The Effects of Gender Stereotypes, In/Out Systems, and System Justification in Women

Complementary stereotypes appear to praise a group, but inherently contain a negative stereotype (“women are better team-players” implies women are poor leaders). Exposure to these stereotypes tends to increase women’s support of the social status quo even as women continue to be socially disadvantaged—System Justification Theory (SJT) posits that this is due to a motivation to believe we live in a just society. This study explores whether or not SJT holds when complementary stereotypes are presented as being part of a society in which one does not live (out-system), thereby removing the proposed motivation to justify. The study also explored how stereotype exposure affects women’s implicit endorsement of future gender stereotypes, and whether this is caused by mere exposure or system justification. Results showed that in-system stereotypes increased system justification while the same stereotypes presented as part of an out-system decreased system justification, compared to controls. In addition, only subjects in the group with increased system justification were more likely to later implicitly endorse stereotypes of women, showing it is system justification not mere exposure that produces this phenomenon. The study’s results imply that seemingly positive societal views of women may actually hamper women’s recognition of gender inequality in America or steps by women to remedy this. 2 System Justification in Women Introduction Stereotyping and prejudice are problems that our country has tried to address for years, from the end of segregation in the Brown v. Board of Education case to Title IX. Psychology studies abound on topics such as the development of stereotypes, their activation, and maintenance (for review, see Hilton & von Hippel, 1996). Despite the many advances made over the years by women, sexism and gender stereotypes continue to plague societies around the world. This particular group also holds the odd distinction of being a socially disadvantaged group in which many members voice the opinion that not only is the status quo just fine, but attempts to change it are quite bad. Some of the most vocal critics of the Equal Rights Amendment were in fact women, such as political activist Phyllis Schlafly, who felt that perceived inequality in some areas was offset by social privileges (i.e., exemption from military draft) that would be lost under the ERA (Kolbert, 2005). Still, some of the most interesting research centers on how exposure to stereotypes can alter cognitions and behavior, possibly explaining some of the many characteristics of women, who although they make up half the world’s population are often socially disadvantaged. Women are constantly exposed to gender stereotypes and this no doubt affects them in many ways. Even in the modern world, subtle discrimination and stereotyping may cause dramatic negative effects in women even if they do not realize they are being stereotyped or discriminated against. This study investigates how exposure to such stereotypes affects women’s appraisal of society and its treatment of women, as well as gender stereotype endorsement. Exposure to stereotypes has been shown to have a multitude of effects on people, whether or not they are the targets of the stereotypes. One study found that when college students were primed with words related to the elderly the students’ stereotypes of the elderly 3 System Justification in Women were activated and they actually walked slower when leaving the laboratory (Bargh, Chen, & Burrows, 1996). This demonstrates the power of stereotype exposure and the unusual effects it can have. While walking slowly after thinking about growing old is a comical effect of stereotype exposure, the phenomenon also appears in much darker forms. Steele and Aronson (1995) demonstrated the existence of stereotype threat, or the fear that one’s behavior will confirm existing stereotypes about one’s group, and that the result can be impaired performance. Their study administered the Graduate Record Examination to white and African-American participants, telling half that their intelligence was being measured and half that it was not—white participants performed equally well in either condition but African-Americans performance suffered when they thought their intelligence was measured. The cause? The participants were reacting to the fear of fulfilling the stereotype of African-Americans having lower IQs. Other studies of stereotype threat found that it reduces working memory capacity, which is another factor in lowered performance (Schmader & Johns, 2003). Interestingly, multiple identities of participants also affect stereotype threat. Sinclair et al (2006) found that in a sample of Asian-American women, activating the Asian stereotype improved performance on a math test, while activating the female stereotype lowered performance in accordance with the stereotype. Stereotype activation does not only lead to lower performance on academic measures, but also to behavior on the part of targets. Sinclair et al (2005) found that when female participants were told they would be interacting with another social actor who supposedly held stereotype-consistent views of women they viewed themselves as more stereotypically feminine and behaved in a more feminine manner, if they had a strong motivation to bond 4 System Justification in Women with the partner. However, if the participants had a strong affiliative motivation to bond with a partner who supposedly held stereotype-inconsistent views of women, the participants viewed themselves as less feminine and behaved accordingly. The authors called this phenomenon social tuning of the self and postulated that social tuning occurs because participants desire to create a shared reality with their partners. Shared reality theory in turn argues that social regulation is central to social cognition (Lowery et al., 2001). The most striking facet of the research on affiliative motivation is that the findings held true even when social tuning meant participants were putting themselves at a disadvantage. In another experiment by Sinclair et al (2005) African-American students were told they were trying out for a scholastic team, and they then observed “David,” a white male filling out forms in another room. Some participants were told that David was also trying out for the team (low affiliative motive), while others learned that he was in fact the team’s captain who would help pick his team members (high affiliative motive). David was also described as holding stereotype-consistent or inconsistent views of African-Americans. The result was that participants in the high affiliative motive condition developed more stereotypeconsistent self views and portrayed themselves as being less intelligent in order to create a shared reality with David. This is so startling because the strong motive to affiliate actually resulted in participants hurting their chances of successfully making the team! Perhaps even more troubling is recent research demonstrating that minority group members may be unwittingly furthering their subjugation. According to system justification theory (SJT), the innate desire to see the world in which one lives as “fair, legitimate, and desirable” one will rationalize the status quo even if it is personally disadvantageous (Kay & Jost, 2003). Disturbingly, it has been purported that this tendency to system justify has 5 System Justification in Women resulted in disadvantaged groups accepting the status quo of inequality rather than acting to change society for their betterment (Kay et al., 2007). This might explain the demonstrated tendency for out-group favoritism found among low-status group members (Jost & Banaji, 1994). What elicits such justification? The answer appears to be benevolent and complementary stereotypes. These stereotypes may appear to compliment or elevate their targets but also carry a negative aspect. For example, Glick and Fiske (2001) found that women are stereotyped as being “warm” and good at the role of team player, but these positive qualities also carry the negative connotation that women are ineffective leaders. Jost and Kay (2005) found that mere exposure to benevolent or complementary stereotypes served to increase socially disadvantaged group members’ (women’s) support for the social status quo in general and in regard to gender, although hostile stereotypes (Glick & Fiske, 2001) did not. Stereotypes did not increase system justification among socially advantaged groups, in this case males (Jost & Kay, 2005). Similar results in support of system justification theory are evidenced in work on complementary stereotypes which ascribe positive attributes to the disadvantaged (“poor but happy”) and negative attributes to the advantaged (“rich but miserable”), demonstrating the power that stereotyping has in allowing us to believe in a fair and just world. Exposing participants to the stereotypes “poor but happy” and “poor but honest” or the stereotypes “rich but miserable” and “rich but dishonest” led to very high scores on a measure of system justification (Jost & Kay, 2003). In these cases, the system seems fair as long as personal characteristics balance out life circumstances. It might seem horribly unfair for a poor person to be miserable and a rich person happy (as is likely to be found in reality), but by balancing out situation we can assume the world has some sort of justice—and from there we derive old stereotypes of the 6 System Justification in Women wealthy but miserable Scrooge characters, and destitute but joyful Tiny Tim. Still, there is much more to be investigated in system justification theory and in-group stereotyping. Interestingly, research has shown that while negative stereotyping of one’s in-group occurs (Biernat, Vescio, & Green, 1996), presenting negative in-group stereotypes to participants has not been shown to induce system justification (Kay et al