Can your uncle be a wedding planner? Proscriptive stereotypes and their effect on attitudes about people's compatability with occupational roles

Abstract

In this study we examined the participant’s attitudes on people's compatibility with gender stereotyped occupations and how this could be affected by different sources of stereotype information. This was done through a forced-choice task. The results implied that participants responded significantly slower when presented with family nouns compared to names, but there was no significant difference between the female gendered family items or the male gendered family items. A previously reported male bias on neutral items was no longer prevalent which can imply that the language amendments have successfully phased out the effect of grammatical gendering on generic nouns. An interesting finding was that the participants responded consistently more positively and in shorter response time when presented with a neutral stereotyped role regardless of the item gender they compared it with. This can imply that the participants used proscriptive stereotypes more than prescriptive when deciding whether the item, whether family member or name. could fit the occupational role presented.