Gender Stereotypes and Emotions: Are Sad Dads Perceived as Less Competent?

Researchers investigating gender stereotypes have found that it is often more socially acceptable for men to display confidence and anger rather than insecurity and sadness. Moreover, gender stereotypes often prescribe and describe emotional displays for men and women in specific social roles including parenting, a social role where emotional expressions are stereotypically feminine. Based on this research, this study investigated gender role violations concerning emotional displays specified in terms of the roles of parenting. It was hypothesized that participants would give sad dads significantly lower ratings of competence, knowledge, and approval in regards to being accepted into an after school program as compared to angry dads, sad moms, and angry moms. Overall, the findings did not support the hypotheses. Gender Stereotypes 5 Gender Stereotypes and Emotions: Are Sad Dads Perceived as Less Competent? Research on stereotypes has produced a better understanding of what they really are. Stereotypes were originally assumed to be ingrained negative evaluations of others. Early scientific research on stereotypes defined them as negative preconceptions of certain groups based on shared traits (Saenger & Flowerman, 1954; Fishman, 1956). However, psychologists have found that stereotypes are more cognitively based processes that utilize generalizations. Psychologists have identified stereotypes as automatic prejudgments that are used frequently to classify and categorize people and objects in order to simplify cognitive overload (Ashmore & Del Boca, 1979; Gilbert & Hixon, 1991; Sherman, 2001). In other words, stereotypes are seen today as being linked with basic cognitive processes rather than a deeply rooted hatred for others. Researchers have investigated stereotype formation. Research shows that individuals learn to stereotype others from an early age. Neugarten (1946) conducted a study on the development of stereotypes in which fifth-grade and sixth-grade school children were instructed to rate their classmates on desirable traits. The findings showed that the upper-class children were rated more desirable overall than the lower-class children, which suggests that even young children have rudimentary ideas of stereotypes and how to implement them in judgments. Stereotypes are complex and multiply determined; as such, researchers have concluded that stereotypes are created by a constellation of factors including individual experiences, normal cognitive processes, and cultural influences (Schneider, 2004). This leads to the conclusion that stereotypes form at an early age and arise from a variety of factors. A major portion of stereotype research has been devoted to investigating the Gender Stereotypes 6 accuracy of stereotypes and the cognitive functions they serve in memory. Researchers still debate the accuracy of stereotypes today, but initially, stereotypes were assumed to be inaccurate (Madon, Jussim, Keiper, Eccles, Smith, & Palumbo, 1998). Recent research suggests that stereotypic information can be both accurate and inaccurate, nevertheless the effects it has on individual’s perceptions of others is limited and small (Diekman, Eagly, & Kulesa, 2002). In relation to memory functions, Sherman and Frost (2000) claim that stereotype-consistent information is more readily available in memory than stereotype-inconsistent information when an individual’s cognitive capacity is low or overloaded. Hall and Crisp (2003) also found that people tend to increase their use of stereotypes during the times they are under a lot of stress, which can cause cognitive overload as well. Although some stereotypes are associated with negative categorizations and cognitive overload, not all stereotypes are linked to these factors. In fact, some stereotypes have a variety of positive uses and applications. Stereotype research shows that many stereotypes appear to be useful generalizations that are occasionally accurate. Thus, stereotypes may aid individuals in making quick and relatively efficient judgments when they find it too difficult to think through every available option. For example, Sassenberg and Moskowitz (2005) argue that stereotypes make cognitive processing more efficient. Similarly, other researchers claim that stereotypes are useful in decision-making when individuals experience low cognitive capacity. Schneider (2004) suggests that the human tendency to evaluate people and objects should not be seen as a negative defining aspect of stereotypes, but rather a common and useful strategy for classification. This research shows that stereotypes can be relatively useful generalizations. However, stereotypes encourage prejudice and Gender Stereotypes 7 discrimination when they are used for the negative devaluation of others. Therefore, stereotypes can result in negative social perceptions and cognitive effects that undermine social relationships because they can function as inflexible assumptions of others (Macrae, Milne, & Bodenhausen, 1994). This paper will focus on the latter use of stereotypes. Gender Stereotypes The result of continuing research on stereotypes has shown that there is something unique about race, gender, and age groups which are commonly referred to as the “big three” (Schneider, 2004, p.437). The “big three” are special for many reasons. One important reason they are special is that becoming a member in these groups does not involve a choice (Schneider, 2004). For instance, an individual is either Caucasian or African American, male or female, young or old. In recent years, gender stereotypes have surfaced as one of the most studied generalizations out of the “big three” by psychologists (Schneider, 2004). Gender stereotypes are defined as “a set of beliefs about personal characteristics of women and men which is shared by the members of some group” (Ashmore et al., 1979). As the result of the continued use of over generalized perceptions in today’s society, gender stereotypes involve assigning common masculine and feminine traits to an individual based on his or her gender. Research has shown that stereotypes, specifically gender stereotypes, tend to develop in childhood. Gender stereotypes form as young as age two (Hill & Flom, 2007). The process of gender stereotype formation continues into children’s pre-school years (Freeman, 2007) and it becomes more defined and salient in their high school years (Rowley, KurtzGender Stereotypes 8 Costes, Mistry, & Feagans, 2007). A major hypothesis has surfaced on gender stereotype formation in childhood. Many researchers argue that children acquire gender stereotypes from early learning experiences and exposure to gender-based generalizations from their parents, siblings, and peers in their social environment (Cowan & Hoffman, 1986; Martin & Ruble, 2004). Once formed in childhood, gender stereotypes are then carried into adulthood, where they prescribe and describe gender appropriate emotional displays for men and women within specific social roles. Gender Stereotypes and Emotion Western cultures maintain the stereotypical belief that women are generally more emotional than men (Fischer & Manstead, 2000). Specifically, the male gender role is more restricted than the female gender role in emotional expressivity (Basow, 1992). These emotional stereotypes extend from childhood well into adulthood due to display rules (Brody, 2000). In essence, these display rules tend to prescribe social norms by dictating the emotions that are considered gender appropriate. For instance, Western cultural norms prescribe boys to display little or no emotions at all, but girls are expected to display a variety of emotions (Brody, 2000). In addition, gender differences have been found in stress coping styles between boys and girls (Vingerhoets & Schiers, 2000). These findings indicate that boys are taught to handle stress instrumentally and aggressively, while girls are taught to actively express emotions and seek support when under stress (Vingerhoets et al., 2000). Although men and women experience emotions in the same manner, they tend to express them differently based on their culture (Plant, Hyde, Keltner, & Devine, 2000). For instance, women evaluate men in Western society who express sadness or fear more Gender Stereotypes 9 negatively because it violates their masculine gender role (Brody, 2000). In contrast, the display of anger or aggression by men is seen as acceptable; although, the expression of anger is not acceptable for women (Shields, 2000). In general, femininity emphasizes the “communal” ability to openly communicate emotions as well as empathize with others, while masculinity refers to the “agentic” ability to contain emotions both verbally and physically (Fisher et al., 2000). Although the male gender role restricts the freedom of men to express an array of emotions in Western society, men have been granted the ability to display anger, by default of masculine stereotypes. In terms of explaining the association between cultural gender differences in emotion, supporters of Social Role Theory (SRT) argue that gender stereotypes are created from exposure to men and women occupying different roles (Eagly, Wood, & Diekman, 2000). In addition, gender stereotypes are molded by the uneven distribution of men and women into separate social roles (Cramer, Million, & Perreault, 2002). Thus, laypeople mistake the differences between men and women as resulting from gender instead of social roles. Madden, Barrett, and Pietromonaco (2000) suggest that the core claim of SRT is the influence of traditional gender roles on men and women’s current behavior. Supporters of SRT assert that a woman’s traditional social role is to be a homemaker, while a man’s traditional role is to be a worker. In addition to social role prescription, theorists have proposed that gender role differences help promote the gender orientation of emotional expression. Over time women have learned th