Validating the semantic misattribution procedure as an implicit measure of gender stereotyping

Abstract

The current research tested the validity of the semantic misattribution procedure (SMP)—a variant of the affect misattribution procedure—as an implicit measure of gender stereotyping. In three studies (N = 604), prime words of gender‐stereotypical occupations (e.g., nurse, doctor) influenced participants' guesses of whether unknown Chinese ideographs referred to male or female names in a stereotype‐congruent manner. Priming scores of gender stereotyping showed high internal consistency and construct‐valid correlations with explicit measures of sexism. Discriminant validity of gender stereotyping scores was tested by investigating relations with priming effects involving grammatical gender (e.g., mother, father). Evidence for discriminant validity was obtained when (1) trials from the two priming measures were presented in a blocked rather than interspersed manner and (2) the measure of stereotypical gender priming preceded the measure of grammatical gender priming. Overall, the SMP showed good psychometric properties and construct validity for the assessment of gender stereotyping.

Effects on the Affect Misattribution Procedure are Strongly Moderated by Influence Awareness

“…It would also call into question a number of second-generational tasks that attempt to exploit the misattribution of meaning (the Semantic Misattribution Procedure: Sava et al, 2012) and truth (the Truth Misattribution Procedure: Cummins & De Houwer, 2019). Such measures have themselves been used to investigate psychological phenomena like gender stereotypes (Ye & Gawronski, 2018), sexual preference, (Imhoff et al, 2011), self-concept (Wong, Burkley, Bell, Wang, & Klann, 2017), and personality (Sava et al, 2012). It seems likely that the very same issues associated with influenceawareness in the traditional AMP are likely to play similar roles in these other procedures.…”

“…Since its creation, the AMP has attracted considerable attention and use in psychological science. It is most commonly used in social psychology to assess automatic evaluations in racial (Payne et al, 2005;Ditonto, Lau, & Sears, 2013; although see Teige-Mocigemba, Becker, Sherman, Reichardt, & Klauer, 2017), gender (Ye & Gawronski, 2018), sexuality (Imhoff, Schmidt, Bernhardt, Dierksmeier, & Banse, 2011), and political domains (Payne et al, 2005;Kalmoe & Piston, 2013), to investigate the potential origins of attitudes and stereotypes (Dunham & Emory, 2014;Mann et al, 2019;Van Dessel, Mertens, Smith, & De Houwer, 2017), and to assess the effectiveness of interventions designed to change automatic evaluations within those domains (Mann & Ferguson, 2017). In clinical psychology, the AMP is often used to assess, or even provide prospective prediction of, psychopathological behaviors such as eating disorders, non-suicidal self-injury, alcoholism, anxiety, depressive symptoms, and physical abuse of children (Fox et al, 2018;Görgen, Joormann, Hiller, & Witthöft, 2015;Jasper & Witthöft, 2013;McCarthy, Skowronski, Crouch, & Milner, 2017;Smith, Forrest, Velkoff, Ribeiro, & Franklin, 2018;Zerhouni, Bègue, Comiran, & Wiers, 2018).…”

An inkblot for beliefs: The Truth Misattribution Procedure

“…We opted for the domain of gender stereotypes for two reasons. Firstly, the SMP has formerly been used successfully in this context, indicating that misattribution procedures are likely suitable for this domain [14]. Secondly, the conceptualisation of “stereotypes” when assessed by associative measures in general (the IAT, SMP, etc.)…”

“…The SMP has already been used in a variety of contexts for the indirect assessment of psychological constructs. For instance, Ye and Gawronski [14] found that the presentation of a stereotypically-masculine occupation prime word (e.g., doctor) led to participants evaluating Chinese characters as meaning “man” more often than when they were preceded by a stereotypically-feminine prime word (e.g., nurse). The SMP has also been used in the assessment of other constructs, for example sexual preference, personality, self-concept, and risk-taking [13, 15, 16, 17].…”

“…In the same way that IAT-like procedures can be adjusted to capture specific propositional beliefs, so too can AMP-like procedures. Consider Ye and Gawronski's [14] earlier-mentioned use of the SMP in the context of gender stereotypes as an example. While Ye and Gawronski found that the prime word “doctor” led to participants being more likely to judge a target as meaning “male” than “female”, it cannot be distinguished whether this was because participants believe that more men than women are doctors, or whether they believe that more men than women should be doctors (see [28]).…”