Sabine Sczesny

A closer look beneath the surface: Various facets of the think-manager-think-male stereotype.

Previous research has indicated that successful managers are perceived as possessing characteristics that belong to a global masculine stereotype. This study was designed to compare the gender-stereotypical perception of leadership by investigating global and leadership-specific gender stereotypes and contrasting self-perception and the perceptionby others. Descriptive and prescriptive norms were analyzed and abilities studied in a leadership context. The sample consists of 215 management students, and the results indicate an impact of gender stereotypes on the perception of leadership by women and men. Ratings of the importance of leadership characteristics yielded a less gender-stereotypic view, especially by female participants. In their self-evaluations women and men did not differ in the degree in which they possess person- and task-oriented skills. They also did not differ in their ratings of the importance of possessing these skills themselves. Finally, women reported that they possess task-oriented abilities more seldom than such abilities were attributed to leaders-in-general.

Meta-Cognition about Biological Sex and Gender-Stereotypic Physical Appearance: Consequences for the Assessment of Leadership Competence

Previous findings are inconsistent with regard to whether men are judged as being more or less competent leaders than women. However, masculine-relative to feminine-looking persons seem to be judged consistently as more competent leaders. Can this different impact of biological sex and physical appearance be due to the disparate availability of meta-cognitive knowledge about both sources? The results of Study 1 indicated that individuals possess meta-cognitive knowledge about a possible biasing influence of persons’ biological sex, but not for their physical appearance. In Study 2, participants judged the leadership competence of a male versus female stimulus person with either masculine or feminine physical appearance. In addition, the available cognitive capacity was manipulated. When high capacity was available, participants corrected for the influence of stimulus persons’ sex, but they fell prey to this influence under cognitive load. However, the effect of physical appearance was not moderated by cognitive capacity.

Masculine = Competent? Physical Appearance and Sex as Sources of Gender-Stereotypic Attributions

In two experiments, the influence of physical appearance and sex on the attribution of leadership competence was analyzed. Participants (male/female) reacted to stimulus persons from one of four groups varying in terms of sex (male/female) and physical appearance (feminine/masculine). The stimulus persons were introduced via photographs. Dependent measures referred to the attribution of leadership characteristics and were measured either directly via ratings or indirectly via a recognition test. In both experiments, participants attributed higher degrees of leadership competence to persons with typically masculine appearance than to persons with typically feminine appearance, regardless of the person’s sex. Only in the experiment with indirect measurement were male persons attributed a higher degree of leadership competence than female persons.

Name Your Favorite Musician: Effects of Masculine Generics and of their Alternatives in German

This article reports on two experiments waith native speakers of German that were conducted to determine the influence of different types of German generics on the cognitive inclusion of women. The results of these studies show that masculine versus other types of generics influence the retrieval of male and female exemplars from memory. This is the first piece of empirical evidence for this kind of effect with regard to the German language.

Effekte des generischen Maskulinums und alternativer Sprachformen auf den gedanklichen Einbezug von Frauen

Zusammenfassung. In der feministischen Linguistik wird angenommen, das maskuline Bezeichnungen, die generisch benutzt werden (Bezeichnungen von Personen beiderlei Geschlechts durch die maskuline Form, wie z.B. die Wissenschaftler, die Studenten), weibliche Personen weniger vorstellbar oder sichtbar machen als mannliche Personen. Verschiedene experimentelle Untersuchungen konnten diese Annahme fur den englischen Sprachraum bestatigen. Fur die deutsche Sprache existieren dagegen bislang sehr wenige Studien zu dieser Frage. Es werden vier Experimente vorgestellt, die untersuchen, ob unterschiedliche Sprachversionen - ,Beidnennung‘ (Studentinnen und Studenten), ,Neutral‘ (Studierende), ,Generisches Maskulinum‘ (Studenten) und “Groses I“ (StudentInnen) - den gedanklichen Einbezug von Frauen beeinflussen. Uber alle Experimente hinweg zeigte sich, das bei Personenreferenzen im generischen Maskulinum ein geringerer gedanklicher Einbezug von Frauen zu beobachten war als bei alternativen Sprachformen wie der Beidne...

Cognitive effects of masculine generics in German: An overview of empirical findings

Abstract This article presents a series of experiments which were conducted among native speakers of German to determine the influence of different types of German generics on the cognitive inclusion of women. Results indicate that the inclusion of women is higher with ‘non-sexist’ alternatives than with masculine generics, a tendency which was consistent across different studies. The different alternatives, however, showed different effects which also varied depending on the context. These results are discussed with regard to their practical consequences in situations such as nominating women and men for awards or political offices.

Masculine = competent? The different impact of biological sex and physical appearance on the attribution of leadership competence

In two experiments, the influence of physical appearance and sex on the attribution of leadership competence was analyzed. Participants (male/female) reacted to stimulus persons from one of four groups varying in terms of sex (male/female) and physical appearance (feminine/masculine). The stimulus persons were introduced via photographs. Dependent measures referred to the attribution of leadership characteristics and were measured either directly via ratings or indirectly via a recognition test. In both experiments, participants attributed higher degrees of leadership competence to persons with typically masculine appearance than to persons with typically feminine appearance, regardless of the person’s sex. Only in the experiment with indirect measurement were male persons attributed a higher degree of leadership competence than female persons.

The Impact of Social Roles on Trait Judgments A Critical Reexamination

Consistent with social role theory’s assumption that the role behavior of men and women shapes gender stereotypes, earlier experiments have found that men’s and women’s occupancy of the same role eliminated gender-stereotypical judgments of greater agency and lower communion in men than women. The shifting standards model raises the question of whether a shift to within-sex standards in judgments of men and women in roles could have masked underlying gender stereotypes. To examine this possibility, two experiments obtained judgments of men and women using measures that do or do not restrain shifts to within-sex standards. This measure variation did not affect the social role pattern of smaller perceived sex differences in the presence of role information. These findings thus support the social role theory claim that designations of identical roles for subgroups of men and women eliminate or reduce perceived sex differences.

Hindsight Bias in Gustatory Judgments

Being in hindsight, people tend to overestimate what they had known in foresight. This phenomenon has been studied for a wide variety of knowledge domains (e.g., episodes with uncertain outcomes, or solutions to almanac questions). As a result of these studies, hindsight bias turned out to be a robust phenomenon. In this paper, we present two experiments that successfully extended the domain of hindsight bias to gustatory judgments. Participants tasted different food items and were asked to estimate the quantity of a certain ingredient, for example, the residual sugar in a white wine. Judgments in both experiments were systematically biased towards previously presented low or high values that were labeled as the true quantities. Thus, hindsight bias can be considered a phenomenon that extends well beyond the judgment domains studied so far.

Universals and Cultural Differences in Forming Personality Trait Judgments From Faces

Previous research has shown high cross-cultural consensus in personality trait judgments based on faces. However, the information that was provided in these studies included extrafacial features, such as hairstyle or clothes. Such styling information can be intentionally chosen by target persons to express who they are. Using a well-developed and validated Western face model, we were able to formalize the static facial information that is used to make certain personality trait judgments, namely, aggressiveness, extroversion, likeability, risk seeking, social skills, and trustworthiness judgments. We manipulated this information in photographs of Asian and Western faces with natural-looking results. Asian and Western participants identified the enhanced salience of all different personality traits in the faces. Asian participants, however, needed more time for this task. Moreover, faces with enhanced salience of aggressiveness, extroversion, social skills, and trustworthiness were better identified by Western than by Asian participants.