When a stereotype dumbfounds: Probing the nature of the surgeon = male belief

Abstract

“A father and his son are in a car accident. The father dies. The son is rushed to the ER. The attending surgeon looks at the boy and says, ‘I can't operate on this boy. He's my son!’ How can this be?” Fifty years after the riddle first received public attention, one likely answer proves elusive: the surgeon is the boy's mother. Seven studies (N = 6,987) were conducted to explore the vicissitudes of the surgeon = male stereotype. In Study 1, over 70% of participants failed to reach the mother solution. However, a reduction in bias was also observed: the percentage of mother inferences more than doubled when “son” was replaced with a gender-neutral kinship term (“child”), suggesting that even incidental exposure to gender-neutral language can loosen the grip of stereotypes. In fact, gender-neutral language was more effective in reducing bias than a condition (“daughter”) with multiple mentions of the female gender. In Study 2, we replicated this finding in a nationally representative sample of the United States, and demonstrated that 82% of Americans failed to provide the mother inference in response to the classic riddle. Additionally, within this nationally representative sample, the demographic and psychological correlates of the surgeon = male stereotype were explored. In Studies 3–5, we interrogated the mechanisms of stereotype reduction in the child condition (Study 3), the degree to which this stereotype simply reflects base rates (Study 4), and eliminated an alternative explanation (Study 5). Finally, in Studies 6–7, the generalizability of the surgeon = male stereotype was tested and confirmed in a non-WEIRD country that supplies medical expertise to the world (India; Study 6), and the result was extended to an inverse gender–occupation stereotype (nurse = female; Study 7). Taken together, these data demonstrate the surprising strength of a gender occupational stereotype and its boundary conditions.