Undoing Androcentric Explanations of Gender Differences: Explaining ‘The Effect to be Predicted’

Abstract

Within categories where 'people' are implicitly assumed to be male, people explain gender differences as being 'about women' rather than being 'about men.' In two experiments (N = 102) this bias was reversed within the category 'voters.' Participants generalized data about women or men to men or women and explained the resulting gender differences. Participants always took 'the effect to be predicted' as 'the effect to be explained' whether their predictions were unconstrained (Experiment 1) or constrained by forced-choice items (Experiment 2). People can reason about gender differences by taking women as the default gender, even within categories that are traditionally normed on men. Implications for the communication of gender differences and the bases of androcentric thinking are discussed.

Is Man the Measure of All Things? A Social Cognitive Account of Androcentrism

“…Our review elaborates and extends previous work (e.g., Hegarty, 2006;Purdie-Vaughns & Eibach, 2008) in arguing that micro-level social-cognitive processes play a pivotal psychological role in androcentrism. This framework complements accounts of androcentrism that emphasize more macro-level sociological forces.…”

“…Categorization principles have recently been applied to androcentrism (e.g., Hegarty, 2006; Purdie-Vaughns & Eibach, 2008). We build on this work and contend that gender-inclusive human categories (e.g., society, humanity, people) have a graded structure that favors men, namely men are chronically perceived as being more typical of humanity than women.…”

Asymmetric Explanations of Group Differences: Experimental Evidence of Foucault’s Disciplinary Power

“…We have conducted experiments in which British college students and older adults were presented with data about one group, and then asked to consider whether the findings would generalize to a second group. In the domains of nationality (Hegarty & Chryssochoou, 2005), age (Robinson & Hegarty, 2005), and gender (Hegarty, 2006), the resulting explanations of predicted group differences focused on the second‐sampled group, or ‘the effect to be predicted’.…”

“…Finally, neither Foucualt’s account of power, nor norm theory, assumes that power simply expresses individual or group interests (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). Research has found gender similarities in the ways that women and men focus attention in explaining gender differences (Hegarty, 2006; Hegarty & Buechel, 2006; Miller et al., 1991), suggesting that lower‐ and higher‐status groups may contribute to the justification of unfair social systems by the way they explain group differences. However, it also seems plausible that members of lower‐status groups will shift their worldviews away from dominant perspectives that position their group identities as different‐from‐the‐norm as their social identities develop (Cross, 1991), or they collectively form ‘cognitive alternatives’ to the prevailing status quo (Reicher & Haslam, 2006).…”

Individuation in job offers as a function of the status of the occupation

“…By suggesting the similar importance of men and women, gender-fair job offers convey a positive message about women's potential to achieve higher professional status (Bosak & Sczesny, 2008). Furthermore, in agreement with norm theory (Kahneman & Miller, 1986), gender-fair role-naming practices help to overcome androcentric tendencies, which consider men as the default category and women as the category 'to be explained' (see Hegarty & Pratto, 2004;Hegarty, 2006). The most stimulating findings of the present research appertain to the impact of occupation status upon the tendency to identify sex-typing in the job offers.…”