Implicit measures show more positive evaluation of women than men

Evidence

Evidence from nonobvious methodologies dispels concerns that respondents’ positive evaluations of women are contaminated by social desirability or political correctness. Implicit attitudinal measures, such as the Implicit Association Test, assess the strength of association between concepts and positive or negative evaluation without participant awareness (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). Research using this method has also obtained more positive evaluation of women than men (Rudman, ch. 7 this volume). Another nonobvious method of assessing gender prejudice involves disguising the purpose of participants’ evaluations. In the Goldberg Paradigm (1968), participants evaluate a product – such as an article or a résumé – ascribed to a person who is identified by a male or female first name. Participants are unaware that the purpose is to detect gender prejudice because they receive only one set of materials in the typical betweensubjects design. In a meta-analysis of 123 such studies, only a very slight bias against women was detected when the findings were summarized across evaluations of many types of materials (Swim, Borgida, Maruyama, & Myers, 1989), and this bias disappears when potential confounding factors (such as associations with specific male and female names; Kasof, 1993) are considered. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 185

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the Goldberg Paradigm and implicit attitude measures as research methodologies.
• XREF: Connects to the broader theme in Allport scholarship about how prejudice has shifted from overt hostility to subtle and ambivalent forms. — connects to: Greater explicit positivity toward women rules out the attitude interpretation of male-name favoritism. — Anthony G. Greenwald and Mahzarin R. Banaji, Implicit Social Cognition: Attitudes,…, 206; Essay evaluation favoring male authors indirectly reveals a gender stereotype linking men with achievement. — Anthony G. Greenwald and Mahzarin R. Banaji, Implicit Social Cognition: Attitudes,…, 200