The Effect of Occupational Status Cues on Memory for Male and Female Targets

Abstract

In an experiment examining the influence of status cues on memory, participants read trait descriptions and formed impressions of either four male or four female targets: two labeled as professors and two labeled as graduate students. They then attempted to recall which traits had described each target. Because pretests confirmed that professors were perceived as having higher status than graduate students, we predicted better recall for male professors than male graduate students. Pretesting also indicated that men were viewed as having higher status than women; consequently, we expected occupation cues to have less impact on the female target condition due to the lower status and possible lesser individuation of the female targets overall. As predicted, there were significantly fewer memory errors for male professors than for male graduate students; however, occupational status did not significantly affect memory for female targets.