Gender Differences in the Recall of Gender-Stereotyped Items Essay Sample
The probe into the country of gender differences in memory was antecedently neglected due to anterior research by Maccoby and Jacklin ( 1974 ) . who stated that there were no gender differences in memory and acquisition. However. more recent research has begun to analyze gender differences for different types of memory. For illustration. it may be that work forces have better memories for more male related experiences and females have better memories for more female related experiences ( Herlitz. Nilsson & A ; Backman. 1997 ) . Crawford. Hermann. Holdsworth. Randall and Robbins ( 1989 ) predicted that work forces and adult females would differ in the public presentation of certain memory undertakings. such as more male oriented memory undertakings and more female oriented memory undertakings. They found that adult females were more likely to retrieve points on a shopping list. and work forces were more likely to retrieve travel waies. Therefore. they suggested that females and males express stereotyped memory procedures towards their ain gender.
A survey by McKelvie. Standing. St Jean and Law ( 1993 ) looked at the gender differences in the acknowledgment memory for faces and autos. They found that work forces were better at acknowledging male faces and autos. and females were better at recognizing female and kids faces. McKelvie ( 1981 ) suggested that gender differences in acknowledgment memory could be due to the differences in male and female involvements. Herrmann. Crawford. and Holdsworth ( 1992 ) looked to see if females would retrieve more points from a shopping list than from travel way. and if work forces would retrieve more travel waies than points from a shopping list. Consequences showed that females performed better on the shopping list than males. and males performed better on the travel waies than the females. They besides looked at the gender differences if the gender-linked content was changed to accommodate both genders. For illustration. the shopping list had two rubrics ; shopping list and hardware list. and the waies had two rubrics ; waies for doing a shirt. and waies for doing a work bench. Hermann et Al. ( 1992 ) found that male’s public presentation was better for the waies when it was labelled as ‘directions for doing a work bench’ than when it was labelled as ‘directions for doing a shirt. ’ These consequences indicate that memory procedures are affected when stereotypes are applied to memory undertakings.
One account for gender differences in memory is the gender scheme theory. which explains that persons learn the definition and norms of being male or female from the society and civilization in which they live in. Therefore. kids adjust their behavior to suit these gender norms and to suit in with their society ( Bem. 1981 ) . Bem ( 1981 ) stated that the gender scheme theory predicts that information related to an individual’s gender scheme should be recalled much better than information that isn’t related to their gender scheme. Gender scheme are referred to as the cognitive constructions that arrange an individual’s gender related cognition ( Cherney. 2005 ) . Liben and Signorella ( 1980 ) suggested that gender scheme bias the determinations and memories for gender-related information. Therefore. this could do females to retrieve more female related points. and males to retrieve more male related points.
More specific research has been conducted on gender differences in the callback of gender related objects. For illustration. a survey by Richardson ( 2006 ) looked at the difference in callback of gender associated images. for males and females. Twenty-eight participants took portion in this survey. and all were psychology undergraduate pupils. However. Richardson found that there was no important consequence of callback between the gender of the participants and the gender related image. Another survey by McGivern et Al. ( 1997 ) was interested in the acknowledgment memory of objects which were either female related. male related. or impersonal.
Consequences showed that female’s recognised female related objects and impersonal objects better than males. However. with male related objects. females and males performed every bit every bit good. Therefore. these findings suggest that females have better acknowledgment of objects than males. regardless of the orientation of the object. and that males have a more selective and self-relevant acknowledgment of objects. Many accounts for this have been proposed by research workers. For illustration. Halpern ( 1992 ) suggested the ground females recognise objects better than males is because females have greater lingual abilities than males. Therefore. Halpern explained that females are better at encoding and recovering information about the object linguistically. than males.
Cherney and Ryalls ( 1999 ) conducted a survey to look into the callback of gender related objects. for males and females. They showed three to six twelvemonth old kids and grownups gender related objects. and asked them to subsequently remember the objects. Consequences showed that males recalled more male-stereotyped objects than female-stereotyped objects and impersonal objects. and females recalled more female-stereotyped objects than the other two types of objects. Cherney ( 2005 ) further investigated gender differences in the callback of gender orientated objects by looking at the consequence of callback when plaything images were presented statically ( still objects ) or dynamically ( traveling objects ) . and when the encryption differences were different ( incidental vs. intentional ) . Results found that there was a weak support for the hypothesis that predicted that males would remember more male-stereotyped plaything images than female and neutral-stereotyped objects. and females would remember more female-stereotyped plaything images than the other two types of plaything images. and this would happen under incidental memory conditions.
Signorella and Liben ( 1984 ) conducted a survey in which preschoolers. 2nd graders. and 4th graders looked at 10 traditional images. which consisted of work forces in masculine activities and adult females in feminine activities. 10 non-traditional images. in which work forces were in feminine activities and adult females were in masculine activities. and 20 impersonal images. They hypothesised that extremely stereotyped gender-related attitudes would remember more traditional images than non-traditional images. Consequences supported this hypothesis. as more traditional images were recalled than non-traditional images. by the extremely stereotypic participants. These consequences are consistent with the gender scheme theory. and suggest that gender affects the callback of gender-related points and images.
The job with these surveies is that most have looked at gender differences in remembering gender-related points for immature kids ; nevertheless immature kids are still building their gender scheme. Therefore. this present survey purposes to look into the gender difference in callback of gender related points. in grownups. Furthermore. the old surveies that have looked at callback in grownups have used psychological science pupils. Psychology pupils are likely to understand the principle of the survey. and can therefore bias the consequences. This survey aims to extinguish this demand characteristic. and see whether gender affects the callback of gender-stereotyped points.
This survey predicted that female participants will remember more female-stereotyped points than male-stereotyped points and impersonal points. Furthermore. it was predicted that males will remember more male-stereotyped points than female and neutral-stereotyped points.
In entire. 40 University of Sussex pupils participated in all conditions of this survey. Twenty were female ( M = 20. 8. SD = 1. 28 ) . and the other 20 were male ( M = 20. 2. SD = 1. 01 ) . Their ages ranged from 19-23. Participants were naive to the principle of the survey. therefore none of the participants were psychology pupils in order to forestall participants foretelling the principle. and therefore cut downing the demand features. Participants were voluntaries.
Participants looked at a PowerPoint presentation that lasted about three proceedingss. The presentation ab initio provided the participants with instructions for the experiment. followed by the undertaking itself. The experiment slide was made up of 30 points. and all points were cartoon versions of the object. Ten were female related points. 10s were male related points. and the staying 10 were impersonal points that were non related to a gender ( See Appendix A ) . The presentation besides included a distracter undertaking slide. which asked participants to number down from 90 in fantans. The images were displayed on a 15” laptop screen and were all mixed up.
This experiment was a 2 ten 3 assorted steps design. There were two independent variables ; gender and the gender-stereotyped points. The gender-stereotyped points had three degrees ; impersonal points. female-stereotyped points. and male-stereotyped points. Participants took portion in all three conditions. The dependent variable was the figure of points recalled. Procedure
All 40 participants took portion in the same experiment. Participants were given a clean sheet of paper and told to non compose anything down until instructed to make so. They were so told to follow the instructions on the PowerPoint presentation. and to inquire if anything was non clear. before the experiment began. The first slide of the presentation told participants that they were allowed to retreat from the experiment at any clip. followed by the instructions of the experiment which told them that they were to see a slide and they were subsequently traveling to be asked to remember as many points as possible. from that slide. The experiment slide which contained 30 objects was shown to the participants for one minute. followed by a distracter undertaking inquiring the participants to number down from 90 in fantans. for 30 seconds. The following slide instructed participants to get down to remember the objects they had merely seen. They were told to compose as many objects as they could retrieve down. and they had one minute. After one minute they were told to halt. and were debriefed. ( See Appendix B for the complete presentation ) . Before the existent experiment began. participants were asked to subscribe a consent sheet ( See Appendix C ) .
In order to see whether a parametric trial could be carried out. the premise of normalcy and homogeneousness of discrepancy was tested. For normalcy. the z-scores for lopsidedness and kurtosis were calculated. and all values were less than 1. 96. bespeaking that the information was distributed usually. The K-S trial was besides calculated and merely the information for impersonal points recalled by female participants was important. D ( 20 ) = . 197. p = . 041. proposing that it is non usually distributed. In order to rectify this log. square root. and mutual transmutations were applied to the information ; nevertheless this disrupted the other informations and did non repair the K-S value. Therefore. any trials performed were on the normal informations. To prove the premise of homogeneousness of discrepancy. a Levene’s trial was performed on the informations. All were non important ( p & gt ; . 05 ) . therefore the premise was accepted.
Figure 1: The average figure of points recalled ( and 95 % assurance interval ) by females and males for impersonal points. female stereotyped points. and male stereotyped points.
Figure 1 shows the interaction between the gender of the participants. and the figure of points recalled for each stereotypic point. From this figure it is seen that females and males do non change excessively much on the sum of points recalled in each status. and most mistake bars overlap. The chief point in this figure is that females recall more female related points ( M = 4. 35. SD = 1. 50 ) than male related points ( M = 2. 85. SD = 1. 63 ) . as the mistake bars do non overlap.
A 2 ten 3 assorted ANOVA was conducted on the figure of points recalled. Mauchly’s trial indicated that the premise of sphericalness had non been violated. ( ? ( 2 ) = 5. 77. p = . 056. The consequences showed that there was no important consequence of the gender stereotyped points on the figure of points recalled. F ( 2. 76 ) = 1. 07. p = . 348. and no important consequence on the gender of the participants and the figure of points recalled. F ( 1. 38 ) = . 023. p = . 881. There was a important interaction between the gender of the participants and the gender stereotyped points. F ( 2. 76 ) = 3. 57. p = . 033. Paired sample t-tests showed that there was no important difference for the figure of points recalled in each status. for the male participants. For the female participants. there was no important difference between the figure of points recalled for the impersonal points and the female stereotyped points. and the impersonal points and the male stereotyped points ; nevertheless. there was a important difference between the figure of points recalled for the female stereotyped points ( M = 4. 35. SD = 1. 50 ) and the male stereotyped points ( M = 2. 85. SD = 1. 63 ) . T ( 19 ) = 3. 38. p = . 003. 500 = . 958.
The consequences from this survey showed that there was no important consequence of male participants and the callback of male-stereotyped points. For female participants. findings showed that females recalled more female-stereotyped points than male-stereotyped points. but there was no important difference between the figure of female-stereotyped points and impersonal points recalled.
The anticipation that females would remember more female-stereotyped points than male-stereotyped points was supported by the consequences of this survey. This contradicts Richardson’s ( 2006 ) survey. which found that there was no important consequence on the gender of participants and the gender related image. However. this could be due to the figure of participants that took portion in the survey ; merely 28 participants took portion in Richardson’s survey nevertheless 40 took portion in the present survey. This could do different consequences to happen. Furthermore. Richardson’s survey did non include a control group. the impersonal points. which could impact the callback for each status. Cherney and Ryalls’ ( 1999 ) survey is consistent with the consequences of the present survey. They besides found that females recalled more female-related objects than male-related objects. These consequences are supported by the gender scheme theory proposed by Bem ( 1981 ) . which states that information related to an individual’s gender scheme would be recalled better than when it is non related to the individual’s gender scheme. In this survey female’s recalled more female related points than other points. because female-stereotyped points are related to their gender scheme.
The anticipation that males would remember more male-stereotyped points than female-stereotyped points and impersonal points was non supported by the findings of this survey. This is consistent with Richardson’s ( 2006 ) survey as it was found that males did non remember more male related points than female related points. However. the findings of this survey contradict the consequences of Signorella and Liben’s ( 1984 ) survey. They found that males and females both recalled more traditional images than non-traditional images. Traditional images showed images of males and females in their traditional activity functions. This was related to the gender scheme theory. because information associating to an persons gender and the norms of gender. such as the traditional activity functions of males and females. was recalled better than information that was non related to the gender of the person.
The survey conducted by McGivern et Al. ( 1997 ) is consistent with both consequences of the present survey. McGivern et Al. ( 1997 ) found that females remember more female-related objects than male related objects. but for the male related objects. males and females recall the same sum. Therefore. they besides found that there was no important consequence of male participants. and the sum of male-stereotyped objects recalled. As antecedently mentioned. Halpern ( 1992 ) came up with a theory for this. explicating that females remember more female related objects than males. nevertheless females and males recall the same sum of male related object. because females have better lingual abilities. and hence can encode and recover information better than males. This relates to general differences in the memory of males and females. A survey by Larrabee and Crook ( 1993 ) besides supports this. as they found that adult females performed better in verbal. acquisition. and retrieving undertakings. than work forces.
One restriction of this survey is the little sample size. A larger sample size would supply more of an chance for a important relationship due to more figure of tonss being present. and a more representative distribution of the population. Another job with this survey is the naming of the points on the PowerPoint slide. The points and objects could be identified otherwise. or a similar designation could be given. that is non precisely correct. This caused research workers to be unsure about what was right recalled. and what was non. To get the better of this. a list of possible different names should be created. for each point. Any points non on the ‘potential list’ can so be rejected. Future research should look at gender differences in the callback of gender-stereotyped points. in grownups. Many surveies have looked at this in immature kids ; nevertheless the research in grownups is limited. Therefore research conducted with grownup participants can let comparings to be made with other surveies. Future research should besides look at if the gender scheme theory applies to the memory of state of affairss that occur in day-to-day life.
The present survey demonstrated that females remember more points that are related to their ain gender. than points that are related to males. Furthermore. this survey showed that males do non remember more male-stereotyped points than females. These consequences indicate that there is a gender difference in memory. as females do better with female related points. but males do non with male related points. This could assist widen research on gender differences in memory. and could besides widen the gender scheme theory. The findings from this research could besides assist to better cognition and accomplishments about acquisition and memory. for females and males.