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Gender stereotypes about intellectual ability emerge early and influence children’s interests

January 2017
Science 355(6323):389-391

DOI:10.1126/science.aah6524

Authors:

Lin Bian

Stanford University

Andrei Cimpian

New York University

Common stereotypes associate high-level intellectual ability (brilliance, genius, etc.) with men more than women. These stereotypes discourage women’s pursuit of many prestigious careers; that is, women are underrepresented in fields whose members cherish brilliance (such as physics and philosophy). Here we show that these stereotypes are endorsed by, and influence the interests of, children as young as 6. Specifically, 6-year-old girls are less likely than boys to believe that members of their gender are “really, really smart.” Also at age 6, girls begin to avoid activities said to be for children who are “really, really smart.” These findings suggest that gendered notions of brilliance are acquired early and have an immediate effect on children’s interests.

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REPORT

◥

PSYCHOLOGY

Gender stereotypes about intellectual

ability emerge early and influence

children’s interests

Lin Bian,

1,2

*Sarah-Jane Leslie,

Andrei Cimpian

1,2

Common stereotypes associate high-level intellectual ability (brilliance, genius, etc.) with

men more than women. These stereotypes discourage women’s pursuit of many

prestigious careers; that is, women are underrepresented in fields whose members cherish

brilliance (such as physics and philosophy). Here we show that these stereotypes are

endorsed by, and influence the interests of, children as young as 6. Specifically, 6-year-old

girls are less likely than boys to believe that members of their gender are “really, really

smart.”Also at age 6, girls begin to avoid activities said to be for children who are “really,

really smart.”These findings suggest that gendered notions of brilliance are acquired early

and have an immediate effect on children’s interests.

The career aspirations of young men and

women are shaped by societal stereotypes

about gender (1,2). For example, the stereo-

type that men are better than women at

mathematics (3) impairs women’sperform-

ance in this domain (4,5) and undermines their

interest in mathematics-intensive fields (6,7).

However, popular beliefs about ability associ-

ate not only specific cognitive processes (e.g.,

mathematical reasoning) with a particular gen-

der but also the overall amount of cognitive

ability. It is commonly assumed that high-level

cognitive ability (brilliance, genius, giftedness,

etc.) is present more often in men than in wom-

en (8–11). This “brilliance = males”stereotype

has been invoked to explain the gender gaps

in many prestigious occupations (12–15). How-

ever, little is known about the acquisition of this

stereotype. The earlier children acquire the no-

tion that brilliance is a male quality, the stronger

its influence may be on their aspirations. The

four studies reported here (N= 400 children)

show that, by the age of 6, girls are less likely

than boys to believe that members of their gen-

der are “really, really smart”—a child-friendly

way of referring to brilliance. Also at age 6, the

girls in these studies begin to shy away from

novel activities said to be for children who are

“really, really smart.”These studies speak to the

early acquisition of cultural ideas about brilliance

and gender, as well as to the immediate effect

that these stereotyped notions have on children’s

interests.

The stereotypes associating men but not

women with brilliance and genius (8–11) may

take a toll on women’s careers; fields whose

members place a great deal of value on sheer

brilliance (e.g., mathematics, physics, philosophy)

have lower proportions of women earning ba-

chelor’s and doctoral degrees (12–17). However,

investigations of the “brilliance = males”stereo-

type that focus exclusively on participants of col-

lege age or older overlook a critical fact: Cultural

messages about the presumed cognitive abilities

of males and females are likely to be influential

throughout development (18,19). If children ab-

sorb and act on these ideas (3,20,21), then

many capable girls are likely to have already

veered away from certain fields by the time they

reach college. Thus, it is important to investi-

gate the acquisition of the “brilliance = males”

stereotype in early childhood, as children enter

school and begin to make choices that shape their

future career paths.

Study one examined the developmental tra-

jectory of this stereotype in 96 children aged 5,

6, and 7 (32 children per age group; half boys,

half girls). Children came mostly from middle-

class backgrounds, and 75% were white. (The

supplementary materials contain additional de-

mographic information. However, across studies,

children’s race/ethnicity and socioeconomic sta-

tus did not significantly moderate the results

of interest.) We assessed children’s endorsement

of the “brilliance = males”stereotype with three

tasks, presented in counterbalanced order (see

the supplementary materials). In task (i), chil-

dren were told a brief story about a person who

was “really, really smart.”No hints as to the

protagonist’s gender were provided. Children

were then asked to guess which of four unfamiliar

adults (two men, two women) was the protag-

onist of the story. In task (ii), children saw several

pairs of same- or different-gender adults and

guessed which adult in each pair was “really,

really smart.”In task (iii), children completed

three novel puzzles in which they had to guess

which objects (e.g., a hammer) or attributes (e.g.,

smart) best corresponded to pictures of unfamiliar

men and women.

Across tasks and studies, the pictures depicted

males and females matched for attractiveness

and professional dress (potential cues to intelli-

gence). In each task, we recorded the proportion

of relevant trials on which children linked in-

tellectual ability with people of their own gender;

these proportions were then averaged into an

own-gender brilliance score. As a comparison,

we also elicited children’s ideas about whether

men versus women are “really, really nice.”These

two traits are differentially linked to gender in

common stereotypes (2). As the relevant cultural

notions are being assimilated, children’sresponses

should likewise differentiate between these traits.

The results suggest that children’sideasabout

brilliance exhibit rapid changes over the period

from ages 5 to 7. At 5, boys and girls associated

brilliance with their own gender to a similar ex-

tent (Wald c

=0.02,P=0.89)(Fig.1Aandtable

S2). The high scores are consistent with the over-

whelming in-group positivity previously observed

in boys and (especially) girls across early and

middle childhood (22,23). Despite this strong

tendency to view one’s gender in a positive light,

girls aged 6 and 7 were significantly less likely

than boys to associate brilliance with their own

gender (Wald c

=8.10,P= 0.004) (Fig. 1A). Thus,

the “brilliance = males”stereotype may be fa-

miliar to, and endorsed by, children as young

as 6. The stereotype associating females with

being nice seems to follow a similar develop-

mental trajectory (Fig. 1B).

In study two, we replicated our initial findings

with a larger sample (144 children; 48 per age

group).Childreninthissampleratedbothadult

and child targets. (Study one included only adult

targets.) As before, there was no statistically sig-

nificant difference in own-gender brilliance scores

for 5-year-old boys and girls (Wald c

=0.01,P=

0.94), but a significant difference emerged start-

ing at age 6 (Wald c

=9.63,P= 0.002) (Fig. 1C

and table S2). This pattern did not differ signif-

icantly by whether children rated adult versus

child targets (Wald c

=1.42,P= 0.23).

What might explain the drop in girls’evalu-

ation of their gender’s intellectual abilities? Al-

though many factors are likely involved, in study

two we tested whether this drop is associated

with differences between younger (5-year-old)

and older (6- and 7-year-old) girls in their per-

ceptions of their school achievement—information

that is, in principle, relevant to judging intelli-

gence. These perceptions were measured with

four questions similar to those we used to mea-

sure stereotypes (e.g., children had to guess which

of four children, two boys and two girls, “gets

the best grades in school”). In contrast with the

drop in brilliance scores, there was no signifi-

cant difference between younger and older girls

in the likelihood of selectingothergirlsashaving

top grades (t=0.22,P=0.83)(fig.S1).Oldergirls

were actually more likely to select girls as having

top grades than older boys were to select boys

Bian et al., Science 355,389–391 (2017) 27 January 2017 1of3

Department of Psychology, University of Illinois, Champaign,

IL 61820, USA.

Department of Psychology, New York

University, New York, NY 10003, USA.

Department of

Philosophy, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.

*Corresponding author. Email: linbian2@illinois.edu (L.B.);

andrei.cimpian@nyu.edu (A.C.)

RESEARCH

on January 26, 2017http://science.sciencemag.org/Downloaded from

(t= 4.41, P< 0.001), consistent with the reality

that girls get better grades in school than boys at

this age (24). Nevertheless, there was no signifi-

cant correlation between girls’perceptions of school

achievement and their perceptions of brilliance

(r=0.11,P=0.34;forboys:r=0.38,P= 0.001).

Thus, girls’ideas about who is brilliant are not

rooted in their perceptions of who performs well

in school. [However, other aspects of children’s

experiences in school, such as teachers’attitudes

and biases (25,26), may still be implicated in the

development of this stereotype.]

In study three, we investigated whether chil-

dren’s gendered beliefs about brilliance shape

their interests. Sixty-four children aged 6 and 7

(half boys, half girls) were introduced to two

novel games, one said to be for “children who

are really, really smart”and the other for “children

who try really, really hard”(counterbalanced;

see the supplementary materials). Children were

then asked four questions to measure their in-

terest in these games (e.g., “Do you like this

game, or do you not like it?”). Girls were less

interested than boys in the game for smart

children (Wald c

=4.02,P=0.045)butnotin

thegameforhard-workingchildren(Waldc

0.53, P=0.47)(Fig.2AandtableS3).

To test whether the gender differences in

interest are related to children’s beliefs about

brilliance, we measured these beliefs with two

items adapted from study one. Indeed, as with

the 6- and 7-year-olds from the first two studies,

girls’own-gender brilliance perceptions were

lower than boys’(t=2.40,P= 0.020). Moreover,

these stereotyped beliefs mediated the rela-

tionship between children’s gender and their in-

terest in the game for brilliant (versus persistent)

children: indirect effect = –0.11, 95% confidence

interval = [–0.33, –0.004] (fig. S2). Thus, young

children’s emerging notions about who is likely

to be brilliant are one of the factors that guide

their decisions about which activities to pursue.

In study four, we compared 5- and 6-year-old

boys’and girls’interest in novel games said to

be “for children who are really, really smart”

(96 children; 48 per age group; half boys, half

girls). We predicted that 5-year-old boys’and

girls’interest in these games would not differ

because their ideas about brilliance are not

yet differentiated (Fig. 1, A and C). In contrast,

6-year-old girls’interest was predicted to be lower

than boys’, in line with the results of study three.

We found no significant gender differences in

interest among 5-year-olds (Wald c

=0.55,P=

0.46)andatrendinthepredicteddirection

among 6-year-olds (Wald c

= 3.66, P=0.056)

(Fig. 2B and table S3). Combining the samples

of 6- and 7-year-olds from studies three and four

with a random-effects meta-analysis (27), we esti-

mated the magnitude of the difference in boys’

versus girls’interest toward the game for brilliant

children to be d= 0.51, 95% confidence interval =

[0.13, 0.88], P= 0.008.

We considered two possible alternative expla-

nations for the results of studies one to four.

First, because boys are sometimes held back from

entering the formal schooling system (28), their

understanding of intellectual ability may be

delayed relative to girls’(29), which may inflate

boys’confidence about their brilliance (30). How-

ever, the boys and girls in our sample did not

enter school at different ages (e.g., the average

chronological age for first-grade boys and girls

was 6.87 and 6.72 years, respectively; t=1.28,P=

0.20). Moreover, own-gender brilliance scores

did not differ for boys who had already entered

first grade versus those who had not (M

before

0.70 versus M

after

=0.67;t= 0.33, P=0.74),but

these scores differed for girls (M

before

= 0.71 versus

after

=0.56;t=2.16,P=0.037).Second,because

women are subject to stronger modesty norms

than men (31), perhaps 6- and 7-year-old girls’

lower interest in the games for brilliant children

(studies three and four) was due to an increase in

concerns about modesty. Contrary to this alter-

native, children in the age range we tested are

notoriously boastful about their abilities (30).

Moreover, the difference in boys’versus girls’

interest in the brilliance games was specifically

mediated by their perceptions about brilliance,

pinpointing these stereotyped perceptions (rather

than modesty) as the underlying mechanism.

Notably, our measure of the “brilliance = males”

stereotype is not susceptible to the modesty ex-

planation: Modesty norms dictate that a woman

should not boast about her own smarts (32,33),

whereas we asked children to judge whether other

people were smart.

It will be important to test whether these find-

ings extend beyond a middle-class, majority-white

U.S. cultural context and to comprehensively

investigate the sources of the “brilliance = males”

stereotype in children’s environments. Nevertheless,

the present results suggest a sobering conclu-

sion: Many children assimilate the idea that

Bian et al., Science 355,389–391 (2017) 27 January 2017 2of3

Fig. 1. Results of

studies one and

two. Boys’(blue)

and girls’(red)

stereotype scores

in study one (Aand

B) and study two

(Cand D), by age

group (5- versus 6-

versus 7-year-olds).

Error bars repre-

sent ± 1 SE.

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

56 7

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

Own-

Gender

Brilliance

Score

Own-

Gender

Niceness

Score

Age (yrs)

567

Age (yrs)

Fig. 2. Results of

studies three and

four. Boys’(blue)

and girls’(red)

interest (average of

standardized

responses to four

questions) in novel

games in study

three (A) and

study four (B). The

main independent

variable for each

study (task in

study three, age in

study four) is

shown in bold.

Error bars repre-

sent ± 1 SE.

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1

0.0

-0.1

-0.2

-0.3

-0.4

Interest

Score

TASK:

AGE:

Smart

Game

Try-Hard

Game

Smart

Game

Smart

Game

6- and 7-

year-olds

6- and 7-

year-olds

5-year-olds 6-year-olds

RESEARCH |REPORT

on January 26, 2017http://science.sciencemag.org/Downloaded from

brilliance is a male quality at a young age. This

stereotype begins to shape children’s interests

as soon as it is acquired and is thus likely to

narrow the range of careers they will one day

contemplate.

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ACKNO WLED GMEN TS

We are grateful to the families who participated and to the

members of the Cognitive Development Lab at the University of

Illinois for research assistance and helpful discussion. We also

thank J. R. Cimpian for insightful feedback on previous drafts. This

research was supported by a Graduate College Dissertation

Completion Fellowship from the University of Illinois (L.B.) and NSF

grant BCS-1530669 (A.C. and S.-J.L.). The supplementary

materials contain additional data. The data for these studies are

also available on Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/yund6/

?view_only=9a8505d4e87b456a89f255b43e21234e.

SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS

www.sciencemag.org/content/355/6323/389/suppl/DC1

Materials and Methods

Supplementary Text

Figs. S1 and S2

Tables S1 to S5

References (34,35)

30 July 2016; accepted 9 December 2016

10.1126/science.aah6524

Bian et al., Science 355,389–391 (2017) 27 January 2017 3of3

RESEARCH |REPORT

on January 26, 2017http://science.sciencemag.org/Downloaded from

(6323), 389-391. [doi: 10.1126/science.aah6524]355Science

Lin Bian, Sarah-Jane Leslie and Andrei Cimpian (January 26, 2017)

influence children's interests

Gender stereotypes about intellectual ability emerge early and

Editor's Summary

, this issue p. 389Science

games intended for the ''really, really smart.''

prepared to lump more boys into the ''really, really smart'' category and to steer themselves away from

childhood's version of adult brilliance. But by age 6, girls were−−expectations of ''really, really smart''

differential perceptions emerge. At age 5, children seemed not to differentiate between boys and girls in

studied young children to assess when those et al.perceptions of intellectual brilliance. Bian

The distribution of women and men across academic disciplines seems to be affected by

Emergent attitudes toward brilliance

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Aug 2022

This research examined the effects of overhearing an adult praise an unseen child for not needing to work hard on an academic task. Five‐year‐old Han Chinese children (total N = 270 across three studies; 135 boys, collected 2020–2021) who heard this low effort praise tended to devalue effort relative to a baseline condition in which the overheard conversation lacked evaluative content. In Study 3, low effort praise increased children's endorsement of essentialist beliefs about ability and their interest in becoming the kind of person who does not need to work hard to succeed. The findings show that overhearing evaluative comments about other people, a pervasive feature of daily life, can have a systematic effect on young children's beliefs about achievement.

Gender, Self-Assessment, and Persistence in Computing: How gender differences in self-assessed ability reduce women’s persistence in computer science

Conference Paper

Aug 2022

Train to Reason: Sports and the Girls’ Math-Reading Gap

Article

Jan 2022
CE

Retrospective accounts of first exposure to minoritized sexual and gender identities

Article

Jul 2022

Although there has been considerable research about attitudes towards LGBTQ+ people, there has been little research into how people first come to be aware of minoritized sexual and gender minority (SGM) identities. This study sought to address this gap. A sample of sexual minority (n = 150) and heterosexual (n = 802) young adults (N = 952; Mage = 18.88 years, SD = 1.75; 949 were cisgender, three were transgender), primarily recruited from a large southern university, were asked retrospectively to recount their first exposure to or awareness of SGM identities. Responses between SGM and heterosexual participants were compared through a variety of analytical approaches, including analyzing themes about the source from which participants first recalled encountering these identities, and whether understanding about these identities came through a personal connection to someone with these identities. SGM participants reported encountering minoritized sexual identities a year earlier than did heterosexual participants, with both groups encountering these concepts in middle childhood, on average. SGM participants were more likely than heterosexual participants to report learning about minoritized gender identities from someone with a minoritized gender identity, while heterosexual participants more often reported learning about these identities from media or celebrities. Heterosexual (vs. SGM) participants were also more likely to imply that minoritized gender identities were adopted to be popular, rather than being authentic identities in themselves. Framed by developmental intergroup theory (DIT), we discuss implications of these findings, especially potential interrelationships with the development of prejudiced attitudes about SGM identities.

Frauen als Nicht-(Mit-)Gestalterinnen der digitalen Transformation

Chapter

Jul 2022

Ursula Maier-Rabler

Die digitale Transformation unserer Gesellschaft findet gleichzeitig in allen gesellschaftlichen Teilbereichen statt und nimmt mit jeder neuen Vernetzungsstufe an Komplexität weiter zu. Umso mehr ist es wichtig, dass digitale Technologien nicht mehr ausschließlich von den Konzeptionen und Vorstellungen von vorwiegend weißen Männern in der westlichen Welt geprägt und gestaltet werden. Der Anteil von Frauen in Informatik und Computerwissenschaft ist extrem gering und demnach auch der Anteil von Software-Ingenieurinnen, Netzwerkanalystinnen oder ganz generell Entscheidungsträgerinnen in der IT-Branche. Aus Sicht einer feministischen Technologieforschung sind es vor allem die unbewussten, aber auch bewussten Einschreibungen von männlich konnotierten Vorstellungen in die Grundfunktionen von Technologie, die einerseits Frauen in deren Nutzung beeinflussen, sie aber auch vom Gestaltungsprozess fernhalten. Theoretische Ansätze wie jener der Gender Scripts oder der Posthumanistischen Performativität ermöglichen es, die vorherrschenden Prozesse der VergeschlechtlichungVergeschlechtlichung von DigitalisierungDigitalisierung zu verstehen und entsprechende Maßnahmen zu deren Beseitigung zu entwickeln. Dazu gehören neben einer generellen Neuorientierung vorhandener öffentlichen und privaten frauenfördernden Maßnahmen (MINTMINT-Initiativen), weg von rein individueller Defizitbeseitigung hin zu gesamtgesellschaftlichen strukturellen Maßnahmen, auch eine politische und ideologische Diskussion über eine wünschenswerte Technologieentwicklung. Im Beitrag wird nach einem kurzen geschichtlichen Rückblick die aktuelle Situation von Frauen in der InformatikFrauen in der Informatik und Computerwissenschaft diskutiert. Theoretische Konzepte und davon abgeleitete konkrete Maßnahmen gegen eine fortschreitende VergeschlechtlichungVergeschlechtlichung informatischer Artefakte sollen deutlich machen, in welche Richtung eine integrative Technologiepolitik im Sinne einer gesellschaftlich wünschenswerten digitalen Transformation gehen muss.

Formal Explanations Shape Children's Representations of Animal Kinds and Social Groups

Article

Full-text available

Jul 2022
DEV PSYCHOL

In certain domains, people represent some of an individual’s properties (e.g., a tiger’s ferocity), but not others (e.g., a tiger’s being in the zoo), as stemming from the assumed “essence” of the individual’s category. How do children identify which properties of an individual are essentialized and which are not? Here, we examine whether formal explanations—that is, explanations that appeal to category membership (e.g., “That’s ferocious because it’s a tiger”)—help children to identify which properties are essentialized. We investigated this question in two domains: animal kinds (Study 1) and social categories (specifically, gender; Studies 2 and 3). Across studies, we introduced children to novel behaviors and preferences of individuals using either a formal explanation or closely matched wording that did not express a formal explanation. To measure the extent to which children essentialized the novel properties, we assessed their inferences about the stability, innateness, and generalizability of these properties. In Study 1 (N = 104; 61 girls, 43 boys; predominantly white and multiracial children from high-income backgrounds), we found that formal explanations led 5- and 6-year-old children to view novel properties of individual animals as more stable across time. In Studies 2 and 3 (total N = 163; 84 girls, 79 boys; predominantly white, Asian, and multiracial children from high-income backgrounds), we found that formal explanations led 6-year-olds, but not 5-year-olds, to view novel properties of individual girls and boys as more stable across contexts. These studies highlight an important mechanism by which formal explanations guide conceptual development.

The Frequency of “Brilliant” and “Genius” in Teaching Evaluations Predicts the Representation of Women and African Americans across Fields

Article

Full-text available

Mar 2016
PLOS ONE

Women and African Americans—groups targeted by negative stereotypes about their intellectual abilities—may be underrepresented in careers that prize brilliance and genius. A recent nationwide survey of academics provided initial support for this possibility. Fields whose practitioners believed that natural talent is crucial for success had fewer female and African American PhDs. The present study seeks to replicate this initial finding with a different, and arguably more naturalistic, measure of the extent to which brilliance and genius are prized within a field. Specifically, we measured field-by-field variability in the emphasis on these intellectual qualities by tallying—with the use of a recently released online tool—the frequency of the words “brilliant” and “genius” in over 14 million reviews on RateMyProfessors.com, a popular website where students can write anonymous evaluations of their instructors. This simple word count predicted both women’s and African Americans’ representation across the academic spectrum. That is, we found that fields in which the words “brilliant” and “genius” were used more frequently on RateMyProfessors.com also had fewer female and African American PhDs. Looking at an earlier stage in students’ educational careers, we found that brilliance-focused fields also had fewer women and African Americans obtaining bachelor’s degrees. These relationships held even when accounting for field-specific averages on standardized mathematics assessments, as well as several competing hypotheses concerning group differences in representation. The fact that this naturalistic measure of a field’s focus on brilliance predicted the magnitude of its gender and race gaps speaks to the tight link between ability beliefs and diversity.

Polygenic Influence on Educational Attainment: New Evidence From the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health

Article

Full-text available

Aug 2015

Recent studies have begun to uncover the genetic architecture of educational attainment. We build on this work using genome-wide data from siblings in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health). We measure the genetic predisposition of siblings to educational attainment using polygenic scores. We then test how polygenic scores are related to social environments and educational outcomes. In Add Health, genetic predisposition to educational attainment is patterned across the social environment. Participants with higher polygenic scores were more likely to grow up in socially advantaged families. Even so, the previously published genetic associations appear to be causal. Among pairs of siblings, the sibling with the higher polygenic score typically went on to complete more years of schooling as compared to their lower-scored co-sibling. We found subtle differences between sibling fixed-effect estimates of the genetic effect versus those based on unrelated individuals.

WOMEN IN SCIENCE. Response to Comment on "Expectations of brilliance underlie gender distributions across academic disciplines"

Article

Full-text available

Jul 2015
SCIENCE

Ginther and Kahn claim that academics’ beliefs about the importance of brilliance do not predict gender gaps in Ph.D. attainment beyond mathematics and verbal test scores. However, Ginther and Kahn’s analyses are problematic, exhibiting more than 100 times the recommended collinearity thresholds. Multiple analyses that avoid this problem suggest that academics’ beliefs are in fact uniquely predictive of gender gaps across academia.

Inventing the Egghead: The Battle over Brainpower in American Culture

Book

Mar 2013

Aaron Lecklider

A model of (often mixed) stereotype content: Competence and warmth respectively follow from perceived status and competition

Article

Jun 2002

Stereotype research emphasizes systematic processes over seemingly arbitrary contents, but content also may prove systematic. On the basis of stereotypes' intergroup functions, the stereotype content model hypothesizes that (a) 2 primary dimensions are competence and warmth, (b) frequent mixed clusters combine high warmth with low competence (paternalistic) or high competence with low warmth (envious), and (c) distinct emotions (pity, envy, admiration, contempt) differentiate the 4 competence-warmth combinations. Stereotypically, (d) status predicts high competence, and competition predicts low warmth. Nine varied samples rated gender, ethnicity, race, class, age, and disability out-groups. Contrary to antipathy models, 2 dimensions mattered, and many stereotypes were mixed, either pitying (low competence, high warmth subordinates) or envying (high competence, low warmth competitors). Stereotypically, status predicted competence, and competition predicted low warmth.

Stereotype threat and women´s math performance

Article

Jan 1999

Inventing the egghead: The battle over brainpower in American culture

Article

Jan 2013

A. Lecklider

Throughout the twentieth century, pop songs, magazine articles, plays, posters, and novels in the United States represented intelligence alternately as empowering or threatening. In Inventing the Egghead, cultural historian Aaron Lecklider offers a sharp, entertaining narrative of these sources to reveal how Americans who were not part of the traditional intellectual class negotiated the complicated politics of intelligence within an accelerating mass culture. Central to the book is the concept of brainpower-a term used by Lecklider to capture the ways in which journalists, writers, artists, and others invoked intelligence to embolden the majority of Americans who did not have access to institutions of higher learning. Expressions of brainpower, Lecklider argues, challenged the deeply embedded assumptions in society that intellectual capacity was the province of an educated elite, and that the working class was unreservedly anti-intellectual. Amid changes in work, leisure, and domestic life, brainpower became a means for social transformation in the modern United States. The concept thus provides an exciting vantage point from which to make fresh assessments of ongoing debates over intelligence and access to quality education. Expressions of brainpower in the twentieth century engendered an uncomfortable paradox: they diminished the value of intellectuals (the hapless egghead, for example) while establishing claims to intellectual authority among ordinary women and men, including labor activists, women workers, and African Americans. Reading across historical, literary, and visual media, Lecklider mines popular culture as an arena where the brainpower of ordinary people was commonly invoked and frequently contested.

Introduction to Mediation, Moderation, and Conditional Process Analysis: A Regression-Based Approach

Book

Jan 2013

Andrew F Hayes

Implicit measures for preschool children confirm self-esteem's role in maintaining a balanced identity

Article

Oct 2015

Self-esteem is one of social psychology's central constructs. Despite the wide endorsement of the importance of self-esteem, there remains substantial variation in theoretical conceptions of how self-esteem functions. To help address this point, 234 5-year-old children were tested across 3 studies using a new implicit measure. A new Preschool Implicit Association Test (PSIAT) was used to assess the association of (a) me with good (self-esteem), (b) me with boy or girl (gender identity), and (c) boy or girl with good (gender attitude). The results documented self-esteem in 5-year-olds, as well as own-gender identity and gender in-group preferences. Interestingly, children who had high self-esteem and strong own-gender identity displayed gender in-group preferences, supporting balanced identity theory's theoretical expectations that implicit self-esteem serves an identity-maintenance function, even for young children. By preschool age, children display fundamental properties of adult implicit social cognition that relate to maintenance and functioning of group identities.

The development of implicit gender attitudes

Article

Aug 2015
DEVELOPMENTAL SCI

The development course of implicit and explicit gender attitudes between the ages of 5 and adulthood is investigated. Findings demonstrate that implicit and explicit own-gender preferences emerge early in both boys and girls, but implicit own-gender preferences are stronger in young girls than boys. In addition, female participants' attitudes remain largely stable over development, whereas male participants' implicit and explicit attitudes show an age-related shift towards increasing female positivity. Gender attitudes are an anomaly in that social evaluations dissociate from social status, with both male and female participants tending to evaluate female more positively than male. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.