Abstract
Gender stereotypes provide viable explanations for why women are underrepresented and men are overrepresented in senior leadership positions and STEM occupations, typically by attributing gender disparities to the dispositions of women and men. The present research examined whether stereotypes also influence attributions to discrimination. Consistent with predictions, undergraduate participants who strongly vs. weakly endorsed gender stereotypes, either chronically (Study 1, N = 147) or when situationally primed (Study 2, N = 258), were less likely to attribute gender disparities in the workplace to discrimination. In addition, participants unexpectedly made stronger discrimination attributions when explaining gender gaps in leadership positions than in STEM occupations, suggesting that interventions for addressing gender discrimination may need to use different strategies for different contexts. Overall, results are consistent with the notion that stereotypes influence explanations for group disparities in ways that justify existing social arrangements as fair, just, and legitimate. Our findings have implications for understanding when people will acknowledge discrimination, which is an important first step toward addressing discrimination.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.
References
Allport, G. W. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Oxford: Addison-Wesley.
Barreto, M., Ryan, M. K., & Schmitt, M. T. (Eds.). (2009). The glass ceiling in the 21 st century: Understanding barriers to gender equality. Washington: American Psychological Association. doi:10.1037/11863-000.
Bastian, B., & Haslam, N. (2006). Psychological essentialism and stereotype endorsement. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42, 228–235. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2005.03.003.
Bell, M. P., Harrison, D. A., & McLaughlin, M. E. (1997). Asian-American attitudes toward affirmative action in employment: Implications for the model minority myth. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 33, 356–377.
Biernat, M., & Kobrynowicz, D. (1997). Gender- and race-based standards of competence: Lower minimum standards but higher ability standards for devalued groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72, 544–557.
Biernat, M., Crosby, F.J., & Williams, J.C. (Eds.). (2004). The maternal wall: Research and policy perspectives on discrimination against mothers in the workplace [Special issue]. Journal of Social Issues, 60(4).
Bigelow, L., Lundmark, L., Parks, J. M., & Wuebker, R. (2014). Skirting the issues: Experimental evidence of gender bias in IPO prospectus evaluations. Journal of Management, 40, 1732–1759. doi:10.1177/0149206312441624.
Brescoll, V., & LaFrance, M. (2004). The correlates and consequences of newspaper reports of research on sex differences. Psychological Science, 15, 515–520. doi:10.1111/j.0956-7976.2004.00712.x.
Callister, R. R. (2006). The impact of gender and department climate on job satisfaction and intentions to quit for faculty in science and engineering fields. Journal of Technology Transfer, 21, 367–375.
Carli, L. L., Alawa, L., Lee, Y., Zhao, B., & Kim, E. (2016). Stereotypes about gender and science: Women ≠ scientists. Psychology of Women Quarterly. doi:10.1177/0361684315622645. Advance online publication.
Ceci, S. J., Ginther, D. K., Kahn, S., & Williams, W. M. (2014). Women in academic science: A changing landscape. Psychological Interest in the Public Interest, 15, 75–141. doi:10.1177/1529100614541236.
Cejka, M. A., & Eagly, A. H. (1999). Gender-stereotypic images of occupations correspond to the sex segregation of employment. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25, 413–423. doi:10.1177/0146167299025004002.
Cheryan, S., Master, A., & Meltzoff, A. N. (2015). Cultural stereotypes as gatekeepers: Increasing girls’ interest in computer science and engineering by diversifying stereotypes. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 1–8. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00049.
Corcoran, K. E., Pettinicchio, D., & Young, J. N. (2015). Perceptions of structural injustice and efficacy: Participation in low/moderate/high-cost forms of collective action. Sociological Inquiry, 85, 429–461. doi:10.1111/soin.12082.
Cundiff, J. L., Zawadzki, M. J., Danube, C. L., & Shields, S. A. (2014). Using experiential learning to increase the recognition of everyday sexism as harmful: The WAGES intervention. Journal of Social Issues, 70, 703–721. doi:10.1111/josi.12087.
Dweck, C. S. (1999). Self-theories: Their role in motivation, personality and development. Philadelphia: Taylor and Francis/Psychology Press.
Dweck, C.S. (2012). Implicit theories. In P. M. Van Lange, A. W. Kruglanski, E. T. Higgins, P. M. Van Lange, A. W. Kruglanski, & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Handbook of theories of social psychology (vol. 2, pp. 43–61). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications Ltd. doi: 10.4135/9781446249222.n28.
Eagly, A. H., & Carli, L. L. (2003). The female leadership advantage: An evaluation of the evidence. The Leadership Quarterly, 14, 807–834. doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2003.09.004.
Eagly, A. H., & Carli, L. L. (2007). Through the labyrinth: The truth about how women become leaders. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
Eagly, A. H., & Steffen, V. J. (1984). Gender stereotypes stem from the distribution of women and men into social roles. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 735–754. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.46.4.735.
Eagly, A. H., & Wood, W. (2012). Social role theory. In P. van Lange, A. Kruglanski, & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Handbook of theories of social psychology (pp. 458–476). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications Ltd.. doi:10.4135/9781446249222.n49.
Ellemers, N., Wilke, H., & van Knippenberg, A. (1993). Effects of the legitimacy of low group or individual status on individual and collective status-enhancement strategies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64, 766–778. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.64.5.766.
Foster, M. D. (2000). Positive and negative responses to personal discrimination: Does coping make a difference? The Journal of Social Psychology, 140, 93–106.
Fouad, N.A., Singh, R., Fitzpatrick, M. E., & Liu, J.P. (2012). Stemming the tide: Why women leave engineering. Retrieved from http://www.studyofwork.com/files/2012/10/NSF_Report_2012-101d98c.pdf.
Gilbert, D. T. (1989). Thinking lightly about others: Automatic components of the social inference process. In J. S. Uleman & J. A. Bargh (Eds.), Unintended thought (pp. 189–211). New York: Guilford Press.
Gilbert, D. T., & Malone, P. S. (1995). The correspondence bias. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 21–38. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.117.1.21.
Harrison, D. A., Kravitz, D. A., Mayer, D. M., Leslie, L. M., & Lev-Arey, D. (2006). Understanding attitudes toward affirmative action programs in employment: Summary and meta-analysis of 35 years of research. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91, 1013–1036. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.91.5.1013.
Haslam, N., Rothschild, L., & Ernst, D. (2000). Essentialist beliefs about social categories. British Journal of Social Psychology, 39, 113–127.
Haslam, N., Bastian, B., Bain, P., & Kashima, Y. (2006). Psychological essentialism, implicit theories, and intergroup relations. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 9, 63–76.
Heilman, M. E. (2012). Gender stereotypes and workplace bias. Research in Organizational Behavior, 32, 113–135. doi:10.1016/j.riob.2012.11.003.
Heilman, M. E., & Haynes, M. C. (2005). No credit where credit is due: Attributional rationalization of women’s success in male-female teams. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90, 905–916. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.90.5.905.
Hoffman, C., & Hurst, N. (1990). Gender stereotypes: Perception or rationalization? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58, 197–208. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.58.2.197.
Inman, M. L., & Baron, R. S. (1996). Influence of prototypes on perceptions of prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 727–739. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.70.4.727.
Iyer, A., & Ryan, M. K. (2009). Why do men and women challenge gender discrimination in the workplace? The role of group status and in-group identification in predicting pathways to collective action. Journal of Social Issues, 65, 791–814.
Jost, J. T., & Banaji, M. R. (1994). The role of stereotyping in system-justification and the production of false consciousness. British Journal of Social Psychology, 33, 1–27.
Katz, I., & Hass, R. G. (1988). Racial ambivalence and American value conflict: Correlational and priming studies of dual cognitive structures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55, 893–905.
Keller, J. (2005). In genes we trust: The biological component of psychological essentialism and its relationship to mechanisms of motivated social cognition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 686–702. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.88.4.686.
Kluegel, J. R. (1985). ‘If there isn’t a problem, you don’t need a solution’: The bases of contemporary affirmative action attitudes. American Behavioral Scientist, 28, 761–784. doi:10.1177/000276485028006004.
Koch, A. J., D’Mello, S. D., & Sackett, P. R. (2015). A meta-analysis of gender stereotypes and bias in experimental simulations of employment decision making. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100, 128–161. doi:10.1037/a0036734.
Koenig, A. M., & Eagly, A. H. (2014). Evidence for the social role theory of stereotype content: Observations of groups’ roles shape stereotypes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 107, 371–392. doi:10.1037/a0037215.
Leslie, S., Cimpian, A., Meyer, M., & Freeland, E. (2015). Expectations of brilliance underlie gender distributions across academic disciplines. Science, 347, 262–265. doi:10.1126/science.1261375.
Levy, S. R., Stroessner, S. J., & Dweck, C. S. (1998). Stereotype formation and endorsement: The role of implicit theories. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1421–1436. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.74.6.1421.
Lyness, K. S., & Heilman, M. E. (2006). When fit is fundamental: Performance evaluations and promotions of upper-level female and male managers. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91, 777–785. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.91.4.777.
Major, B., Gramzow, R. H., McCoy, S. K., Levin, S., Schmader, T., & Sidanius, J. (2002a). Perceiving personal discrimination: The role of group status and legitimizing ideology. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 269–282. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.82.3.269.
Major, B., Quinton, W. J., & McCoy, S. K. (2002b). Antecedents and consequences of attributions to discrimination: Theoretical and empirical advances. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 34, 251–330.
Martell, R. F., Lane, D. M., & Emrich, C. (1996). Male-female differences: A computer simulation. American Psychologist, 51, 157–158. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.51.2.157.
Martin, C. L., & Parker, S. (1995). Folk theories about sex and race differences. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 45–57. doi:10.1177/0146167295211006.
McArthur, L. Z., & Post, D. L. (1977). Figural emphasis and person perception. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 13, 520–535. doi:10.1016/0022-1031(77)90051-8.
Medin, D. L., & Ortony, A. (1989). Psychological essentialism. In S. Vosnaidou & A. Ortony (Eds.), Similarity and analogical reasoning (pp. 179–195). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Moss-Racusin, C. A., Dovidio, J. F., Brescoll, V. L., Graham, M. J., & Handelsman, J. (2012). Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109, 16474–16479. doi:10.1073/pnas.1211286109.
Mummendey, A., Kessler, T., Klink, A., & Mielke, R. (1999). Strategies to cope with negative social identity: Predictions by social theory and relative deprivation theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76, 229–245. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.76.2.229.
Operario, D., & Fiske, S. T. (2001). Ethnic identity moderates perceptions of prejudice: Judgments of personal versus group discrimination and subtle versus blatant bias. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27, 550–561.
Park, B., & Judd, C. M. (1990). Measures and models of perceived group variability. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 173–191. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.59.2.173.
Pauker, K., Ambady, N., & Apfelbaum, E. P. (2010). Race salience and essentialist thinking in racial stereotype development. Child Development, 81, 1799–1813.
Pettigrew, T. F. (1979). The ultimate attribution error: Extending Allport’s cognitive analysis of prejudice. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 5, 461–476. doi:10.1177/014616727900500407.
Rangel, U., & Keller, J. (2011). Essentialism goes social: Belief in social determinism as a component of psychological essentialism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, 1056–1078. doi:10.1037/a0022401.
Regan, D. T., & Totten, J. (1975). Empathy and attribution: Turning observers into actors. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32, 850–856.
Reyna, C. (2000). Lazy, dumb, or industrious: When stereotypes convey attributional information in the classroom. Educational Psychology Review, 12, 85–110.
Rogier, A., & Yzerbyt, V. (1999). Social attribution, correspondence bias, and the emergence of stereotypes. Swiss Journal of Psychology, 58, 233–240.
Ross, L. (1977). The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings: Distortion in the attribution process. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental psychology (vol. 10, pp. 174–221). New York, NY: Academic Press.
Ross, L. D., & Nisbett, R. E. (1991). The person and the situation: Perspectives of social psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Rydell, R. J., Hugenberg, K., Ray, D., & Mackie, D. M. (2007). Implicit theories about groups and stereotyping: The role of group entitativity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33, 549–558. doi:10.1177/0146167206296956.
Settles, I. H., Cortina, L. M., Buchanan, N. T., & Miner, K. N. (2013). Derogation, discrimination, and (dis)satisfaction with jobs in science: A gendered analysis. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 37, 179–191. doi:10.1177/0361684312468727.
Sidanius, J., & Pratto, F. (1999). Social dominance: An intergroup theory of social hierarchy and oppression. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Soo Oh, S., & Lewis, G. B. (2011). Stemming inequality? Employment and pay of female and minority scientists and engineers. The Social Science Journal, 48, 397–403. doi:10.1016/j.soscij.2010.11.008.
Swim, J. K., Aikin, K. J., Hall, W. S., & Hunter, B. A. (1995). Sexism and racism: Old-fashioned and modern prejudices. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68, 199–214. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.68.2.199.
Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 33–47). Monterey: Brooks/Cole.
Trope, Y., & Gaunt, R. (2000). Processing alternative explanations of behavior: Correction or integration? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 344–354. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.79.3.344.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2015). Employed labor force statistics from the Current Population Survey. Retrieved from http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm.
U.S. Department of Labor & Bureau of Labor Statistics (2008). Women in the labor force: A databook (Report No. 996). Retrieved from http://www.bls.gov/cps/wlf-databook2008.htm.
U.S. Glass Ceiling Commission (1995). Good for business: Making full use of the nation’s human capital. Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://www.witi.com/research/downloads/glassceiling.pdf.
Valian, V. (1998). Why so slow? The advancement of women. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Van Vugt, M., & Spisak, B. R. (2008). Sex differences in the emergence of leadership during competitions within and between groups. Psychological Science, 19, 854–858.
Van Zomeren, M., Postmes, T., & Spears, R. (2008). Toward an integrative social identity model of collective action: A quantitative research synthesis of three socio-psychological perspectives. Psychological Bulletin, 134, 504–535. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.134.4.504.
Vescio, T. K., & Biernat, M. (1999). When stereotype-based expectations impair perceivers’ performance: The effect of prejudice, race, and target quality on judgments and perceiver performance. European Journal of Social Psychology, 29, 961–969.
Vescio, T. K., & Biernat, M. (2003). Family values and antipathy toward gay men. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 33, 833–847.
Vescio, T. K., Gervais, S. J., & Cundiff, J. L. (2016). Powerful women and men’s stereotyping of the self and others in masculine domains. Manuscript in preparation.
Watson, D. (1982). The actor and the observer: How are their perceptions of causality divergent? Psychological Bulletin, 92, 682–700.
Weiner, B. (1995). Judgments of responsibility: A foundation for a theory of social conduct. New York: The Guilford Press.
Weiner, B., Osborne, D., & Rudolph, U. (2011). An attributional analysis of reactions to poverty: The political ideology of the giver and the perceived morality of the receiver. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 15, 199–213. doi:10.1177/1088868310387615.
Wenneras, C., & Wold, A. (1997). Nepotism and sexism in peer-review. Nature, 387, 341–343.
Williams, W. M., & Ceci, S. J. (2015). National hiring experiments reveal 2:1 faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112, 5360–5365. doi:10.1073/pnas.1418878112.
Yoshida, E., Peach, J. M., Zanna, M. P., & Spencer, S. J. (2012). Not all automatic associations are created equal: How implicit normative evaluations are distinct from implicit attitudes and uniquely predict meaningful behavior. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48, 694–706. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2011.09.013.
Yzerbyt, V., & Rogier, A. (2001). Blame it on the group: Entitativity, subjective essentialism, and social attribution. In J. T. Jost & B. Major (Eds.), The psychology of legitimacy: Emerging perspectives on ideology, justice, and intergroup relations (pp. 103–134). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Yzerbyt, V., & Rogier, A. (2002). Subjective essentialism and the emergence of stereotypes. In C. McGarty, V. Y. Yzerbyt, & R. Spears (Eds.), Stereotypes as explanations: The formation of meaningful beliefs about social groups (pp. 38–66). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Yzerbyt, V., Rocher, S., & Schadron, G. (1997). Stereotypes as explanations: A subjective essentialistic view of group perception. In R. Spears, P. J. Oakes, N. Ellemers, & S. A. Haslam (Eds.), The social psychology of stereotyping and group life (pp. 20–50). Cambridge: Blackwell.
Yzerbyt, V., Rogier, A., & Fiske, S. (1998). Group entitativity and social attribution: On translating situational constraints into stereotypes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24, 1089–1103. doi:10.1177/01461672982410006.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by a Psi Chi Graduate Research Grant awarded to the first author. Portions of this research were presented at the 11th Annual Meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in Las Vegas, NV, January, 2010.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Disclosure of Funding Sources
The research was supported by a Psi Chi Graduate Research Grant awarded to the first author.
Conflict of Interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Previous Publication
The authors certify that the work described in the manuscript has not been published previously, that the manuscript is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, and that is approved by all authors. Portions of this research were presented at the 11th Annual Meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in Las Vegas, NV, January, 2010.
Ethical Treatment of Human Participants
The authors certify that the research was approved by the Pennsylvania State University IRB and was conducted in accordance with APA ethical guidelines, including informed consent from all research participants.
Electronic supplementary material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
ESM 1
(DOCX 141 kb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Cundiff, J.L., Vescio, T.K. Gender Stereotypes Influence How People Explain Gender Disparities in the Workplace. Sex Roles 75, 126–138 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-016-0593-2
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-016-0593-2
Keywords
- Stereotyped attitudes
- Sex role attitudes
- Attribution
- Division of labor
- Sex discrimination