Gender Stereotypes and the Coordination of Mnemonic Work within Heterosexual Couples: Romantic Partners Manage their Daily To-Dos

Abstract

Couples appear to help each other remember outstanding tasks (“to-dos”) by issuing reminders. We examine if women and men differ in the frequency with which they offer this form of mnemonic assistance. Five studies measure how heterosexual couples coordinate mnemonic work in romantic relationships. The first two studies demonstrate that men are assumed to do less of this form of mnemonic work (Study 1) and experience less societal pressure to do so than women do (Study 2). The next three studies suggest that men tend to do less of this mnemonic work than women do and that, when men do mnemonically help their partners, the help tends to involve errands for which they are stakeholders. This notion was evidenced in the greater accessibility of examples of women’s reminding acts than men’s reminding acts for both partners (Study 3) and in the less helpful reminders that men provided, compared to those women provided, as rated by both partners (Study 4a) and independent coders (Study 4b). These results converge on the possibility that men, relative to women, are less inclined to be concerned with keeping track of their partners” outstanding needs, perhaps because doing so is a behavior that is less strongly prescribed for men than for women. Implications for helping behavior and the possible consequences associated with performing disproportionate mnemonic work in relationships are discussed.

Full text

ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Gender Stereotypes and the Coordination of Mnemonic Work
within Heterosexual Couples: Romantic Partners Manage
their Daily To-Dos
Janet N. Ahn
1
&Elizabeth L. Haines
1
&Malia F. Mason
2
#Springer Science+Business Media New York 2017
Abstract Couples appear to help each other remember out-
standing tasks (Bto-dos^) by issuing reminders. We examine if
women and men differ in the frequency with which they offer
this form of mnemonic assistance. Five studies measure
how heterosexual couples coordinate mnemonic work in ro-
mantic relationships. The first two studies demonstrate that
men are assumed to do less of this form of mnemonic work
(Study 1) and experience less societal pressure to do so than
women do (Study 2). The next three studies suggest that men
tend to do less of this mnemonic work than women do and
that, when men do mnemonically help their partners, the help
tends to involve errands for which they are stakeholders. This
notion was evidenced in the greater accessibility of examples
of women’s reminding acts than men’s reminding acts for both
partners (Study 3) and in the less helpful reminders that men
provided, compared to those women provided, as rated by
both partners (Study 4a) and independent coders (Study 4b).
These results converge on the possibility that men, relative to
women, are less inclined to be concerned with keeping track
of their partners^outstanding needs, perhaps because doing so
is a behavior that is less strongly prescribed for men than for
women. Implications for helping behavior and the possible
consequences associated with performing disproportionate
mnemonic work in relationships are discussed.
Keywords Sharing mental labor .Gender stereotypes .
Outstanding tasks .Helping behavior .Prospective memory
The belief that women are communal is at the core of gender
stereotypes (Broverman et al. 1970;Eagly1987; Fiske and
Stevens 1993; Madera et al. 2009; Spence and Helmreich
1979; Williams and Best 1990). Women are typically assumed
to be compassionate, concerned with others’personal and
emotional needs, selfless, and nurturing (Bem 1974;Deaux
1976; Eagly 2009; Eagly and Crowley 1986; Ruble 1983;
Spence and Helmreich 1979;Woodetal.1997). These de-
scriptive beliefs, in turn, create expectations about what wom-
en should and should not do, or become norms for suitable
behavior. Such beliefs about and expectations for women have
implications for how they behave, in part because women are
routinely penalized when they violate the communal prescrip-
tion (Eagly and Karau 2002; Heilman 2001; Heilman et al.
2004; Rudman and Glick 1999,2001) but also because these
expectations become personal standards against which wom-
en judge and regulate their own behavior (Witt and Wood
2010; Wood and Eagly 2007).
The belief that women are good caretakers and the expec-
tation that they concern themselves with others’needs is
thought to affect the way in which they negotiate work in
romantic partnerships. Researchers have extensively docu-
mented how physical labor (e.g., housework) has been divid-
ed between the genders, noting that women in general, wheth-
er they are employed or not, tend to do more of the physical
household labor than men do (Bergen 1991; Blair 1993;Blair
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article
(doi:10.1007/s11199-017-0743-1) contains supplementary material,
which is available to authorized users.
*Janet N. Ahn
ahnj9@wpunj.edu
*Malia F. Mason
mfm2139@columbia.edu
1
Department of Psychology, William Paterson University, 300
Pompton Road, Wayne, NJ 07470, USA
2
Columbia Business School, Columbia University, 3022 Broadway,
Uris 720, New York, NY 10027, USA
Sex Roles
DOI 10.1007/s11199-017-0743-1

and Johnson 1992; Brayfield 1992; Coltrane and Ishii-Kuntz
1992; Danigelis and McIntosh 1993; Demo and Acock 1993;
Deutsch et al. 1993; Ferree 1991; Shelton and John 1993;
Wright et al. 1992). Women, on average, spend 16 h a week
on housework compared to men’s 9 h (Parker and Wang 2013).
Such a division of physical household labor is believed to have
emerged for a number of reasons (e.g., economic shifts, Buss
and Schmitt 2011; the distinctive physical attributes of men and
women, Eagly and Wood 2012; Wood and Eagly 2002).
However, more social-cognitive approaches emphasize the role
of descriptive and prescriptive stereotypes in propagating why
this division persists (Wood and Eagly 2012). Because women
are assumed and expected to be more communal, they tend to
take on more of the housework.
In this vein, the current work examines how gender stereo-
types manifest in an important but less considered arena: the
mental labor undertaken by men and women in romantic re-
lationships. We are particularly interested in examining
whether the stereotype of being communal manifests in the
way women help their partners remember outstanding tasks,
and the degree to which both genders benefit from such mne-
monic work.
For a host of reasons, people cannot always act on their needs
as soon as they realize they exist but must instead wait for future
opportunities to fulfill them. Researchers have long noted that
remembering to act on outstanding needs at the appropriate
future moment is a daily struggle (cf. Harris 1984; McDaniel
and Einstein 1993). In fact, forgetting to act on a delayed inten-
tion when an opportunity to do so presents itself is purported to
be the most common everyday memory failure. Diary studies
indicate that at least 50% of the memory failures that people
report involve the forgetting of planned actions (Crovitz and
Daniel 1984; Kliegel and Martin 2003; Terry 1988).
We propose that men not only are assumed to do less to
help their partners avoid these memory lapses, but also expe-
rience less societal pressure to do so than women do. We
believe that the lowered societal expectations for men to be
communal results in them doing less of this mental labor and
benefitting more from the collective nature of this mental
work than their female partners do. We test this prediction
by examining the relative frequency with which women and
men issue reminders to their other-sex partners about tasks
that are outstanding and the extent to which the genders ben-
efit from issuing reminders to and receiving reminders from
their partners.
Gender Stereotypes and Coordinating Housework
Historically, national surveys and time-diary studies have in-
dicated that household labor—mostoftenreferredtoas
Bunpaid work done to maintain family members and/or a
home^(Shelton and John 1996, p. 300), such as meal
preparation or cooking, housecleaning, shopping for groceries
or household goods, and doing laundry—is not equally divid-
ed between the involved partners (Bianchi et al. 2000; Casper
and Bianchi 2009; Fenstermaker 1985; Hochschild 1989;
Hook 2006; Kan et al. 2011;PettitandHook2009;
Robinson and Godbey 1997; Shelton and John 1996).
Rather, women spend far more time on household labor than
men do (Coltrane 2000;Hochschild1989;MariniandShelton
1993; Shelton and John 1996), despite major demographic
shifts in women in the workforce (Parker and Wang 2013).
To account for the fact that women do a disproportionate
share of the housework, some scholars have noted that women
generally have fewer financial resources to contribute to the
relationship and are therefore more dependent on and beholden
to their partners than men (Bittman et al. 2003;Brines1994;
Greenstein 2000). Yet it appears unlikely that the gender im-
balance in household labor reflects power differences alone—
women do a greater share of the household labor even in situ-
ations where they earn a higher income than their partners do
(Atkinson and Boles 1984; Bittman et al. 2003; Brayfield
1992; Brines 1994; Greenstein 2000; Hochschild 1989).
Gender scholars argue that part of the reason that the divi-
sion of housework tends to remain traditionally divided even
in the face of dramatic changes in women’s employment and
earnings is because women internalize societal standards of
being communal (Bem 1974;Deaux1976;Eagly2009; Eagly
and Crowley 1986; Ruble 1983; Spence and Helmreich 1979;
Wood et al. 1997) and therefore experience a heightened sense
of responsibility for housework (Eagly 2009; Fenstermaker
1985;F
erree1991; Hochschild 1989; South and Spitze
1994). The societal imperative to place the needs of others
before their own and to facilitate the progress of others toward
their goals is especially strong for girls and women (Bernard
1981;Chodorow1978;Eagly2009; Eagly and Crowley 1986;
Haines et al. 2016; Miller 1976; Piliavin and Unger 1985;
Staub 1978;UnderwoodandMoore1982). Taking on more
housework is a way of adhering to these standards of helping
that women, more than men, are encouraged to comply.
Gender Stereotypes and Coordinating Mnemonic
Work
Just as the stereotype of being communal manifests in women’s
inclination to undertake more physical work, we suggest that
another way in which this stereotype manifests is in greater
willingness to take on mental work, specifically, to provide a
particular form of mnemonic assistance—the remembering of
outstanding tasks. In making this prediction about gen-
der differences in the tendency to help one another with
this type of mental work, we draw on evidence that
heterosexual couples tend to establish collective memory
systems (Hollingshead 1998a,1998b; Wegner 1986;
Sex Roles

Wegner et al. 1991;Wegneretal.1985). That is, they
coordinate the encoding and storage of information that one or
the other may subsequently need. In so doing, a member of a
given couple can access information beyond his/her personal
knowledge store, which his or her partner worked to commit
to memory. Critically, the evidence suggests that couples co-
ordinate mnemonic work even in the absence of an explicit
strategy for who will remember what material (Hollingshead
2000; Littlepage et al. 2008; Wegner et al. 1985). For instance,
Wegner and colleagues (1991) found not only that recall of
items on shared memory tasks was higher for natural couples
than for assigned pairs, but also that memory recall suffered
when members of naturalistic couples were given ex-
plicit instruction regarding which pieces of information
each should attend (i.e., woman remembers X, man re-
members Y) instead of being left to coordinate on their own
(see also Ward and Lynch 2015). In sum, this line of research
suggests that couples intuitively divide and conquer to-be-
recalled material rather than doing redundant mnemonic
work.
Although this line of research reveals that naturalistic cou-
ples tacitly develop a strategy for coordinating mnemonic
work, it leaves open the question of how equitably the work
is divided. It is possible that one partner garners considerable
knowledge and benefit from the arrangement despite doing
little of the mnemonic labor. Such a possibility seems consis-
tent with extensive research on gender roles and gender ste-
reotypes (Eagly 1987; Fraidin and Hollingshead 2005;
Hollingshead and Fraidin 2003). That is, because the descrip-
tive aspect of gender stereotypes maintains that, relative to
men, women are thought to be more communal, nurturing,
and selfless, remembering others’goals and obligations may
be assumed to be more typical of women. The prescriptive
aspect of this stereotype would then denote that women and
men are held to different standards—wherein the societal stan-
dard for men to engage in this type of work is much more
relaxed than it is for women, thereby resulting in men actually
doing less mnemonic work than women do.
The Present Research
Researchers have extensively examined how being communal
orients women to take on more housework (physical labor)
than men do but less attention has been given towards whether
this is also true for mental work. In particular, the present
investigation emphasizes an aspect of mental work that in-
volves partners assisting each other to remember to perform
outstanding tasks at appropriate future moments, which we
refer to as mnemonic assistance. There are two features of
our conception of mnemonic assistance for outstanding tasks
that should be highlighted. First, an act of mnemonic assis-
tance involves an individual issuing a reminder about a task
their partner has already committed to pursuing. Second, an
act of mnemonic assistance is motivated by the belief that
one’s partner may have temporarily forgotten the outstanding
task. This conception stands in contrast to an act of Bnagging^
which is motivated not by a desire to help a partner remember
an action he or she already intended to perform and has tem-
porarily forgotten, but to wrestle compliance from a partner
who has not yet committed to performing an action (see
Kozloff 1988)because,unliketheBnagger,^he or she does
not believe the activity is important (see Boxer 2002).
Such an empirical extension is important for the following
reasons. First, research has focused almost exclusively on how
couples coordinate the implementation of work. However, just
as implementing housework carries opportunity costs (i.e., the
forgone value of completing another task) so too does
recalling it: thinking about a partner ’s outstanding needs and
responsibilities costs resources that could otherwise be spent
thinking about one’s own needs and responsibilities.
Reminding oneself and others about outstanding tasks is a
form of work about which the scholarly literature is nearly
silent. Second, there is reason to believe that assisting others
in remembering to perform outstanding tasks makes it more
difficult for people to keep their complete attention on an
immediate experience or current activity. A growing body of
evidence reveals that outstanding tasks are a primary source of
distraction—people’s mind-wandering often entails thoughts
of outstanding errands and unfinished business (e.g., Bcurrent
concerns^;Klinger1977; Klinger and Cox 2011; Mason et al.
2009; Stawarczyk et al. 2011). Having others’outstanding
tasks on one’s mind and self-reminding about these outstand-
ing tasks may make it difficult to concentrate on an immediate
task at hand (Christoff et al. 2009; Mason et al. 2007;Mason
and Reinholtz 2015;Smallwood2010,2011; Smallwood et al.
2007). Third, the present research extends the understanding
of communal activity not only to include behaviors such as
providing empathy and emotional support (Gleason et al.
2003;Shroutetal.2006,2010), but also to those that are of
amnemonicvariety.
We have four specific predictions about the mnemonic as-
sistance that women and men provide each other. First, we
predict that men are assumed to provide less mnemonic assis-
tance than women do. Second, we predict that men experience
less societal pressure than women do to aid their partners with
this form of mnemonic assistance (i.e., issue reminders about
outstanding tasks). Third, we predict that men indeed
provide less of this form of mnemonic assistance to
their partners than women do. Fourth and finally, we predict
that when men do provide their partners with this form of
mnemonic assistance, it tends to involve errands for which
they are stakeholders. That is, men are less likely to issue
selfless reminders than are women.
We tested these four predictions in five studies. Across
these studies, we use Bissuer^to refer to the person who issued
Sex Roles

a reminder to their partner for an outstanding task and
Brecipient^to refer to the person who received a reminder of
an outstanding task. Study 1 examined if people assume men
provide less mnemonic assistance than women do (i.e., if men
are assumed to play an issuer role less frequently than women
do). That is, people have a descriptive stereotype of men doing
less of this mnemonic work. Study 2 extended these findings
by examining whether the descriptive aspect of the stereotype
regarding men is matched by a relaxed societal prescription of
such behavior for men. Although this form of mnemonic as-
sistance may be generally valued, men may be given some
leeway for not exhibiting such behaviors. Study 3 moved be-
yond examining people’s beliefs and expectations about the
two genders doing this form of mnemonic work by garnering
evidence that men actually perform less of this mnemonic
work in relationships. Specifically, we tested if examples of
male issuers are underrepresented among both men and wom-
en, which would imply there are fewer examples available
from which both genders can draw.
Finally, Study 4a tested the notion that when men do mne-
monic work (e.g., issue reminders to their partners) it tends to
be about tasks for which they are stakeholders (i.e., when men
offer mnemonic assistance, it tends to be less selfless than
when women do). Study 4b sought to corroborate such find-
ings by having independent raters evaluate who benefited
from the reminders issued by both women and men to their
romantic partners. To our knowledge, none of theseeffects has
been examined in past research, despite how frequently goal
pursuit occurs in phases of interruption and resumption
(Bargh et al. 2010; Gollwitzer and Oettingen 2012;
McDaniel and Einstein 2007), the risks inherent in having
too many outstanding tasks on one^s mental radar (Cohen
et al. 2008), and evidence that people are in the habit of using
their partners as external storage for everyday remembering
(Wegner et al. 1991).
Study 1: Descriptive Stereotypes
The aim of Study 1 was to test whether people assume that
helping others remember outstanding tasks by issuing re-
minders is a behavior more common among women than
among men. To test for this possibility, we measure two aspects
involved in mnemonic assisting: the tendency to help others
remember outstanding tasks that they have already committed
to doing but may have temporarily forgotten by issuing re-
minders (e.g., to act as the issuer) and the tendency to rely on
others’mnemonic assistance (e.g., to act as the recipient).
People should widely assume that men are less likely than
women are to help others remember their outstanding tasks
by issuing reminders (i.e., to act as issuers). It should also be
noted that although we measured the tendency to rely on
others’mnemonic assistance and the results are entirely
consistent with our argument, we only report analyses related
to the tendency to issue mnemonic assistance because this is
most central to our hypothesis. Please refer to the former anal-
yses in an online supplement. Additionally, because gender
stereotypes are widely held by both men and women (Jost
and Banaji 1994), we did not expect to observe gender differ-
ences in participants’typicality ratings but entered participants’
gender as a factor in all analyses to test for this possibility.
Method
Participants
A total of 366 U.S. adults were recruited via Amazon’s
Mechanical Turk and participated in exchange for monetary
compensation. Of the 366, 29 individuals failed one or more
of the four attention-check measures that were included in the
survey as quality controls (see below), thus a total of 337
participants’responses were submitted to final analysis. Of
these 337 participants, 136 (40.4%) were women, and they
ranged in age from 18 to 68 years-old (M=31.80,
SD = 11.38, mdn = 29). A majority was White (n= 233,
69.1%), with the remainder identifying as Black (14, 4.2%),
Asian (47, 13.9%), Latino/Hispanic (22, 6.5%), Native
American (4, 1.2%), Arab/Middle Eastern (1, .3%), and
Indian (1, .3%). We confirm that, for Study 1 and the other
studies reported here, we have reported all measures and con-
ditions and have described our approach to data exclusions.
Sample sizes were exogenously determined in advance by our
intuitions about likely effect sizes and required power. There
were no significant differences in women’s and men’sages
and race/ethnicity.
Procedure
Participants were told that they would be asked a series of
questions about the Btypicality of various tendencies.^They
were then informed that:
We were especially interested in their views about two
tendencies. First, we were interested in the tendency to
help others remember their personal obligations, needs
and commitments. Second, we were interested in the
tendency to rely on others' reminders about obligations,
needs and commitments rather than remember the er-
rand on one's own. (italics in the original)
Each participant was then asked to rate Bhow typical each
of the following tendencies is among adult American females^
and Bhow typical each of the following tendencies is among
adult American males.^The order was counterbalanced across
participants such that half started with ratings of female targets
and the other half started with ratings of male targets.
Sex Roles

Participants’beliefs about the typicality of this mnemonic
work was assessed via three items: (a) a tendency of helping
other people remember commitments they might forget
(BDon’t forget you committed to doing X today^); (b) a ten-
dency of helping other people remember outstanding needs
they might forget (BDon’t forget you are out of X and need
more^); and (c) a tendency of helping other people remember
obligations they might forget (BDon’t forget you promised to
do X^). Each of these tendencies was rated on a scale that
ranged from 1 (very atypical)to9(very typical), with
a midpoint of Bneutral.^Responses to the 3-item mea-
sure of the tendency for women (α= .90) and men
(α=.89)dothismnemonicworkwerehighlyinternallycon-
sistent. We therefore computed a composite Btendency to help
others with their mnemonic work^score by averaging across
these measures within each target type. As mentioned earlier,
for a detailed explanation of the procedure and results for the
tendency to rely on others’mnemonic work, please refer to the
online supplement.
To assess participants’descriptive stereotyping, partici-
pants then rated one target gender (women or men) on these
items before being asked to rate the other target gender (men
or women) on these items—the order in which participants
rated male and female targets was counterbalanced across par-
ticipants. We also included four items for quality control pur-
poses. Two of these asked participants to indicate whether
they were responding to tendencies of men or women as ma-
nipulation checks. To check on participants’attention, a third
item asked participants to select the radio button on the far left;
a fourth item asked them to select the radio button on the far
right. Participants who failed any one of these checks were
excluded from the analysis (n=36).
Results and Discussion
To determine whether the tendency to help others with their
mnemonic work is assumed to be less typical of men than of
women among both male and female participants, we first
submitted ratings of mental helping to a 2 (Target: man, wom-
an) × 2 (Participant Gender: man, woman) mixed analysis of
variance (ANOVA) with target as a within-subjects factor and
participant gender as a between-subjects factor. Results re-
vealed a main effect of target, F(1, 335) = 392.61, p<.001,
ηp
2
= .54. The tendency to help others with their mnemonic
work is assumed to be less typical of men (M= 4.34,
SD =1.68)thanofwomen(M=6.80,SD = 1.46),
t(336) = 18.82, p<.001,d= 2.05. Furthermore, we observed
that ratings of male typicality were significantly below the
midpoint of the scale (5 = neutral), t(336) = −7.25, p<.001,
d= .79, which is consistent with the view that this behavior is
considered atypical of men. By contrast, ratings of female
typicality were significantly higher than the midpoint of the
scale, t(336) = 22.63, p<.001,d= 2.47, implying that this
behavior is seen as typical of females and not simply more
typical of females relative to males.
There was no main effect of participants’gender on typi-
cality ratings, F(1, 335) = .95, p=.33,ηp
2
= .003, however,
there was a significant interaction between Target x
Participant Gender, F(1, 334) = 19.41, p<.001,ηp
2
=.06.
We explored this interaction by examining the simple effect of
target within each participant gender (see Fig. 1). As predict-
ed, results revealed that the perception that the two genders
differ in helping others with their mnemonic work was held by
both men and women. Among male participants only, the
tendency to issue helpful reminders to others was assumed
to be less typical of men (M=4.61,SD = 1.67) than of women
(M=6.61,SD =1.49),t(200) = 12.39, p<.001,d=1.75.
Furthermore, implying that men assume helping others per-
form mnemonic work to be atypical of men but typical of
women, male participants rated male targets as significantly
lower in this tendency than the scale midpoint, t(200) = −3.31,
p= .001, d= .47, and rated female targets as significantly
higher than the scale midpoint, t(200) = 15.35, p< .001,
d= 2.17. Among female participants, this behavior was also
assumed to be less typical of men (M=3.93,SD = 1.63), than
of women (M=7.08,SD =1.37),t(135) = 15.21, p<.001,
d= 2.62. Again, female participants rated male targets as
significantly lower in this tendency than the scale mid-
point, t(135) = −7.68, p< .001, d= 1.32, and rated
female targets as significantly higher, t(135) = 17.61,
p<.001,d= 3.03, which implies that women assume it is
atypical of men and typical of women.
Whereas both men and women viewed assisting with mne-
monic work as atypical of men, the extremity of these typical-
ity ratings differed such that women rated this behavior as
being significantly more atypical of male targets than men
3
4
5
6
7
8
FemaleMale targets
Tar
g
ets
Typicality Ratings
Men
Women
Fig. 1 Participants’assumptions of how typical it is for men and women
to assist others with mnemonic work (issuing reminders) in Study 1
Sex Roles

did, t(335) = −3.73, p<.001,d= .41 (see Fig. 1). Likewise,
whereas participants of both genders considered this behavior
more typical of women, the extremity of ratings differed
across participants’gender. Women rated this behavior as be-
ing significantly more typical of female targets than men did,
t(335) = 2.88, p=.004,d=.31.
In sum, the results of our first study provided evidence of
the descriptive aspect of the stereotype that male targets, rela-
tive to female targets, are assumed less inclined to assist others
with mnemonic work. Participants believe that helping others
act on outstanding tasks by providing mnemonic assistance is
less typical of men than of women. Further, it appears that
female participants have stronger beliefs regarding the differ-
ences between men’s and women’s reliance on and issuance of
mnemonic work. Such results indicate that people have biases
regarding the differential mnemonic tendencies of the genders.
It leaves open the question of whether or not there is differen-
tial societal pressure on the two genders to offer mnemonic
assistance. Study 2 examines this possibility directly.
Study 2: Prescriptive Stereotypes
Study 1 revealed that people assume that helping others re-
member outstanding tasks by issuing reminders is a behavior
more common among women than among men. It is impor-
tant to understand the descriptive aspect of this stereotype that
people have regarding gender roles in mnemonic work be-
cause it serves as an implicit anchor by which people set up
and adjust their expectations. The purpose of Study 2 was to
extend these findings by demonstrating that men not only are
assumed to help others less with their mnemonic work, but
also face lower societal expectations and pressure to do so and
are less likely to be judged according to whether they are
mnemonically helpful than are women. This reasoning is in
concert with research on precarious manhood (Vandello et al.
2008), which demonstrates that masculinity is fragile and in
need of being protected and signaled more than femininity is.
If, as Study 1 suggests, reminding a partner about outstanding
tasks has a communal undertone, men may feel that doing so
threatens their perceived masculinity.
To determine whether society has higher standards for
women, whether society grants men leeway, or whether both
might be true, we adopted the approach used by Prentice and
Carranza (2002) in their study of gender prescriptions. They
argue that understanding the nature of gender prescriptions
necessitates more than measuring and comparing the desirabil-
ity of a trait in both genders; it requires measuring the desir-
ability of the trait for people in general and then using this
rating as a benchmark against which the desirability of the trait
in both genders is compared. For instance, if people indicate
that Bbeing nice^is more desirable in a woman than in a man, it
is unclear whether this means society requires that behavior for
women but not for men or if society requires that behavior of
both genders but more so for women. Disentangling the two
interpretations requires that one use the desirability of the trait
for people in general as a standard of comparison.
Prentice and Carranza (2002)reasonthatifitismorede-
sirable for a woman to be nice than for a person in general, this
is what society requires of women in particular (i.e., it is an
intensified prescription for women). If it is equally as desirable
for women and people in general to engage in a behavior, the
lower desirability rating for men (relative to the other two
targets) reflects a reduced standard for them (i.e., there is a
relaxed societal prescription for men). We also note that even
though the central aim of our study is to testwhether providing
mnemonic assistance is less prescribed for men, Prentice and
Carranza point out that both prescriptions and proscriptions
can be intensified or relaxed. Here, we limit our discussion to
prescriptions but it is worth mentioning that we also measured
and report on the relative undesirability of relying on mne-
monic assistance. Please note that this analysis is included in
the online supplement.
Thus, the purpose of Study 2 was to examine whether the
descriptive aspect of the stereotype—the assumption that men
do less to assist others with mnemonic work—is matched by a
societal prescription that is relaxed for men. This approach
provides a broader framework to understand the societal ex-
pectations set out for men and women in the domain of mne-
monic work.
Method
Participants
A total of 370 U.S. adults were recruited via Amazon’s
Mechanical Turk and participated in exchange for monetary
compensation. Of the 370, 26 individuals failed one or more
of the four attention-check measures that were included in the
survey as quality controls, so that a total of 344 participants’
responses were submitted to final analysis. Of these 344 par-
ticipants, 136 (36.7%) were women, and they ranged in age
from 18 to 74 years-old (M=31.85, SD =10.54,mdn =29).A
majority was White (n= 268, 77.9%), with the remainder
identifying as Black (15, 4.4%), Asian (33, 9.6%), Latino/
Hispanic (17, 4.9%), Native American (8, 2.3%),
Arab/Middle Eastern (2, .6%), and Indian (1, .3%).
Procedure
Participants were told that Bthey would be asked a series of
questions about how society evaluates various targets, and
that we were not interested in how they personally feel about
these targets but in their best guess of how society at large feels
about targets with certain tendencies^(italics in the original).
They were then informed that the experimenters were
Sex Roles

Bespecially interested in society’s attitude towards individuals
who: (i) help others remember their personal obligations,
needs and commitments, and (ii) rely on others' reminders
about obligations, needs and commitments rather than remem-
ber the errand on their own^(italics in the original).
Each participant was then asked to rate the desirability of
various tendencies among three targets: a romantic partner
(i.e., a spouse), a female partner (i.e., a wife, a girlfriend),
and a male partner (i.e., a husband, a boyfriend). Participants
always rated the general desirability of the tendencies—the
desirability in a romantic partner—first. The order in which
the other two targets were rated was counterbalanced across
participants such that half completed ratings of female targets
second and male targets third, whereas the other half complet-
ed ratings of male targets second and female targets third.
Participants’beliefs about the societal imperative to help
romantic others with their mnemonic work was assessed via
the same three items used in Study 1. Responses to the three
items that measured how society values romantic partners
(α= .89), female romantic partners (α= .93), and male ro-
mantic partners (α= .93) who do this mnemonic work were
highly internally consistent. We therefore computed a com-
posite score for Bsocietal imperative to help romantic partners
with their mnemonic work^by averaging across the
three measures within each target type. Please refer to
the online supplement for procedure and analyses regarding
the assessment of participants’beliefs about the societal im-
perative to rely on the mnemonic work.
Results and Discussion
To confirm that there is a societal imperative to help
others mnemonically, we first compared the desirability
of mnemonic helping to the midpoint of the scale (5 = neutral)
for each of the three targets. As expected, participants indicat-
ed that society values romantic partners who have this tenden-
cy, t(343) = 17.81, p<.001,d= 1.92; values male partners
who have this tendency, t(343) = 9.75, p<.001,d= 1.05; and
values female partners who have this tendency, t(343) = 14.62,
p<.001,d=1.58.
To examine whether the societal imperative to help others
by issuing reminders is especially strong for women in rela-
tionships (i.e., intensified female prescription), especially re-
laxed for men in relationships (i.e., relaxed male prescription),
or if both are true, we submitted our composite mnemonic
assistance measures to a 3 (Target: romantic partners, female
partners, male partners) × 2 (Participant Gender: men, women)
mixed analysis of variance (ANOVA), with target as a within-
subjects factor and participants’gender as a between-subjects
factor. Critically, results revealed a significant main effect of
target, F(2, 684) = 28.03, p<.001,ηp
2
= .08. To understand
the nature of the target differences, and thus the nature of the
societal imperative for the two genders, we conducted three
paired t-tests. Results revealed evidence that the societal im-
perative for assisting others with mnemonic work is relaxed for
men. There was no difference in how participants valued fe-
male partners and romantic partners (in general) who assisted
with mnemonic work, t(343) = 1.46, p= .15, d= .16. By
contrast, participants indicated that this tendency was less val-
ued in male partners (M=5.90,SD = 1.71) than in female
partners (M=6.35,SD = 1.71), t(343) = 4.95, p<.001,
d= .53, and partners in general (M=6.46,SD =1.52),
t(343) = 7.32, p< .001, d= .79. There was no main effect of
participants’gender on desirability ratings, F(1, 342) = 1.53,
p=.22,ηp
2
= .004. Also, the interaction did not reach statis-
tical significance, F(2, 684) = 1.97, p= .14, ηp
2
= .006, im-
plying that there was consensus among male and female par-
ticipants. In sum, participants of both genders appear to agree
that mnemonic helping is a standard to which men are only
weakly held.
In sum, the results of Study 2 demonstrated that the pre-
scription for helping others remember outstanding tasks ap-
pears to be relaxed for men. Although it is a desirable tenden-
cy in general, society puts less pressure on men to help others
remember outstanding needs and goals.
These results suggest that doing more mnemonic work
(e.g., by issuing reminders) is one way in which women’s
heightened tendency to be communal manifests, especially
given that men experience less societal pressure than women
do to help others with their mnemonic work.
Study 3: Accessibility of Past Reminding Acts
Study 3 had a two-fold aim. First, we sought to build on
evidence that men experience less societal pressure to assist
others mnemonically with preliminary evidence that they ac-
tually issue fewer reminders about outstanding tasks than
women do. More specifically, we measured the accessibility
of past reminding acts issued by women versus by men. We
reasoned that if acts of helpful mnemonic work by men are
relatively uncommon, then both women and men should have
a bias for generating examples of female-reminding as op-
posed to male-reminding. Our second aim was to gather pre-
liminary evidence that, even when men do this mnemonic
work, it tends to involve errands for which they are stake-
holders. We predicted men’s reminders are less selfless—they
tend to derive greater benefit from the reminders they issue
than do women.
Method
Participants
A total of 281 U.S. adults were recruited via Amazon’s
Mechanical Turk and participated in exchange for monetary
Sex Roles

compensation. Of the 281, 37 individuals failed to complete
more than half the survey. Of the 244, 194 individuals indi-
cated that they were currently in a committed relationship (i.e.,
they were married, in a partnership, or in a committed rela-
tionship regardless of whether they live together or not) and
given our interest, we focused on these respondents for our
analyses. However, all obtained results hold even when in-
cluding participants who indicated they were not in a relation-
ship. Of these 194 participants, 112 (57.7%) were women, and
they ranged in age from 18 to 71 years-old (M=32.68,
SD = 14.48, mdn = 30). A majority was White (n= 149,
76.8%), with the remainder identifying as Black (23,
11.9%), Asian (14, 7.2%), Latino/Hispanic (4, 2.1%), Native
American (3, 1.5%), and Arab/Middle Eastern (1, .5%).
Procedure
In this third study, participants were asked to provide an ex-
ample of a reminder about an outstanding task that they re-
ceived or issued. Specifically, participants read the following
set of instructions:
Partners help each other remember to follow through on
commitments and responsibilities. For example, I might
remind my partner to get a card for his/her mother’s
birthday. Similarly, my partner might remind me that I
need to buy milk the next time that I visit the grocery
store. Please take a minute and reflect on the last time
you reminded your partner of an outstanding need or
commitment or the last time your partner reminded
you of an outstanding need or commitment.
Following these instructions,participants were prompted to
answer a series of questions about the reminding act. Because
our primary aim was to determine whether examples of help-
ful mnemonic work are over-represented in memory and thus
more likely to be provided by participants, participants first
indicated whether they had identified an example in which
they issued the reminder or their partner issued the reminder.
Participants also indicated the content of the reminder (i.e.,
what the reminder was about). For illustrative purposes,
Tab le 1a displays the types of reminders issued by both male
and female participants.
Participants then responded to two items that measured the
extent to which the reminder was selfless: (a) the person who
benefits from this task being remembered and enacted from 1
(me)to9(my partner) and (b) whose responsibility it is to
remember to do this task, rated on the same 9-point scale. In
addition, one item measured whether the reminder was super-
fluous versus needed: BHow likely the task would be forgotten
without a reminder,^rated from 1 (very unlikely)to9(very
likely). Lastly, participants were asked to indicate the gender
of their partner. Upon completion of these items, participants
provided demographic information, as well as individual
and joint annual income level, etc. (Please refer to the
online supplement for a full list of items.)
Results and Discussion
In order to test whether women are more likely than men are to
assist their partners with mnemonic work, we conducted a
Chi-square analysis on the examples of past reminding acts
that participants provided. We observed that examples of
women performing such work were significantly more com-
mon than examples of men, χ
2
(1, N= 194) = 24.14, p<001,
Φ= .35. Consistent with our prediction, women were more
likely to generate an example where they did the mnemonic
work (64% of the time) and men were also more likely to
generate an example where their female partners did the mne-
monic work (61%). The relative inaccessibility of examples of
men issuing reminders for both women and men implies that
the relaxed societal expectation on men to help their partners
with mnemonic work translates into them doing less to help
their partner avoid memory lapses.
Not only did the results yield evidence that men are less
likely to offer mnemonic assistance, they also suggested that,
when men do offer mnemonic assistance to their female part-
ners, it tends to involve reminders about errands for which
they are stakeholders. The less selfless the reminder, the more
likely that it was issued by a man, b=−.26, exp.(b) =1.30,
SE =.07,Wal d X
2
=15.60,p< .001. In sum, whereas the
examples of women issuing reminders involved errands that
would benefit their partners (e.g., BShe reminded me about
one of my work deadlines^), the examples of men issuing
reminders involved errands about which the issuer had a vest-
ed interest in seeing the errand accomplished (e.g., BHe
reminded me that the office Christmas party was coming up
and that I had said I would buy him a new suit jacket^).
Further bolstering our claim that women have a stronger
inclination to do mnemonic work on their partner’s behalf
than men do, we also observed that the less it was one’sown
personal responsibility to do a task, the more likely the re-
minder was issued by a woman, b= .20, exp.(b) = 1.22,
SE =.06,Wal d X
2
=12.98,p< .001, which is consistent with
the proposition that the reminding women do more commonly
involves errands for which their partner is responsible. And,
finally, consistent with our argument that this accessibility
difference exists because women are more likely than men
are to provide mnemonic assistance (i.e., remind their partner
of an intention which he or she wants to fulfill but might have
temporarily forgotten) rather than Bnag^(i.e., attempt to
persuade their partner to do something by issuing constant
requests), we observed that women tended to issue reminders
that their partner had a high chance of forgetting, b= .13,
exp.(b) =1.14,SE =.06,Wal d X
2
=4.65,p=.03.Thatis,
women are likely to be motivated by a desire to help their
Sex Roles

partner remember an intention he previously committed to
fulfilling as opposed to nagging their partner into compliance
to an act he has not committed to fulfill.
Study 3 garnered evidence that doing more mnemonic
work is one way in which women’stendencytobecommunal
manifests, as evidenced by both male and female participants’
bias for generating examples of female reminding acts.
Additionally, the results provided an interesting facet to this
claim such that although men tend to do less mnemonic work,
when they do issue reminders, their reminders tend to be less
selfless and more often about errands from which they per-
sonally benefit.
Study 4a: The Selflessness of Reminders Issued
Study 3 demonstrated that examples of women helping others
with mnemonic work were more accessible for both men and
women, which is consistent with the argument that doing
more mnemonic work is one way in which women’s height-
ened tendency to be communal manifests. Study 3 also pro-
vided preliminary evidence that men, relative to women, are
not only less likely to perform this mnemonic work for their
partners but also far more likely to issue reminders about
errands for which they are stakeholders. However, a short-
coming of Study 3 is that it used a single dimension to mea-
sure the beneficiary of the reminder and thus assumed that
reminders benefit one partner at the exclusion of the other. It
is likely that some reminders are of benefit to both the issuer
and the recipient. To address this shortcoming in Study 4a, we
used separate Likert-type scales to measure the extent to
which the issuer and the recipient are benefitted.
A second shortcoming of Study 3 is that it asked partici-
pants to consider the perspective of issuers (where all partic-
ipants issued reminders) or the perspective of recipients
(where participants received reminders) but not both simulta-
neously. It would be useful to ask participants to do both and
then test whether one gender consistently derives greater value
from the reminding acts. In Study 4a we therefore asked
participants to recall times when they acted as both issuers
and recipients and then had them rate the benefit of the re-
minder to the issuer and to the recipient on separate dimen-
sions. Thus, the primary aim of Study 4a is to replicate the
finding that when men issue reminders, they tend to be about
tasks for which they are stakeholders, after correctingfor some
methodological shortcomings of Study 3.
Method
Participants
A total of 428 U.S. adults were recruited via Amazon’s
Mechanical Turk and participated in exchange for monetary
compensation. Of the 428, 53 individuals failed to complete
more than half the survey. Of the 375, 351 individuals indi-
cated that they were currently in a committed relationship (i.e.,
they were married, in a partnership, or in a committed rela-
tionship regardless of whether they live together or not) and
given our interest, we focused on these respondents for our
analyses. However, all obtained results hold even when in-
cluding participants who indicated they were not in a relation-
ship. Of these 351 participants, 261 (74.4%) were women, and
they ranged in age from 18 to 72 years-old (M=35.67,
SD = 10.91, mdn = 29). A majority was White (n= 243,
69.2%), with the remainder identifying as Black (28, 7.9%),
Asian (18, 5.1%), Latino/Hispanic (16, 4.6%), Native
American (12, 3.4%), and Indian (34, 9.7%).
Procedure
In the present study, all participants provided two types of
examples: (a) one where they were the issuers (they issued
reminders to their partners about outstanding tasks, thereby
assisting their partners with mnemonic work) and (b) another
where they were the recipients (they received reminders from
their partners about outstanding tasks, thereby relying on their
partners’mnemonic work). The order in which these exam-
ples were generated was counterbalanced across participants
Tabl e 1 Descriptions of the contents of reminders issued by each gender, studies 3 and 4a
Issuer Category of the reminders issued
Shopping/
meal errands
House
Errands
Health Work/ Professional
development
Finance Relationship
maintenance/
building: nuclear
Relationship
maintenance/
building: extended
Relationship
maintenance/
building: others
Study 3
Female Issued 12.05% 9.64% 6.02% 4.82% 10.84% 12.05% 37.35% 7.23%
Male Issued 18.75% 3.13% 9.38% 6.25% 12.50% 15.63% 21.88% 12.50%
Study 4a
Female Issued 11.48% 11.48% 10.38% 10.38% 14.75% 9.84% 28.96% 2.73%
Male Issued 15.68% 14.59% 18.92% 10.81% 10.27% 10.27% 13.51% 5.95%
Sex Roles

such that half were asked to provide an example of a time
when they reminded their partner first whereas the other half
of participants started with an example of a time where their
partner did the reminding.
Participants read the following instructions for the issuer
[recipient] before providing details of the remembering event:
Partners help each other remember to follow through on
commitments and responsibilities. For example, I might
remind my partner [your partner might remind you] that
he/she [you] need to buy milk the next time that he/she
[you] visit the grocery store. Please take a minute and
reflect on the last time you [your partner] reminded your
partner [you] of an outstanding need or commitment.
(See Table 1b for a descriptive of the content of reminders
issued by each gender.)
After providing each example type (i.e., issuer and
recipient), participants answered the following two ques-
tions for each example type: (a) BTo what extent do you
benefit from this task being remembered^and (b) BTo
what extent does your partner benefit from the task
being remembered,^where each was rated on a 1 (very
unlikely)to9(very likely) scale. Finally, participants provided
demographic information, as well as various scales regarding
their relationship satisfaction and unmitigated communion.
(Please refer to the online supplement for a list of all
measures.) The latter scales did not interact with any variables,
thus these are not mentioned here in further analysis.
Results and Discussion
In order to examine the extent to which men and women benefit
as a function of their role as the issuer or recipient of reminders,
we conducted a 2 (Participant Gender: man, woman) × 2
(Beneficiary of reminders: self, partner) analysis of variance
(ANOVA), with beneficiary as the within-subjects factor and
participants’gender as the between-subjects factor, for each of
the two example types.
Participant as Issuer
As expected, when participants provided examples of
mnemonic assistance when they were issuers, there
was a main effect of the beneficiary of the reminders such that
all participants (regardless of gender) believed that when they
issued reminders, their partners benefitted more (M=7.74,
SD = 1.77) than they (the self) did (M=5.84,SD =2.70),
F(1, 349) = 95.68, p<.001,ηp
2
=.22.
We also observed a marginally significant interaction be-
tween Participant Gender x Beneficiary, F(1, 349) = 3.77,
p=.053,ηp
2
= .011 (see Fig. 2). We explored this interaction
by examining the simple effect of when the beneficiary was the
self within each participant gender. Results revealed that there
was no observed gender differences in the extent to which
participants reported that they themselves benefitted from is-
suing the reminder, t(349) = −.16, p=.88,d= .02. We then
examined the simple effect of when the beneficiary was the
partner within each participant’s gender. This would test
whether there are gender differences in the extent to which
participants (the issuers) believed their partners (the recipients)
benefitted from the reminder that the participant had personally
issued. We observed that female participants believed that their
partners benefitted more (M=8.03,SD = 1.55) from the issued
reminder than did male participants (M= 7.27, SD = 2.00),
t(349) = −4.02, p< .001, d= .43. Thus, compared to women,
men tended to believe their partners benefitted less from the
reminders they issued.
Participant as Recipient
The same analysis was conducted when participants provided
examples when they were recipients of their partner’smne-
monic assistance. As expected, there was a main effect of the
beneficiary of reminders such that all participants (re-
gardless of gender) believed that when they received
reminders, these reminders tended to benefit themselves
(the self) more (M=7.50,SD = 2.09) than they benefitted their
partners (M=6.48,SD =2.55),F(1, 339) = 36.60, p<.001,
ηp
2
= .10. This confirms that participants followed instruc-
tions, providing reminding acts that were of benefit to the
recipient.
There was also a significant interaction, F(1, 339) = 7.63,
p=.006,ηp
2
= .022. We unpacked this interaction by exam-
ining the simple effect of when the beneficiary was the self
within each participant’s gender. There was no observed gen-
der difference with respect to the extent to which participants
reported that they benefitted (the self) from the reminders they
received, t(339) = .97, p=.33,d= .11. As before, we then
tested whether there are gender differences in the extent to
which participants (in this case, the recipients) believed their
partners (the issuers) benefitted from issuing the reminders
even when participants were the recipients (and thus should
be the ones to benefit the most). We observed that female
participants (M=6.78,SD = 2.49) believed that their partners
who issued the reminders benefitted more from making the
reminders than did male participants (M=5.95,SD =2.60),
t(339) = −2.93, p=.004,d= .32 (see Fig. 3). Thus, compared
to men, women reported that their partners benefitted from the
reminders they issued, which is consistent with the perception
that women view men as issuing reminders about outstanding
tasks for which they are stakeholders.
The results of this first part of our fourth study are in line
with our hypothesis that when men help their partner with
mnemonic work, the assistance they provide tends to be less
selfless than when women help. As issuers of reminders, men
Sex Roles

considered the reminders they issued to be significantly less
beneficial to their partners than did women. Moreover,
as recipients, men, relative to women, judged their part-
ners as benefitting significantly less from the reminders their
partners issued.
Study 4b: Collective Nature of the Reminders Issued
The results of Study 4a are consistent with the argument that
when men assist their partners with mnemonic work, it tends
to be about tasks for which they are stakeholders. However, it
is certainly possible that the results instead reflect heightened
pessimism women have about the altruistic nature of their
partner’s reminders. In other words, this difference might re-
flect different judgmental standards applied by men and by
women and not a true value discrepancy. To bolster the argu-
ment that when men offer mnemonic assistance, it tends to be
about tasks for which they are stakeholders (i.e., the reminders
tend to be less selfless and Bother-oriented^than reminders
issued by women), we had independent raters judge the value
of the reminders generated by the participants in Study 4a,
after removing any information that might signal the
gender of the issuer or the recipient. In this way, we
removed self-involvement when judging the relative val-
ue of each reminder to the recipient (versus issuer) as a func-
tion of his or her gender.
Method
Participants and Design
Independent coders had access to the anonymous data from
the 320 participants in Study 4a. Therewere a total of 4 trained
coders: 3 undergraduate coders (2 females and 1 male) and
one graduate coder (1 female).
Procedure
Trained, independent raters were told that participants in a
previous study were asked to generate an example of a time
when they reminded their partner of an outstanding errand
(where they were in the issuer role) and an example of a time
when their partner reminded them of an outstanding errand
(where they were in the recipient role). To obscure the gender
of the recipient and issuer, we replaced gendered nouns (e.g.,
husband, girlfriend) and pronouns (his/her) with gender-
neutral terms (e.g., partner). The coders rated the extent to
which each of the 640 reminders issued benefitted the recipi-
ent (Cronbach’sα= .70) and issuer (Cronbach’sα=.59)ona
1(not at all)to7(very much so)scale.
Results and Discussion
Independent Coders Judge Reminders Participants Issued
We conducted a 2 (Participant Gender: man, woman) × 2
(Beneficiary of reminders: issuer, recipient) analysis of vari-
ance (ANOVA), with beneficiary as the within-subjects factor
and participants’gender as the between-subjects factor. As
expected, and reflecting the results of Study 4a, there was a
main effect of the beneficiary of reminders such that the inde-
pendent raters, on average, believed that the reminders issued
benefitted recipients more (M=5.34,SD = 1.12) than they
benefitted issuers (M=3.55,SD =1.83),F(1, 318) = 236.14,
p<.001,ηp
2
=.43.
Critically, there was also a significant interaction, F(1,
318) = 3.92, p= .049, ηp
2
= .01. Although there was no ob-
servable effect of gender on raters’judgments of reminders
generated by participants to benefit participants themselves,
t(318) = .01, p=.99,d= .001, there was an effect of gender
for when reminders benefit recipients. When reminders were
issued by participants, raters believed that male issuers
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Reminder Benefits Self Reminder Benefits Partner
Benefit from Reminder
Men
Women
Fig. 2 Participants’ratings of how much they or their partner benefited
from the reminder that they (participants) issued in Study 4a
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Reminder Benefits Self Reminder Benefits Partner
Benefit from Reminder
Men
Women
Fig. 3 Participants’ratings of how much they or their partner benefited
from the reminder that their partners issued in Study 4a
Sex Roles

(M=5.58,SD = 1.09) benefitted more than did female issuers,
(M= 5.12, SD =1.10),t(318) = 3.76, p< .001, d= .42, which
converges with the argument that, when men provide mnemon-
ic assistance, it is less likely to be selfless and other-oriented.
Independent Coders Judge Reminders Participants Received
We conducted parallel analysis for independent coders’rat-
ings when participants received reminders. Again as expected,
there was a main effect of the beneficiary of reminders such
that the independent raters, on average, believed that the
reminders issued benefitted recipients (M=5.34,SD =1.16)
more than they benefitted issuers (M=4.10,SD =1.81),F(1,
318) = 127.79, p<.001,ηp
2
= .29. The main effect of recip-
ients’gender, F(1, 318) = 1.59, p=.21,ηp
2
<.005,andthe
interaction, F(1, 318) = 1.17, p= .28, ηp
2
= .004, were
not significant.
General Discussion
In sum, the results of Study 1 suggest that men are assumed to
be less inclined to assist others with mnemonic work. Study 2
suggest that men face lowered societal expectations to assist
their partners with mnemonic work. Study 3 extended these
findings with evidence that the relaxed societal standard may
translate into men offering less mnemonic help to their part-
ners. Study 4a revealed that when men do offer mnemonic
assistance (which is generally less often than women do), it
tends to be about tasks for which they are stakeholders. Study
4b provided corroborating evidence for this latter assertion.
When independent raters judged the extent to which each
issuer (with gender masked) benefitted from the reminders
they issued to their partners, they agreed that men
tended to benefit more from the issued reminders than
women did. This last finding provided converging sup-
port for our hypothesis that when men do offer mnemonic
assistance to their partners, it tends to be about errands from
which they can personally benefit.
In the current investigation, we tested whether being com-
munal manifests in the way women assist their partners in
remembering outstanding tasks and commitments. The schol-
arly literature is nearly silent about the frequency with which
romantic partners offer one another this type of mnemonic
assistance and whether there are gender differences in this
particular class of helping behavior. Whereas a large and
burgeoning literature has considered how couples divide and
coordinate the implementation of physical labor, the question
of whether and how equitably couples divide mnemonic
work—in this case, the remembering of outstanding tasks—
has so far gone ignored. This oversight is puzzling because so
much of the work that couples share must occur in fits-and-
starts, necessitating that tasks be delayed and then recalled at
opportune, future moments. Because goal pursuit is intermit-
tent in nature, a big part of the challenge inherent in complet-
ing errands is in recalling that they exist at all. Acting on an
intention to purchase a carton of eggs, for instance, requires
more than driving to the grocery store; one must keep the goal
to purchase eggs on one’s mental radar so a future opportunity
to fulfill this goal can be seized. Here, we considered the
extent to which couples assist each other with this mnemonic
aspect of labor and whether one gender consistently yields
greater benefit from the collective arrangement.
Drawing on a wealth of evidence that being selfless and
concerned with others’needs are described and prescribed for
women as part of the communal female stereotype and social
role (Eagly 1987,2009; Eagly and Steffen 1984; Glick and
Fiske 1999;Maderaetal.2009), we hypothesized that men
not only are assumed to do less to help their partners avoid
memory lapses, but experience less societal pressure to do so
than women do. We proposed that this diminished societal
pressure should translate into a gender difference in mnemon-
ic assistance. The prediction that men would remind less than
women do is congruent with social role theory (Eagly 1987)
which shows that women and men are motivated to adopt the
behaviors of their social role so that they may fulfill societal
expectations and avoid incurring a backlash for behavior that
constitutes a departure from what is expected of them (Eagly
and Karau 2002;Heilman1983; Rudman and Glick 2001).
We further hypothesized that, when men do mnemonically
assist their partners, they are more likely than women are to
do so about tasks for which they are stakeholders (i.e., they
personally can benefit from the errands being enacted).
We tested these predictions across five studies. The first
two studies tested if men are assumed to do less to help ro-
mantic partners remember outstanding needs and if this as-
sumption translates into men experiencing less societal pres-
sure to do so than women do. And, indeed, Study 1 obtained
evidence of the descriptive aspect of the stereotype that people
assume that men do less mnemonic work than women do.
Study 2 demonstrated that the belief that men do less mne-
monic work is not merely descriptive in nature but also pre-
scriptive—the societal standard to engage in such work is
more relaxed for men than it is for women.
The next set of studies sought evidence that men actually
provide less of this particular form of mnemonic assistance as
well as evidence that, when men do issue reminders to their
partners, they pertain to errands for which men are stake-
holders (i.e., their mnemonic assistance is less Bother-orient-
ed^).Study3demonstratedthatbothmenandwomenhada
bias for generating examples of female reminding acts. We
suggested that examples of men issuing reminders are under-
represented because men—relative to women—do less to help
their partners remember outstanding tasks. Study 4a provided
evidence that when men do provide mnemonic assistance, the
reminding acts issued were less selfless; men were far more
Sex Roles

likely than women were to remind about errands they person-
ally gain from having fulfilled. And, finally, Study 4b corrob-
orated the results of Study 4a with evidence that independent
coders also rated the (gender-masked) reminders men issued to
their partners to be less selfless than the reminders women
issued. Taken together, these results converge on the possibility
that men are far less inclined to be concerned with and keep
track of their partners’outstanding needs than women are,
perhaps because doing so is a behavior that is less strongly
prescribed for men than for women.
Limitations and Future Research Directions
For a variety of reasons, we cannot always enact our goals as
soon as we commit to pursuing them. The world regularly
presents compelling reasons for delaying goal pursuit and re-
instating the efforts at more appropriate future moments. As
prospective memory researchers have long noted, remember-
ing to perform outstanding tasks at the appropriate times is a
daily struggle (cf. Harris 1984; McDaniel and Einstein 1993).
Consistentwith previous researchers, our findings suggest that
one of the ways that people try to overcome the challenges
inherent in everyday goal pursuit is by delegating reminding
to the external environment. People increase the likelihood
that they will act on a delayed goal in a relevant future moment
by anticipating cues they will encounter in future enactment
opportunities (Gollwitzer 1999; Mäntylä 1993;McDanieland
Einstein 1993;McDanieletal.2004).
For instance, acting on an intention to bake a friend a birth-
day cake requires that one recall not onlywhat ingredients one
needs to have (e.g., eggs, powdered sugar) but also that one
has this goal in moments where it can be enacted. What is
especially challenging about the latter timing is that opportu-
nities to act on delayed goals typically emerge when a person
is already in the throes of pursuing some unrelated goal (e.g.,
driving home from work in an efficient and safe manner).
What this means is that one must recall the intention (to bake
the cake) despite the fact that cake-related thoughts do not
help an individual make progress on an ongoing task (driving
home). Moreover, one must do so in the circumscribed win-
dow of time where the opportunity exists and when it is still
relevant (e.g., before the birth date has passed). Recalling the
intention in moments when it cannot be fulfilled (e.g., when
one is in a work meeting) or outside that critical enactment
window is insufficient. Thus, what is unique about the present
research is that, as far as we know, it is the first to demonstrate
that people delegate reminding not just to the physical envi-
ronment but also to other people. Moreover, we found evi-
dence that men were less likely to assist their partners mne-
monically (i.e., by issuing reminders) than women were.
This begs the question, What are the risks in becoming the
repository for other people’s to-dos? A unique feature of this
particular form of remembering—prospective remembering—
is that it requires that one constantly self-remind about out-
standing tasks. Prospective remembering requires one remem-
ber not only the content of the outstanding task (i.e., regarding
the details of what one needs to do), but also the immediacy of
the outstanding task that should be fulfilled in moments when
it can be enacted. Herein lies the crux of the problem with
becoming the repository for others to-dos. We believe that
becoming overburdened with one’sownandother’soutstand-
ing to-dos may lead to an increase in distractedness (Klinger
1977,1996; Mason and Reinholtz 2015) and anxiousness. It
also may undermine one’s ability to perform an ongoing task in
an efficient and effective manner (Kuhl and Beckmann 1994;
for a meta-analysis, see Randall et al. 2014), in part because it
introduces the need to constantly interrupt ongoing activities
with self-reminders about others’needs and outstanding tasks.
Thus, gender differences in the implementation of labor may
be the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Women may be doing not
only more shared physical labor, but also greater mental labor
to keep track of the household’s outstanding needs.
Furthermore we would submit that this latter type of labor
has non-trivial mental costs. Future research might examine
the downstream consequences associated with becoming
overburdened with outstanding tasks and the implications of
this gender difference in mnemonic assistance more explicitly
than we have herein.
Finally, it seems reasonable to suggest that the relatively
higher societal expectation to be communal that is placed on
women compared to men may lead them to take on a dispro-
portionate amount of this particular mnemonic work not just
in romantic relationships but in all relationships, including the
ones they have at work. It has been suggested that heightened
societal expectations on women to be concerned with others
may drive them to take on more workplace Badministrivia^
(i.e., administrative tasks that must be dealt with to keep an
organization running as opposed to important strategic work;
cf. Kanter 1977; Heilman and Chen 2005). Because many of
these less meaningful activities are pursued in fits-and-starts, it
would seem that the costs of taking on trivial errands at work
is not a matter of simply doing the errands but also keeping
track of them.
Additionally, we have suggested that gender differences in
mnemonic assistance exist, in part, because this type of re-
membering is itself gendered. However, it is possible that
men offer less mnemonic assistance to their partners not be-
cause the societal imperative of being communal is relatively
diminished for them—as we imply here—but because men
have comparatively poor prospective memory capabilities
(i.e., recalling outstanding tasks at appropriate future points).
Men may issue fewer helpful reminders for no other reason
than that they are far less effective than women are at recalling
delayed intentions in moments where they can be acted on.
From this perspective, women play this specialized mnemonic
role not because they are motivated to live up to a societal
Sex Roles

standard that is relaxed for men but because they are in pos-
session of mental machinery that is more adequately suited to
the task. Although we have not definitively ruled this possi-
bility out in the current investigation, it is important to note
that there is no compelling evidence that women outperform
men on prospective memory tasks. Some researchers have
observed superior prospective remembering by women (e.g.,
Huppert et al. 2000; Maylor et al. 2002;Penningroth2005),
whereas others have report finding no gender differences in
prospective remembering whatsoever (e.g., Bakker et al.
2002;Crawfordetal.2003; Efklides et al. 2002). It is worth
noting that there is evidence that the gender difference ob-
served in some of the studies may be rooted in motivation
rather than capacity. For instance, in testing for gender differ-
ences in self-reported memory failures, Hultsch et al. (1987)
reported finding no gender differences in self-reported capac-
ity (e.g., BI am good at remembering^) but that females utilize
mnemonic strategies more than males (e.g., "I write appoint-
ments in a calendar to help me remember them") and experi-
ence greater anxiety about remembering (e.g., "I do not get
flustered when put on the spot remember new things" ).
Likewise, Penningroth (2005) presented evidence that is con-
sistent with the idea that females engage in more frequent
conscious rehearsal of outstanding intentions than males (see
also Tan and Kvavilashvili 2003). In sum, it seems unlikely
that women offer disproportionate mnemonic assistance sim-
ply because they are endowed with brains that make them
particularly suited to specialize in this role. Even if we were
to assume that women are inherently better at recalling de-
layed tasks and monitoring for opportunities to act on them,
maintaining an awareness of others’outstanding needs and
goals still carries costs that, to this point, have gone
underestimated by gender scholars. The current line of inquiry
is important not simply because it highlights a previously
overlooked aspect of Blabor^but also because of the potential
costs that may be associated with becoming overburdened
with this particular form of mnemonic work.
It is also worth acknowledging that women may offer more
mnemonic assistance not because this type of mnemonic work
is gendered but because women tend to recall outstanding tasks
that are in the Bfemale wheelhouse^and there are simply more
of these to track. According to Wegner et al. (1991, p. 924),
couples negotiate the allocation of the transactive memory that
parallel Bthe more formal systems often codified in working
groups^and decide who performs which task and makes which
decision. Wegner and colleagues even allude to the notion that
task allocation might occur based on assumptions of each part-
ner’s expertise in a domain. For example, the one who agrees to
remember to pay the bills will then be the pair’s expert in this
domain. Consistent with this possibility, Hollingshead and
Fraidin (2003) found that task allocation is crucially shaped
by gender stereotypes. That is, both men and women assigned
categories and learned information consistent with gender
stereotypes when they believed their partner was of the other
sex—suggesting that the division of knowledge responsibilities
in transactive memory systems may be perpetuated by gender
stereotypes. Whether or not mental labor is itself gendered, as
suggested by Hollingshead and Fraidin (2003), our re-
sultssuggestthatwomenstilltendtodomoreofit—
and that matters.
Finally, in the present set of studies we are limited in our
ability to pinpoint the exact underlying mechanism that ex-
plains why men do less mnemonic work. That is, the process
of memory formation involves the transfer of information in
three components: encoding (how information from sensory
input is changed into a form that can be stored), storage (how
information can be rehearsed in ways to maintain it in short-
term or long-term memory), and finally retrieval (getting in-
formation from storage). Although the present findings sug-
gest that men are less inclined to retrieve their partner’sout-
standing tasks from memory (i.e., less likely to issue helpful
reminders), it could be that the gender difference emerges
much earlier in the memory process, that is, at the initial
encoding phase. Men might be providing less mnemonic as-
sistance because they lack the motivation to attend and encode
their partner’s needs in the first place. It would be an important
future endeavor to disentangle at which stage in memory for-
mation men fall short because it would shed light on why men
do less of this particular mnemonic work for their partners
than women do.
Practice Implications
These results provide a complement and extension of what
research has documented about the unequal division of phys-
ical labor in the home. Documenting a phenomenon is as
important as suggesting implications for how it may play out
in everyday experience. As such, we recommend that marital
therapists and the people in partnerships themselves be aware
of the gender asymmetries that exist in mnemonic assistance
for outstanding needs because this asymmetry may im-
pact the quality of romantic relationships. These find-
ings can help unpack gender inequalities that have
remained sticky over time despite many changes in women’s
status over the last few decades.
Couples therapists seeking to enhance the quality of com-
munication, reduce contempt, enhance caring and concern,
and maintain social support to reduce stress in relationships
should be mindful not only of how couples negotiate house-
work but also of how they navigate their mnemonic work. As
our research demonstrates, women are expected to provide
more mnemonic assistance for outstanding tasks than are
men; it also appears that men’s mnemonic assistance may
provide less support than women’s because men’s reminders
are less selfless than women’s. Couples therapy could focus
on mnemonic assistance as a method to increase social
Sex Roles

support, communication, and reduce stress that may
come from common relationship stressors such as chal-
lenges that come from raising children and navigating work-
life balances.
Raising awareness at the individual level may help women
and men check in with their internalization of gender roles.
The extent to which one internalizes societal norms or stan-
dards both reflect and perpetuate gender inequality
(Rimal 2008; Rimal and Lapinski 2015). It may be pos-
sible to lessen the memory burden that women may feel
and that men may expect by using technology to reduce
the asymmetry in remembering outstanding tasks. For
example, although it cannot alleviate the problem entirely (be-
cause one cannot always predict enactment opportunities),
couples might benefit from outsourcing the task of reminding
about collective to-dos to a shared, electronic calendar (e.g., a
Google calendar).
Conclusion
The nature of how couples in close relationships divide house-
hold labor between each other has been a topic of extensive
investigation for researchers from various disciplines (e.g.,
economics, sociology, psychology). The primary aim of the
current investigations builds upon this body of evidence by
examining how the stereotype of being communal manifests
in women undertaking more of a particular form of labor—
mnemonic work (the remembering of outstanding tasks).
Specifically, we considered the extent to which the genders
exhibit differences in their willingness to assist each other to
remember to perform outstanding tasks. Five studies demon-
strated that men do less of this mnemonic work than women
do but, when men do, their work is less other-oriented and
tends to be about errands for which they can personally gain.
We suggest that men do less mnemonic work because
the stereotype of being communal and assisting others
in their goal pursuit is a standard to which men, relative
to women, are only weakly held. Our findings imply
prosocial behavior in close relationships extends beyond
emotional support to support that is of a mnemonic,
mental variety. Furthermore, our findings raise the pos-
sibility that gender differences in helping behavior may trans-
late into steeper cognitive costs for women in close relation-
ships than for men.
Acknowledgements We thank Audrey Schield, Alyssa Kenney, Thet
Zaw Naing and Elif Naz Coker for their help coding the data and
Elizabeth Moulton for feedback on an earlier draft of the
manuscript.
Compliance with Ethical Standards The manuscript has not been
published and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. All
authors have approved this submission and all studies were approved by
the IRB.
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