focused on teaching critical engagement with media—as a possible way of reducing the negative effects of problematic media portrayals. As reported in McLean and colleagues’ systematic review [ 124 ], these interventions have been previously shown to be effective at increasing media literacy, while also improving body-related outcomes such as body satisfaction in boys [ 125 ], internalization of the thinness ideal in girls [ 125 ], body size acceptance in girls [ 126 ] and drive for thinness in girls and boys [ 127 ]. More recently, they were also shown to be effective at reducing stereotypical gender role attitudes [ 128 ], as well as fostering unfavorable attitudes toward stereotypical portrayals and lack of realism [ 129 ]. Development and promotion of these interventions should be considered when attempting to reduce negative media-related influences on body image. It should be noted, however, that McLean and colleagues’ review found no effect of media literacy interventions on eating disorder symptomatology [ 124 ], which warrants more careful interventions.

Furthermore, both internal (e.g., new entrants’ attitudes in interpersonal or organizational contexts) and external (e.g., pressure from public opinion) sociocultural pressures appear to have a strong influence in reducing harmful representations [ 55 , 56 ]. Critically examining these representations when they appear, as well as voicing concerns toward examples of possibly harmful representations, may promote more healthy representations in media. As documented by some studies, the promotion of diverse body representations in media may also be effective in reducing negative effects [ 70 , 118 ].

3.2. Limitations

The current review synthesizes the latest evidence on stereotyping, objectifying and sexualizing media representations. However, limitations in its methodology are present and should be taken into consideration. It is not a systematic review and may not be construed to be a complete investigation of all the available evidence. Only articles written in the English language have been considered, which may have excluded potentially interesting findings written in other languages. Furthermore, it is not a meta-analysis, and as such cannot be used to draw statistical conclusions about the surveyed phenomena.

3.3. Future Directions

While this perception is limited by the non-systematic approach of the review, to what we know, very few studies appear to be available on the relationship between media representation and non-sexual objectification, which may provide interesting directions to explore in relation to autonomy, violability or subjectivity, as was attempted in the context of work and organizations [ 130 ].

More cross-cultural studies (e.g., Tartaglia & Rollero [ 54 ]) would also prove useful in exploring differences between cultural contexts, as well as the weight of different sociocultural factors in the relationship between media representation and gender.

More studies focusing on relatively new media (e.g., social media, videogames) would possibly help clear up some of the identified discrepancies and explore new directions for the field that take advantage of their interactivity. This is particularly true for niche but growing media such as virtual reality, in which the perception of embodiment in an avatar with different physical features than one’s own could prove to be important in sexualization and objectification. Only preliminary evidence [ 131 ] has been produced on the topic.

Studies to further explore the relationship between media representations, gender and sexual orientation would also be beneficial. As already highlighted by Frederick and colleagues [ 132 ], gay, lesbian and bisexual people may deal with a significantly different set of appearance norms and expectations [ 133 ], and face minority-related stresses [ 134 ] that can increase susceptibility to poorer body image and disordered eating [ 135 , 136 ]. Additionally, none of the reviewed studies had a particular focus on trans people, who may have different experiences relating to media and body image, as suggested by the differences in pathways found in a recent study [ 137 ]. Sexual orientation and gender identity should be kept into consideration when investigating these relationships, as their specificities may shed light on the different ways societal expectations influence the well-being of sexual minorities.

The examined literature on the topic also appears to feature specificities that need to be taken into account. As previously reported by Ward [ 37 ], the vast majority of the studies continue to be conducted in the United States, often on undergraduates, which limits the generalizability of the results to the global population. Given the abundance and complexity of the constructs, more studies examining the pathways from media exposure to well-being using methodologies such as path analysis and structural equation modeling may help clarify some of the discrepancies found in the literature about the same relationships.

Finally, as previously reported by many authors [ 37 , 69 , 138 ], sexualization, self-sexualization, objectification and self-objectification are sometimes either treated as synonymous or used with different definitions and criteria, which may add a layer of misdirection to studies on the subject. Given the divergences in the use of terminology, clearly stating one’s working definition of sexualization or objectification would possibly benefit academic clarity on the subject.

4. Conclusions

Consistent empirical evidence highlights the importance of media representations as a key part of sociocultural influences that may have consequences on well-being. Despite some notable progress, harmful representations with well-researched links to detrimental effects are still common across a number of different media. Exposure to stereotyping, objectifying and sexualized representations appears to consistently be linked to negative consequences on physical and mental health, as well as fostering sexism, violence and gender inequity. On a clinical level, interventions dealing with body image and body satisfaction should keep their influence into account. The promotion of institutional and organizational interventions, as well as policies aimed at reducing their influence, could also prove to be a protective factor against physical and mental health risks.

Funding Statement

This research received no external funding.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, F.S. and L.R.; methodology, T.T. and M.N.P.; writing—original draft preparation, F.S.; writing—review and editing, T.T. and M.N.P.; supervision, L.R. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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