TY - JOUR
T1 - Essentializing differences between women and men
AU - Prentice, Deborah A.
AU - Miller, Dale T.
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by grants from the Russell Sage Foundation and the National Institute of Mental Health. We are grateful to Diana Usas, Allison Baer, and Lisa Tan for assistance with data collection and to Jennifer Eberhardt, Phil Goff, and Lara Tiedens for helpful comments on this article.
PY - 2006/2
Y1 - 2006/2
N2 - People represent many social categories, including gender categories, in essentialist terms: They see category members as sharing deep, nonobvious properties that make them the kinds of things they are. The present research explored the consequences of this mode of representation for social inferences. In two sets of studies, participants learned (a) that they were similar to a member of the other gender on a novel attribute, (b) that they were different from a member of the other gender on a novel attribute, or (c) just their own standing on a novel attribute. Results showed that participants made stronger inductive inferences about the attribute in question when they learned that it distinguished them from a member of the other gender than in the other conditions. We consider the implications of these results for the representation of social categories and for everyday social inference processes.
AB - People represent many social categories, including gender categories, in essentialist terms: They see category members as sharing deep, nonobvious properties that make them the kinds of things they are. The present research explored the consequences of this mode of representation for social inferences. In two sets of studies, participants learned (a) that they were similar to a member of the other gender on a novel attribute, (b) that they were different from a member of the other gender on a novel attribute, or (c) just their own standing on a novel attribute. Results showed that participants made stronger inductive inferences about the attribute in question when they learned that it distinguished them from a member of the other gender than in the other conditions. We consider the implications of these results for the representation of social categories and for everyday social inference processes.
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U2 - 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01675.x
DO - 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01675.x
M3 - Article
C2 - 16466420
AN - SCOPUS:33645067404
SN - 0956-7976
VL - 17
SP - 129
EP - 135
JO - Psychological Science
JF - Psychological Science
IS - 2
ER -