Measures of Implicit Gender Attitudes May Exaggerate Differences in Underlying Associations among Chinese Urban and Rural Women.

Zheng Jin,Andrew M Rivers,Jeffrey W Sherman ,Chen Rui-Jun

doi:10.5334/pb.308

Zheng Jin, Andrew M Rivers + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.5334/pb.308

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Abstract

The oppression of women in rural China is more severe than in urban China, not only because the two areas differ in terms of social hierarchy, but also because urban women are more likely to fight against their subordination, which is endorsed by conventional social views on gender. To independently assess these relationships, we applied the Quadruple Process model to measure the processes underlying implicit gender attitudes in a sample of urban and rural females. The results indicated that the urban women had higher in-group favoritism than did the rural women. Application of the Quad model, however, showed that pro-women associations were similarly activated among urban and rural women, but that women in rural settings more effectively inhibited activated associations. Differences in inhibition, rather than in activated associations, appear to account for the less favorable attitudes among rural women. Thus, the differences in attitudinal responses among urban and rural women exaggerate the differences in underlying evaluative associations with respect to gender and conceal differences in self-regulating the expression of those associations.

Highlights

During the past several thousand years, few countries in the world have been influenced by patriarchal ideology as much as Corresponding author: Dr Zheng Jin
Multinomial modeling technique that involves estimating hypothetical parameters that represent the probabilities of unobservable cognitive events revealed that negative-old associations were less influential among older than younger adults and at the same time, older adults were less able to self-regulate their behavior while performing the task
A number of other findings demonstrate the joint and sometimes opposing influences of activated associations and the ability to control them (Calanchini & Sherman, 2013; Sherman et al, 2008). These results make clear that, to understand the factors that influence gender attitudes, both the biased associations that come to mind and the selfregulatory processes that translate those associations into attitudinal responses must be examined

Summary

RESEARCH ARTICLE

The oppression of women in rural China is more severe than in urban China, because the two areas differ in terms of social hierarchy, and because urban women are more likely to fight against their subordination, which is endorsed by conventional social views on gender. The differences in attitudinal responses among urban and rural women exaggerate the differences in underlying evaluative associations with respect to gender and conceal differences in self-regulating the expression of those associations. A number of other findings demonstrate the joint and sometimes opposing influences of activated associations and the ability to control them (Calanchini & Sherman, 2013; Sherman et al, 2008) These results make clear that, to understand the factors that influence gender attitudes (e.g., in-group favoritism), both the biased associations that come to mind and the selfregulatory processes that translate those associations into attitudinal responses must be examined. In the IAT, participants used two keys to categorize 16 target words (eight male names and eight female names) and 14 evaluative words (seven positive and seven negative) (see Appendix B) They were instructed to make their classifications as quickly and accurately as possible. The order of the critical blocks was counterbalanced across participants

Results and Discussion

Rural women

IAT effect