Many Mickles Make a Muckle: Evidence That Gender Stereotypes Reemerge Spontaneously Via Cultural Evolution.
Pers Soc Psychol Bull
; : 1461672241254695, 2024 Jun 03.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-38829014
ABSTRACT
We explore whether societal gender stereotypes re-emerge as social information is repeatedly passed from person to person. We examined whether peoples' memories of personality attributes associated with female and male social targets became increasingly consistent with societal gender stereotypes as information was passed down social transmission chains. After passing through the memories of just four generations of participants, our initially gender-balanced micro-societies became rife with traditional gender stereotypes. While we found some evidence of the re-emergence of gender stereotypes in Experiment 1, we found the effects were stronger when targets appeared in a feminine-stereotyped occupational context (Experiment 2), and a masculine-stereotyped occupational context (Experiment 3); conversely, the re-emergence of gender stereotypes was attenuated when targets appeared in a single gender context (Experiment 4). The current findings demonstrate that gender schematic memory bias, if widely shared, might cause gender stereotypes to be maintained through cultural evolution.
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Language:
En
Journal:
Pers Soc Psychol Bull
Year:
2024
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
United kingdom