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"Stereotyping"
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Gender stereotypes about intellectual ability emerge early and influence children’s interests
Common stereotypes associate high-level intellectual ability (brilliance, genius, etc.) with men more than women. These stereotypes discourage women’s pursuit of many prestigious careers; that is, women are underrepresented in fields whose members cherish brilliance (such as physics and philosophy). Here we show that these stereotypes are endorsed by, and influence the interests of, children as young as 6. Specifically, 6-year-old girls are less likely than boys to believe that members of their gender are “really, really smart.” Also at age 6, girls begin to avoid activities said to be for children who are “really, really smart.” These findings suggest that gendered notions of brilliance are acquired early and have an immediate effect on children’s interests.
Journal Article
She Needs to See it to be it: The Importance of Same-Gender Athletic Role Models
In four studies, we examined the importance of gender-matched athletic role models for women. Although both women and men may benefit most from exposure to high profile athletes in their own sport, women may have fewer motivating role models available to them. When asked to nominate examples of athletes, women were less likely than men to list same-gender examples (Study 1) and athletes from their own sport (Studies 1 and 2 with 183 and 382 MTurk workers, respectively); even high-performing female athletes were less likely to nominate a same-gender role model than their male peers (Study 3 with 110 varsity athletes and 126 recreational college athletes). Women were nevertheless significantly more motivated by the same-gender and sport-matched examples (Studies 1–2). We demonstrate that same-gender role models are particularly valuable for women because they provide evidence that success is attainable, better represent a possible future self, and counteract negative gender stereotypes (Study 4 with 508 MTurk workers). Thus, although they derive special benefit from exposure to female athletic superstars, women are less likely than men to find such role models in their own sport of interest and, consequently, may be at a disadvantage relative to men. The present research illustrates the practical value of role models for women, with important implications for media and educational programming.
Journal Article
AI generates covertly racist decisions about people based on their dialect
Hundreds of millions of people now interact with language models, with uses ranging from help with writing
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,
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to informing hiring decisions
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. However, these language models are known to perpetuate systematic racial prejudices, making their judgements biased in problematic ways about groups such as African Americans
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–
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. Although previous research has focused on overt racism in language models, social scientists have argued that racism with a more subtle character has developed over time, particularly in the United States after the civil rights movement
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,
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. It is unknown whether this covert racism manifests in language models. Here, we demonstrate that language models embody covert racism in the form of dialect prejudice, exhibiting raciolinguistic stereotypes about speakers of African American English (AAE) that are more negative than any human stereotypes about African Americans ever experimentally recorded. By contrast, the language models’ overt stereotypes about African Americans are more positive. Dialect prejudice has the potential for harmful consequences: language models are more likely to suggest that speakers of AAE be assigned less-prestigious jobs, be convicted of crimes and be sentenced to death. Finally, we show that current practices of alleviating racial bias in language models, such as human preference alignment, exacerbate the discrepancy between covert and overt stereotypes, by superficially obscuring the racism that language models maintain on a deeper level. Our findings have far-reaching implications for the fair and safe use of language technology.
Despite efforts to remove overt racial prejudice, language models using artificial intelligence still show covert racism against speakers of African American English that is triggered by features of the dialect.
Journal Article
History in a Crisis — Lessons for Covid-19
The history of human responses to epidemics carries various lessons for our current situation. Two of the more disheartening ones are that stigmatization follows closely on the heels of pathogens and that outbreaks too often claim the lives of health care providers. The article is accompanied by a slide show.
Journal Article
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.
Journal Article
Gender stereotypes can explain the gender-equality paradox
The so-called “gender-equality paradox” is the fact that gender segregation across occupations is more pronounced in more egalitarian and more developed countries. Some scholars have explained this paradox by the existence of deeply rooted or intrinsic gender differences in preferences that materialize more easily in countries where economic constraints are more limited. In line with a strand of research in sociology, we show instead that it can be explained by cross-country differences in essentialist gender norms regarding math aptitudes and appropriate occupational choices. To this aim, we propose a measure of the prevalence and extent of internalization of the stereotype that “math is not for girls” at the country level. This is done using individual-level data on the math attitudes of 300,000 15-y-old female and male students in 64 countries. The stereotype associating math to men is stronger in more egalitarian and developed countries. It is also strongly associated with various measures of female underrepresentation in math-intensive fields and can therefore entirely explain the gender-equality paradox. We suggest that economic development and gender equality in rights go hand-in-hand with a reshaping rather than a suppression of gender norms, with the emergence of new and more horizontal forms of social differentiation across genders.
Journal Article