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Remembering gender-related information

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Abstract

College students (approximately 90% nonminority, 10% minority) described themselves, and then rated males and females in general on stereotypically masculine and feminine traits. Next, recall of either pictures or words with gender connotations was tested. Subjects whose judgments of others were more stereotyped recalled a greater proportion of traditional pictures portraying men in masculine activities, recalled a lower proportion of nontraditional pictures portraying men in feminine activities, and were more likely to cluster items in recall according to gender categories. Similar but more limited effects were observed on words. Subjects' self-descriptions, in contrast, were related to one memory measure only. The results were interpreted as providing support for Spence's gender identity theory.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Pennsylvania State University, USA

    Margaret L. Signorella

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  1. Margaret L. Signorella
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Additional information

I would like to thank Mary J. Ciraula, Leslie de la Rosa, Andrew Forsythe, Gretchen Grindle, Mary B. Sebes, Dawn Tatters-Ford, and Jan Wilkerson for their assistance in scoring and coding data.

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Signorella, M.L. Remembering gender-related information. Sex Roles 27, 143–156 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00290014

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