Determinants of Gender Essentialism in College Students

Smiler, Andrew P.; Gelman, Susan A.

doi:10.1007/s11199-008-9402-x

Cited by 82 publications

(78 citation statements)

References 69 publications

(74 reference statements)

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“…(a) because males tend to have essentialist gender belief systems [30,50], (b) because males have greater anxiety when gender boundaries are blurred [28,42,43], (c) because males are attempting to be better accepted by their peers [43], and (d) because males are more invested than females in adhering to gender norms [24,29,42]. In any case, we might expect to find that males might be more concerned than females about transgender female usage of female bathrooms.…”

Section: Transphobia In Malesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Which Gender is More Concerned About Transgender Women in Female Bathrooms?

Stones

2016

Gend. Issues

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We enumerate 1035 user comments from 190 online articles to gauge public opinion about safety and privacy when transgender women use female bathrooms. In these comments, we find that cisgender males are around 1.559 as likely to express concern about safety and privacy as cisgender females. Moreover, we find that when expressing concern (a) cisgender females are around 49 as likely as cisgender males to assert that transgender women do not directly cause their safety and privacy concerns, typically emphasizing their concerns are about 'perverts' posing as transgender females, and (b) cisgender males are around 1.59 as likely as cisgender females to assert that transgender females directly cause their safety and privacy concerns. We theorize that the heightened concern seen in males in these comments stems from them being more likely to view transgender females not as females, but as males who are lying or mistaken about their gender, and consequently they view themselves as protecting females from these males intruding into private, female-only spaces. This may be further exacerbated by a fear of deception and a belief that transgender people are mentally ill or 'sick'.

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Section: Transphobia In Malesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Which Gender is More Concerned About Transgender Women in Female Bathrooms?

Stones

2016

Gend. Issues

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“…For example, endorsement of biological versus social causes of gender differences predicts greater perceived differences between men and women (Martin and Parker 1995), and experimentally introducing a biological explanation for gender differences promotes how strongly people endorse common descriptive gender stereotypes-even when the difference being described (i.e., skill in plant identification) was unrelated to the stereotypical qualities presented to the participants (e.g., being emotional) (Brescoll and LaFrance 2004). Gender essentialism has also been found to predict the strength of certain forms of sexism (Smiler and Gelman 2008), and being exposed to the idea that gender differences have a genetic basis can promote beliefs in the legitimacy and inevitability of male-female power inequality (Morton et al 2009). …”

Section: Social Essentialism and Social Cognitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This essence is assumed to be causally responsible for the emergence of category-typical features (Gelman 2003). Work in the social domain suggests that social groups are often essentialized and that viewing groups this way predicts a number of other important social inferences, including stereotype endorsement and certain forms of prejudice (Bastian and Haslam 2006;Gaunt 2006;Hoffman and Hurst 1990;Morton et al 2009;Smiler and Gelman 2008;Yzerbyt et al 1998Yzerbyt et al , 2001. However, much less is known about the development of this association, and the full complexity of how essentialism, stereotyping, and other social judgments interrelate remains unclear.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender Essentialism in Children and Parents: Implications for the Development of Gender Stereotyping and Gender-Typed Preferences

Meyer

Gelman

2016

Sex Roles

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Psychological essentialism is a set of lay beliefs about categories, according to which certain categories are seen as natural and arising from an inborn, causal force or Bessence.Ŝ ocial categories, including gender, are often essentialized by both adults and children. The current study examines how gender essentialism relates to other gender-relevant beliefs and preferences, in both a child sample (5-to 7-year-olds) and an adult sample (the children's parents). Children's and parents' essentialism predicted children's gender-typed preferences, but not children's prescriptive stereotyping. In contrast, parents' essentialism predicted their own prescriptive stereotyping, but not their gender-typed preferences. Implications of these findings are discussed in the contexts of (a) past findings linking essentialism with stereotyping and (b) the practical implications of developmental shifts in the correlates of essentialism, including ways in which stereotyping and rigid beliefs about gender may be reduced.

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“…While the terms feminine and femininity are widely understood on a conversational level, as was found in a study with US undergraduate participants (Smiler and Gelman 2008), defining specifically what constitutes feminine behavior, and how this differs across cultures is more difficult than it first appears (Brannon 2011). The focus of the current study is on how gender role norms, broadly defined as the Brules and standards that guide and constrain masculine and feminine behavior^ (Mahalik et al 2003 p.3), differ in two different countries.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Feminine Role Norms Among Australian and Italian Women: a Cross-Cultural Comparison

et al. 2015

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Australia and Italy are both nations where complex contradictions exist in the current social roles and expectations for women. The current study used the Conformity to Feminine Norms Inventory (CFNI: Mahalik et al. 2005) to compare the endorsement of eight feminine norms (Nice in Relationships, Thinness, Care for Children, Modesty, Domestic, Romantic Relationships, Sexual Fidelity, Invest in Appearance) by samples of Australian and Italian women, and to demonstrate how any observed differences relate to social and historical differences between the two nations. Two hundred forty-six female undergraduate students from an inner-city university on the East coast of Australia and 187 female undergraduate students from two universities in North-East Italy completed the CFNI. Comparisons were made between the two samples on the eight norms that the inventory examines. Italian women endorsed the Domestic and Romantic Relationships norms to a greater degree than Australian women, whereas Australian women endorsed the Nice in Relationships, Modesty and Sexual Fidelity norms to a greater degree than Italian women. Both samples endorsed the Thinness, Care for Children and Invest in Appearance norms to a similar degree. The current results are discussed in terms of other relevant findings regarding women’s roles in the two nations. The results both highlight the need to avoid the assumption that Western cultures are uniform with their expectations of women, while emphasizing the central roles that physical appearance and child-rearing still play in women’s social roles

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Determinants of Gender Essentialism in College Students

Cited by 82 publications

References 69 publications

Which Gender is More Concerned About Transgender Women in Female Bathrooms?

Which Gender is More Concerned About Transgender Women in Female Bathrooms?

Gender Essentialism in Children and Parents: Implications for the Development of Gender Stereotyping and Gender-Typed Preferences

Feminine Role Norms Among Australian and Italian Women: a Cross-Cultural Comparison

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