Examining adolescent daughters' and their parents' academic-gender stereotypes: Predicting academic attitudes, ability, and STEM intentions.

INTRODUCTION: Women continue to be underrepresented in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) and research suggests that academic-gender stereotypes can be a contributing factor. In the present research, we examined whether adolescent daughters' and their parents' gender stereotypes about math and liberal arts would predict the academic orientation of daughters at a critical time of career related decision-making. METHODS: Participants included girls in late adolescence (N = 185, Mage = 17) and at least one parent (N = 230, Mage = 49), resulting in 147 mother-daughter dyads and 83 father-daughter dyads. Implicit academic-gender stereotypes were measured using an Implicit Association Test (IAT) and explicit stereotypes, academic attitudes, academic ability, and daughters' intentions to pursue a degree in STEM were measured using self-reports. RESULTS: Neither mothers' nor fathers' implicit or explicit academic-gender stereotypes predicted adolescent daughters' implicit stereotypes; however, fathers' explicit stereotypes predicted daughters' explicit stereotypes. In addition, daughters' academic orientation, a latent variable composed of adolescent girls' academic attitudes, academic ability, and intentions to pursue a degree in STEM, was predicted by daughters' own implicit and explicit stereotypes. This was the case for relative orientation toward math versus liberal arts, as well as math (but not liberal arts) orientation. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest the importance of challenging academic-gender stereotypes during adolescence and suggest that at this stage in development, mothers' and fathers' academic stereotypes might have limited relation to daughters' own implicit associations with academic domains.

Children's implicit attitudes toward targets who differ by race and gender.

In the current research we examined non-Black children's associations with targets who differed by both race and gender, with a focus on the role of categorization in informing children's biases. Children aged 5 to 12 years (N = 206; 109 boys, 97 girls; 55% White; 68% of household incomes > $75,000/year), recruited from a science museum in a large multicultural Canadian city, completed a child-friendly Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald et al., 2003) that included own-gender Black and other-gender White targets. Children were randomly assigned to complete this IAT under one of three categorization conditions. When asked to categorize targets by gender as opposed to race, both girls and boys showed relatively more positive associations with own-gender Black targets over other-gender White targets. Children in a third, Ambiguous-Categorization (AC-IAT; Lipman et al., 2021) condition, which allowed for categorization by gender and/or race, were more likely to spontaneously categorize additional final trials primarily by gender (70%), suggesting that gender was the more salient social category. However, girls' and boys' biases in this condition differed, with girls showing relatively more positive associations with own-gender Black targets (Black girls > White boys) and boys showing relatively more positive associations with other-gender White targets (White girls > Black boys). In addition, the more boys and girls categorized by gender (over race) at the end of the task, the more they showed positive associations with own-gender Black targets over other-gender White targets. These findings provide insight into children's social categorization processes and biases toward targets who differ by race and gender. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Children's spontaneous associations with targets who differ by race and emotional expression.

Across three studies, we examined non-Black children's spontaneous associations with targets who differed by both race and emotional expression. Children aged 5 to 10 years (N = 419; 215 girls; 58% White; 65% of household incomes >$75,000/year) completed Implicit Association Tests (IAT; Greenwald et al., 2003) containing smiling Black and neutral White target faces. In all three studies, when children categorized these faces by emotional expression, they showed relatively more positive associations with smiling Black targets over neutral White targets, as compared with when they categorized these faces by race. This was the case when children were shown how to categorize these faces (Studies 1 and 2) and when they spontaneously categorized by race or emotional expression on an Ambiguous-Categorization IAT that allowed for categorization by race and/or emotion (Studies 2 and 3). In Study 3, after watching an adult explain that she was categorizing racially diverse faces by emotional expression in a seemingly unrelated card-sorting task, children were also relatively faster to pair smiling Black faces with pleasant images and neutral White faces with unpleasant images on this Ambiguous-Categorization IAT compared with children in a control condition. Older children were more likely to spontaneously categorize primarily by race (Studies 2 and 3) but were also more likely to categorize by emotion following the intervention (Study 3) compared with younger children. Together, these studies provide insight into children's social categorization processes and spontaneous associations with targets who differ systematically across multiple perceptually salient categories. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Disambiguating auditory information causes priming, but not aftereffects, in the perception of ambiguous faces.

In five experiments, we used a visual aftereffects paradigm to probe whether emotion- and gender-relevant information presented in the auditory domain would affect the formation of visual aftereffects or would instead create a priming effect. In experiment 1, participants fixated on surprise facial expressions while listening to a story that described the surprise as either happy or sad, and then were asked to classify the expression of a briefly presented neutral face. Subsequently, the identity of the model (experiment 2) and the timing of the auditory presentation (experiment 3) were manipulated. In experiment 4, this approach was extended to judgments of gender. Experiment 5 serves as a control experiment in which the story, but no visual stimuli, was presented during the adaptation phase. In each case results revealed evidence of priming, but no evidence that information in the auditory domain affected the formation of aftereffects.