BEHAVIORAL AND AFFECTIVE CONSEQUENCES OF BEING STEREOTYPED

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.