BEHAVIORAL AND AFFECTIVE CONSEQUENCES OF BEING STEREOTYPED
BEHAVIORAL AND AFFECTIVE CONSEQUENCES OF BEING STEREOTYPED
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Date
1996
Authors
Canfield, Jennifer Ellen
Advisor
Stangor, Charles
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Abstract
Two studies were conducted to examine women's reactions
to being stereotyped. I hypothesized that women who report
a high concern with gender-based discrimination would be
more likely to interpret a sexist comment as sexist,
consequently exhibiting more anxiety and lower task
performance as compared to women who report a low concern
with gender-based discrimination. In study 1, women who
reported a high or low concern with discrimination overheard
either a sexist comment or no comment while performing on a
task. A trend was found where high concern women who
overheard a sexist comment experienced an increase in
anxiety, and women who overheard the sexist comment
(regardless of concern) subsequently displayed poorer task
performance than women who heard no comment . For Study 2 ,
the control comment was changed from no comment to a
nonsexist comment, allowing for comparison between the
effects of receiving negative feedback which either was
sexist or nonsexist . I found that women who overheard the
sexist comment were the only group to interpret the sexist
comment as sexist, a trend where women who perceived a
sexist comment as sexist experienced an increase in anxiety,
and that women's task performance significantly dropped
after overhearing the negative comment , whether the comment
was sexist or nonsexist. Also, women who perceived the
sexist comment as sexist reported less enjoyment of the
task, less likelihood of volunteering for a similar task,
and less likelihood of improving their task performance than
women who overheard a nonsexist comment or who did not
perceive a sexist comment as sexist.