Abstract
Traditional roles are problematic for women because they constrain their life choices. Therefore, women have a vested interest in challenging them. We argue that women can resist pervasive traditional roles by showing automatic ingroup bias. In two studies we used an associative procedure to expose two groups of women to stereotypical vs. counter-stereotypical roles, and measured implicit ingroup bias with an evaluative decision task. Study 1 shows that women activated ingroup bias when they were exposed to stereotypical roles and targets appeared in a stereotype-congruent context (kitchen). Study 2 shows that automatic ingroup bias was activated only when gender roles were salient. Further, stereotypic role associations promote negative emotions, and increased persistence on a stereotype-relevant performance task in women.
Highlights
There is no clear evidence that this can occur at the implicit level and forms our focus: we examine whether implicit ingroup bias is used as a “resistance strategy”, along with other coping strategies such as behavioral persistence in a counterstereotypical task, supporting collective actions, and emotional reactions
We argue that stereotypical roles are threatening for women, so only when such roles are primed will we find implicit resistance responses in the form of ingroup bias
In order to go beyond implicit ingroup bias as a form of resistance, we introduced a measure of persistence in solving a stereotype-related task
Summary
In the present research we extend this argument, previously assessed on explicit measures, by examining the automatic reactions of women to traditional roles as a form of implicit resistance. Women do not show evidence of legitimizing their disadvantaged situation using the IAT (Rudman & Goodwin, 2004) According to these authors their pro-female bias is robust. The present research builds on these previous findings and extends them to the use of implicit ingroup bias as a form of resistance to traditional gender stereotypes. Using an evaluative decision task de Lemus, Spears, Lupiáñez, Bukowski, & Moya (Fazio, Jackson, Dunton, & Williams, 1995), there was evidence of stereotype activation but no sign of ingroup bias using male or female faces as primes.
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