A priori vs. spontaneous models of attribution: The case of gender and achievement

Abstract

This study aims to relate causal explanations for men's and women's achievements to implicit theories held about sex stereotypes. Two different methods were used: one following Weiner's two‐dimensional attribution model, and another expressed in terms of attributional semantic space. The classical analysis, in terms of locus of causality and stability, replicated previous results and did not show differences between male and female observers. However, the second method showed that men and women use different vocabularies and call up different representational elements when they have to explain male and female achievement. Further, whereas males discriminate the performance of another male from that of a female, females evaluate the performances of males and females similarly. The use of free responses under a spontaneous model is discussed. Although not without disadvantages, this method is more sensitive to the implicit theories of the judges than are the classical ones.

The Social Judgeability Approach to Stereotypes

“…Nevertheless, they are very often so well tamed by the investigators' specially tailored paradigms that they are not able to display the whole array of their strategies (Jaspars, 1983; Leyens, 1990;Sousa & Leyens, 1987). Let us assume for a moment that one is convinced that discovering how person memory works will yield an understanding of how people form impressions.…”

Internality, academic status and intergroup attributions

“…It is nonetheless important to acknowledge that, in these studies, the disymmetry of the category memberships pertains to groups that have different statuses indeed, but whose differences of value are not socially regarded as being primitive. Clearly, for the subjects under study (the male students and the female students in Deaux & Emswiller, 1974; the English-speaking students from Quebec and the French-speaking students from Quebec in Guimond & Simard, 1979; the Malay and the Chinese in Hewstone & Ward, 1985; the male and female Portuguese in Sousa & Leyens, 1987...), the category memberships are endowed with social value (the men, the English-speaking people and the Malay are perceived as dominant groups versus the dominated groups respectively made of the women, the French-speaking people and the Chinese). However, this value, although it is socially determined because it stems from domination relationships, is also socially problematic.…”

Stereotype effects of attributions, predictions, and evaluations: No two social judgments are quite alike.

“…First is the question of whether the results are generalizable to other measures of attributions, predictions, and evaluations. In particular, the attribution measures used in Experiment 1, although frequently used in past research, have nevertheless been criticized on a number of grounds (e.g., Elig & Frieze, 1979; Fiedler, 1982; Russell, McAuley, & Tarico, 1987; Sousa & Leyens, 1987). For example, it is unclear from these measures whether subjects' ratings indicate the importance of a causal factor or how much of the causal factor the target possesses (e.g., the target's level of ability).…”