Implicit and Explicit Occupation-x stereotypes
Abstract This study was designed to compare implicit and explicit occupation-x stereotypes for three occupations (engineer, accountant, and elementary school teacher). The occupations reprented the end points and middle of a masculine-feminine continuum of explicit occupation-x stereotypes. Implicit stereotypes were assd using the Implicit Association Test (IAT), which is believed to minimize lf-prentational bias common with explicit measures of occupation-x stereotypes. IAT results for the most gender stereotyped occupations, engineer (masculine) and elementary school teacher (feminine), were comparable to explicit ratings. There was less agreement with less stereotyped comparisons. Results indicated that accounting was implicitly perceived as more masculine than explicit measures indicate, which calls into question reports of diminishing gender stereotyping for such occupations.
Keywords Occupation-x stereotypes .Implicit stereotypes .Stereotypes .Implicit Association Test
Popular beliefs have long held that becau of their stereotyped traits and temperaments men and women are suited for different kinds of occupations. One of the earliest empirical examinations of the occupation-x stereotypes was conducted by Shinar (1975) who showed that college students thought that some occupations required masculine traits, while others required feminine traits. The
method that Shinar (1975) and others (Beggs & Doolittlo, 1993; Whito, Kruczok, Brown,&Whito, 1989) ud to study occupational stereotypes is the traditional method of measuring stereotypes of all typos. Indeed, it was first ud by Katz and Braly (1935) in their very early work on national stereotypes. This approach treats stereotypes as a Collection of traits o r attributes that the respondent consciously and explicitly associates with members of different groups. Most conceptual treatments of stereotypes, and all popular accounts, have emphasized the explicit process and their contents.
Persons acquire stereotypes, in part, through personal experience. But becau stereotypes are part of the beliefs and shared assumptions that societies have about diffe
rent types of people and groups, they are also part of the society's collective knowledge. In order for a society to socialize its members, the stereotypes must be explicitly, even if subtlety, taught (0tangor&ghallor, 1996). Whether stereotypes are individual or cultural in origin, the emphasis on explicit beliefs is not surprising considering that the content of stereotypes has great intrinsic interest to both the person using the stereotype and the person targeted by it. Even when objectively wrong, stereotypes simplify social perception and rve as guidelines for social interaction.
It is increasingly clear that implicit process are important in stereotyping. Greenwald and Banaji (1995, p. 15) have defined implicit stereotypes "as the introspectively unidentified (or inaccurately identified) traces of past experience that mediate attributions of qualities to members of a social category." Implicit stereotypes and other implicit cognitive forms reflect the continuing influence of past experience and learned associations. They are the remaining influence of explicit beliefs that, although consciously abandoned or rejected, continue to influence cognition and perception. This influence is often beyond conscious control and may be invoked or primed by briefly pres
ented stimuli (cf., Fazio, Sanbonmatsu, Powell,&Kardes, 1986). Even among tho persons who explicitly disavow bias toward out-group members, appropriate priming may trigger implicit stereotyped judgments (Banaji, Hardin,& Rothman, 1993). Stereotypes may thus exist and continue to bias perceptions at an implicit level, even if they are not prent at an explicit level (Kunda&Spencer, 2003).
