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Gender stereotypes

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The SAGE Encyclopedia of Psychology
and Gender
Gender Stereotypes

Contributors: Bettina J. Casad & Breanna R. Wexler

Edited by: Kevin L. Nadal
Book Title: The SAGE Encyclopedia of Psychology and Gender
Chapter Title: "Gender Stereotypes"
Pub. Date: 2017
Access Date: July 20, 2017
Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc.
City: Thousand Oaks,
Print ISBN: 9781483384283
Online ISBN: 9781483384269
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781483384269.n
Print pages: 755-758
©2017 SAGE Publications, Inc.. All Rights Reserved.
This PDF has been generated from SAGE Knowledge. Please note that the pagination of
the online version will vary from the pagination of the print book.
SAGE SAGE Reference
Contact SAGE Publications at http://www.sagepub.com.

Gender stereotypes are overgeneralized beliefs about the characteristics of individuals based
solely on their gender, regardless of the actual diversity among members of various gender
groups. The beliefs reflect perceivers’ knowledge and expectations about women, men,
transgender, and other gendered people. The content of stereotypes typically includes
personality traits, behaviors, physical features, roles, preferences, attitudes, skills, and
interests, among others. Stereotypes are relevant to the psychology of gender because they
shape how people process information about gender and influence judgments made about
members of various gender groups. Stereotypes serve as a schema, or lens, through which
individuals view their social world. This entry provides a brief overview of gender stereotypes,
including history, origins and purpose, types and forms, consequences, and methods to
reduce gender stereotypes.

Brief History

The term stereotype was first brought to public attention by journalist Walter Lippmann in
1922 to refer to “images in our heads.” The term was based on a printing process that used
fixed casts to print images, and later the term stereotypy was used to describe a pathological
state that reflected rigid, unchanging behavior. Lippmann also used the term stereotype to
reflect fixed thinking, highlighting that stereotypes create “pseudo environments” or “fixations”
in individuals’ minds that do not necessarily reflect reality. In this sense, stereotypes are social
schemas, or cognitive structures, that organize our information about the social world and
influence information processing. Although holding stereotypes was once thought to be
abnormal, cognitive psychologists have noted that stereotypes are necessary to process large
amounts of information quickly. Humans are bombarded with so much sensory information
every second that cognitive shortcuts and filters are necessary to make daily living possible.
Thus, humans are often referred to as “cognitive misers” who take shortcuts in processing
information and making judgments, which can be surprisingly accurate (e.g., research on first
impressions based on “thin slices” of behavior) but can also be grossly inaccurate.

Origins and Purpose

Gender stereotypes originate from grouping individuals by gender into categories such as
women, men, transgender, two spirit, among others. Once people are classified into gender
groups, they are assumed to share characteristics, and their unique qualities are often
overlooked. This social categorization process is the first step in simplifying information
processing. Once humans are classified into gender groups, in-groups and out-groups can
be determined, or groups to which one belongs and groups to which one does not belong,
respectively. This designation allows for differentiating among various gender groups, which
often leads to differential valuing of groups.

Besides simplifying information processing, gender stereotypes can be used for self-
enhancement or boosting self-esteem. If someone is feeling down, the person can apply a
negative gender stereotype to someone (e.g., women are bad at math) and can therefore feel
better about oneself. Stereotypes also serve to affirm our values and beliefs. For example, by
stating that women ought to be mothers and not have a career, individuals are expressing
their belief in family values. Gender stereotypes are often reinforced in society and reflect
cultural norms.

Types and Forms

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Gender stereotypes come in many forms: They can be positive or negative, explicit or implicit,
and prescriptive or descriptive. Gender stereotype also share common dimensions such as
communion and agency and attractiveness bias. Each concept is described next.

Positive and Negative

Gender stereotypes can be positive in that they bestow positive qualities on a particular
gender group, for example, that women are warm, friendly, and caring, whereas men are
competent, confident, and assertive. On the surface, this may not seem problematic; however,
these positive stereotypes suggest that all women and all men should have these respective
qualities. It is possible for women to have some qualities associated with men and for men to
have some qualities associated with women, or to lack qualities associated with their gender
group. Thus, the rigid categories, although apparently positive, are limiting for how members
of gender groups express their personality and behaviors. People use these stereotypes to
make judgments, and if members of gender groups do not conform to these expectations,
they face negative consequences.

The greatest attention has been paid to negative stereotypes as they are easier to detect as
harmful and problematic. Examples include women are overly emotional, irrational, and
incompetent, whereas men are hot tempered, violent, and lack empathy. If these negative
expectations are applied to all women and all men, this grossly exaggerates the gender
expectations of men and women. In addition, gender stereotypes do not take into account
situational influences on behavior and instead describe these personality traits as innate
aspects of one’s gender.

Explicit and Implicit

A second classification of gender stereotypes is whether they are consciously or

unconsciously held by the individual. Much of the research has focused on explicit gender
stereotypes, or those that are conscious and controlled that can be freely reported on a
questionnaire or in conversation. However, a more insidious form of gender stereotypes is that
which operates implicitly, or without awareness and control. According to dual-process
theories, behavior can operate both automatically (implicitly) and systematically (explicitly).
That is, someone can have both an implicit and an explicit stereotype toward someone based
on gender, and these stereotypes can be expressed consciously or unconsciously through
behavior. In addition, automatically activated stereotypes can have a particularly strong
influence on a wide range of social judgments and behaviors.

When dual gender stereotypes exist, the implicit stereotype is activated automatically, while
the explicit stereotype requires motivation to be retrieved from memory. If the explicit
stereotype is retrieved, it can override the implicit stereotype; otherwise, people report the
implicit stereotype. Implicit stereotypes influence uncontrollable responses, such as nonverbal
behaviors, even when the explicit stereotype is retrieved from memory. This explains why
implicit gender stereotypes often predict prejudicial behavior above and beyond explicitly
reported gender stereotypes.

Prescriptive and Descriptive

Men and women are subjected to both descriptive and prescriptive stereotypes, which outline
how others think men and women are and how others think men and women should behave,

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respectively. Descriptive bias occurs when men and women are not deemed to have the
appropriate masculine or feminine characteristics for a given situation or job. Prescriptive bias
occurs in reaction to counterstereotypic behavior, such as when a woman behaves in an
assertive manner and is deemed “rude” and therefore experiences negative backlash.

Agency and Communion

Many gender stereotypes can be organized based on two fundamental dimensions of social
judgments: agency and communion. Agency is the extent to which a person believes another
person is competent and able to carry out their motives. Communion is the extent to which a
person is warm and caring and determines whether others like the person. The stereotype
content model documents many forms of gender stereotypes that vary on these two
dimensions. For example, stay-at-home mothers are typically viewed as low in agency but
high in communion, whereas career women are viewed as high in agency but low in
communion. In contrast, the typical man is viewed as high in agency and communion.

Attractiveness Bias

Research has consistently demonstrated that those who are more attractive experience many
advantages over their less attractive counterparts, or the “what is beautiful is good”
stereotype. However, biases based on attractiveness may have particularly detrimental effects
for women because men place a heavy emphasis on women’s attractiveness in mate
selection, more so than women do for men. Also, in the United States, women tend to be
judged based on appearance to a greater extent than men, with women being held to higher
standards of beauty and subjected to greater expectations of devoting resources to
enhancing their appearance.

One area in which physically attractive people receive preferential treatment is in the hiring
context. Attractiveness is particularly important for women in this context, as unattractive
women are the least-preferred applicants after attractive men, attractive women, and
unattractive men.

Consequences of Stereotypes

Gender stereotypes have negative consequences for the individuals and gender groups
targeted by them as well as for the advancement of gender equality in society. Gender
stereotypes may limit individuals’ life aspirations and put unnecessary restrictions on their
behavior.

Stereotype Threat

Stereotype threat is the fear and anxiety that members of stereotyped groups experience
when they worry that their behavior will be judged based on a negative stereotype. The
experience of stereotype threat often results in lower achievement in academic and work
domains. A prominent example of this process is the effects of the stereotype that girls and
women are not as competent in mathematics as boys and men. When in evaluative
performance situations, such as high-stakes academic tests, girls and women may worry that
if they perform poorly they will inadvertently support this negative stereotype. They might be
worried that their poor math performance reflects poorly on them and/or on their gender group
as a whole. Stereotype threat is situationally induced, such as by priming gender before an

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exam, and therefore can be eliminated. Indeed, women who learn about the harmful effects of
stereotype threat on women’s math performance are less likely to be negatively affected by it
in the future. However, many girls and women are unaware of this psychological
phenomenon, and it is considered as one of the causes of gender gaps in math and science
education and career achievements.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Gender stereotypes affect one’s behavior toward members of various gender groups. How
one treats an individual can affect how the individual responds. Thus, if one treats a person in
accordance with a gender stereotype (e.g., expecting a woman to be incompetent in science),
the person may pick up on subtle cues and respond unfavorably, such as performing poorly
in a job interview, and the perceiver’s stereotype may appear to be confirmed. The self-
fulfilling prophecy is a pernicious cycle that makes gender stereotypes more resistant to
change.

Leadership Aspirations

Compared with men, women are evaluated less favorably by others for leadership roles. This
finding can best be explained by role congruity theory, which is grounded in social role theory
and examines the extent of congruity between gender roles and leadership roles. When
women do break through traditional gender stereotypes and display agentic behaviors
characteristic of leaders, they are also evaluated unfavorably because they are displaying
behaviors incongruous with their gender.

When women are in leadership roles, there is evidence that they underpredict their
performance compared with men. This may be the result of a lack of self-confidence, learned
gender roles, and self-sexism among other explanations. This is a particular concern because
leader self-awareness is a precursor for leader effectiveness. In other words, this could create
a self-fulfilling prophecy and continue the unfortunate cycle of women’s perceived lower
leadership performance.

Hiring Discrimination

Studies that have examined applicant gender in conjunction with other factors (e.g., physical
attractiveness, student vs. employee raters, type of job, and qualification level) have
consistently supported a preference for male applicants in selection situations, even when
equally qualified females apply for the same job. This access discrimination often prevents
women from entering the workforce or results in women being placed in lower-level positions.

Hiring discrimination is especially likely to occur when women are applying for male-
dominated jobs and when raters endorse traditional gender stereotypes (e.g., associating
women with communality and men with agency). Interestingly, this discriminatory link does
not hold for androgynous women.

Women are also discriminated against in promotion decisions. This glass ceiling effect
describes invisible barriers that seem to prevent women from reaching top levels within
organizations. Similarly, the sticky floor effect describes the situation of women who are
intentionally selected into low-level jobs with little chance of promotion. This phenomenon
does not exist for (predominantly White) men, however, as they are often quickly promoted to

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higher level positions, even in female-dominated jobs in what has been appropriately termed
the glass escalator effect.

Changing Stereotypes

Research on reducing gender stereotyping has shown that diversity education and self-
awareness training are effective. People need to make a conscious effort to recognize the use
of gender stereotypes among themselves and their loved ones. Because gender stereotypes
affect how people process information, if they are aware of the stereotypes, they can minimize
how the stereotypes affect their judgments. For example, instead of looking for evidence to
confirm gender stereotypes (e.g., a dumb blonde), one can look for contrary evidence (e.g., a
woman scientist who happens to be blonde).

See alsoGender Microinequities; Gendered Stereotyped Behaviors in Childhood; Gendered

S t e r e o t y p e d B e h a v i o r s i n M e n; G e n d e r e d S t e r e o t y p e d B e h a v i o r s i n W o m e n;
Microaggressions; Sexism; Stereotype Threat and Gender

women
sex work
sex trafficking
transsexualism
sexism
sexual harassment
women against violence against women

Bettina J. CasadBreanna R. Wexler

http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781483384269.n
10.4135/9781483384269.n
Further Readings
Kite, M. E., Deaux, K., & Haines, E. L. (2008). Gender stereotypes. In F. L. Denmark & M. A.
Paludi (Eds.), Psychology of women: A handbook of issues and theories (
2nd ed.
, pp. 205–236). Westport, CT: Praeger.
Wood, W., & Eagly, A. H. (2010). Gender. In S. T. Fiske, D. T. Gilbert, & G. Lindzey (Eds.),
Handbook of social psychology (Vol. 1, pp. 629–667). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

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