Stereotypes and crossed-category evaluations: The case of gender and science education

A Model to Explore how Communal Traits Affects Stay Intent Amongst Taiwanese Nurses

Aims

This study discusses the model built to explore low levels of communal traits’ influence on nurses’ stay intent.

Background

The high turnover rate and low stay intent amongst Taiwan's nurses is a serious issue. One reason for the low stay intent is nurse-to-nurse interpersonal conflict. Surface-level difference, such as low levels of communal traits, may be an important antecedent factor. Previous studies have found that this type of conflict can frequently arise in female-to-female relationships.

Design

This was quantitative, cross-sectional research using a questionnaire survey.

Method

249 registered nurses participated in the survey, which employed convenience sampling. The data was collected from January 10th 2020 to February 10th 2020. Results/Findings: We found that nurses with low levels of communal traits become frustrated, creating psychological need thwarting and decreasing stay intention. Belonging perception appears to weaken this. In addition, autonomy and relatedness of need thwarting but not competence mediates the relationship between frustration experience and stay intent. Unlike in past studies, this was not found to be an exclusively female phenomenon.

Conclusion

Improving belonging perception may be the answer to overcoming negative outcomes caused by surface-level difference in the nursing profession. However, why surface-level difference has a negative influence remains a question that needs to be further explored. In addition, Taiwanese nursing managers in this low status and relationship-oriented nursing culture should also focus on improving frontline nurses’ confidence and self-conceptualizations.

Gender Bias in STEM Fields

The current study focuses on girls’ and women’s reported experiences with gender bias in fields related to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). In the first set of analyses, I examined whether the prevalence of self-reported gender bias varied depending on the educational context. I then examined whether experiencing gender bias was associated with lower STEM self-concept and, if so, whether having a supportive network of STEM peers would buffer this effect. Data were collected through a self-report survey that was administered to high school girls who aspired to have STEM careers, women in STEM undergraduate majors, and women in STEM doctoral programs. Overall, 61% of participants reported experiencing gender bias in the past year, but the prevalence rate varied according to their phase of education and field of study. In particular, women in math-intensive undergraduate majors were especially likely to encounter gender bias, which predominately originated from male peers in their major. As expected, participants who encountered gender bias had lower STEM self-concept than participants who did not. However, this effect was attenuated for participants who also had a supportive network of STEM peers. These findings suggest that positive peer connections may be a valuable resource for girls and women in the STEM pipeline.

Explaining Extremity in Evaluation of Group Members

A meta-analysis that included more than 1,100 effect sizes tested the predictions of three theoretical perspectives that explain evaluative extremity in social judgment: complexity-extremity theory, subjective group dynamics model, and expectancy-violation theory. The work seeks to understand the ways in which group-based information interacts with person-based information to influence extremity in evaluations. Together, these three theories point to the valence of person-based information, group membership of the evaluated targets relative to the evaluator, status of the evaluators’ ingroup, norm consistency of the person-based information, and incongruency of person-based information with stereotype-based expectations as moderators. Considerable support, but some limiting conditions, were found for each theoretical perspective. Implications of the results are discussed.

Trapped in the gender stereotype? The image of science among secondary school students and teachers

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to investigate the gender stereotype of science by analysing the semantic attributes of gender in relation to three science subjects – chemistry, mathematics, and physics – among students and their science teachers.

Design/methodology/approach

– This cross-sectional study applied a survey of 3,045 students and 123 teachers in secondary schools. The gendered image of science was assessed using a semantic differential consisting of 25 pairs of adjectives with semantically opposite meanings.

Findings

– In summary, the results of the study demonstrate that from the female students’ perspective mathematics and physics are negatively related to female gender, whereas chemistry is neither significantly related to the male nor to the female profile. From the male students’ point of view mathematics is negatively related to the female gender, whereas chemistry and physics are positively related to the male gender. In the science teachers’ perception chemistry and physics combine feminine and masculine attributes, whereas the teachers’ perception of mathematics matches only with the male, but not with the female gender.

Originality/value

– In contrast to previous research, the study is the first to analyse the gender stereotype of chemistry as well as to assess the gender image of three science subjects from students’ and teachers’ perspectives.

What goes well with physics? Measuring and altering the image of science

BACKGROUND

In view of the shortage of students majoring in science, we examined the image of physics in terms of students' implicit, automatic associations with physics.

AIMS

To describe the specific image of physics that might alienate students (difficulty, masculinity, heteronomy) and test an intervention for altering the image.

SAMPLES

In Study 1 the sample consisted of 63 school students (11th grade) and in Study 2 the sample consisted of 71 undergraduates.

METHODS

Study 1 measured participants' implicit associations between physics (relative to English) and the image dimensions of difficulty, masculinity and heteronomy, implicit attitudes towards and identification with physics using latency data (Implicit Association Test; IAT) and explicit attitudes using a questionnaire. Study 2 was an experimental treatment that required reading a text (treatment group) that emphasized the importance of discourse and creativity for science versus a school textbook for physics (control group).

DEPENDENT VARIABLES

implicit attitudes (IAT).

RESULTS

Students in Study 1 associated physics (relative to English) more easily with words referring to difficulty (than to ease), to males (than to females), to heteronomy (than to self-realization), to unpleasantness (relative to pleasant words) and to others (relative to words referring to self). The three image aspects of difficulty, masculinity and heteronomy predicted explicit attitudes. Participants in the treatment group in Study 2 showed a significant reduction of the IAT effects compared to the control group.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings indicate that students' negative explicit attitudes towards physics coincide with negative implicit associations about physics. An intervention addressing the alteration of implicit associations proved to be fruitful. Implications for science education are discussed.

Intergroup bias in weight controllability attributions

We examined weight controllability attributions for obese and non-obese targets who were either racial ingroup or outgroup members, predicting that attributions would be biased in favor of ingroup targets. In Experiment 1, white British participants attributed more controllability to obese than to non-obese targets overall, and this effect was more pronounced for black than for white targets. In Experiment 2, white and black American participants rated targets that were racial ingroup or outgroup members, fit or obese, and male or female. Again, the simple effect of target weight was stronger for racial outgroup than for racial ingroup targets. Consistent with past research on hierarchical category dominance for gender, the effects were stronger for same-gender targets than for opposite-gender targets.