Family vs. Career, Men vs. Women

Most people like to believe that they don’t stereotype people. Stereotypes are beliefs people hold about a certain group (e.g., white guys can’t jump). Additionally, stereotypes are also known as “group schemas,” which are essentially mental frameworks for organizing what we know about groups. I’d certainly like to think that I see everyone as equals and take the time to get to know people before I pass judgment on them, but I suppose on some unconscious level I might not.

The IAT (Implicit Association Test) was developed as a way of getting at individuals unconscious thoughts or feelings (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). It measures the degree to which two different ideas are associated. I decided to take a few, which can be found online here: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/takeatest.html.

This online version of the IAT has you press either “E” or “I” to decide whether a word or image goes into one of two categories. For example, I started off with the Gender-Career Test. In this instance, “Male” was printed on the left of my screen while “Female” was printed on the right of my screen. When a female name (e.g., Rebecca) popped but I had to press “I” to associate it with the “Female category. When a male name (e.g., Ben) popped up I had to press “E.” Then the computer presented me with words related to the topic of Family (e.g., relatives, wedding) or Career (e.g., business, management), and I had to press “E” or “I” again depending upon which category the words belonged with. Then, the categories were combined; that is, Male was paired with Career, and Female was paired with Family. Again, names and words had to be placed in the correct categories using the “E” and “I” keys. Finally, the categories were switch; that is, Male was paired with Family, and Female was paired with Career. Based on how long it took to place the words I was given into the different category pairings, the IAT rated how closely I associated Gender with Career.

My results were interesting. According to the IAT, I have a moderate Male with Career and Female with Family, as compared to Female with Career and Male with Family.

I don’t feel that these results are consistent with my actual attitudes about gender and careers. I’m perfectly aware that both men and women can do any job, whether it’s being CEO of a company or taking care of a home. Not only that, but I’m supportive of women who seek jobs in fields dominated by men. In fact, growing up I feel like I spent more time with my dad, who does farm work at home, than I did with my mom who works long hours as a nurse. Yet according to these results I exhibit moderate implicit sexism.

I have two ideas about why my results turned out so different from what I believe I feel about gender and careers. First, it may be that I’m affected by mass media portrayals of women as homemakers and men as businesspersons, as well as my friends’ parents whose family dynamics were more stereotypical. Second, the words they chose were more corporate related than career related in general. For example, they used words like “management,” “corporation,” and “office,” rather than more broad words like “work,” “job,” or “occupation.” It’s possible that I do hold a stereotype for businesspeople – which is, in fact, a male dominated field – without holding a stereotype for “career women” or “career men” in general, making my initial evaluation of myself more accurate than this test would lead people to believe.

That being said, I feel as though the IAT is showing more of a cultural association than my true attitude. In the world we see more businessmen than we do businesswomen. It does not, however, mean that I think only men should only be businesspeople. I may associate them moderately simply because in our culture one is more common than the other.

Importantly, the IAT did make me think slightly differently about stereotypes and prejudice. Assuming these results are correct, it makes it more apparent that stereotypes and prejudice aren’t exactly the same thing. Stereotypes aren’t necessarily negative; they’re simply frameworks for the way we categorize things. Were I actually prejudice against women having careers I doubt that I would be here right now – writing a blog for a class, striving to get ahead, hoping for a promising career, not spending a moment wondering about raising a family, admiring my own mother for working so hard and making more money than my dad, encouraging my friends that are girls to work for the same things.

Interestingly, after my first Gender-Career IAT, I decided to take both the Asian and Age IATs just for fun (I have no automatic preference for ethnicity and American or Foreign, but a moderate automatic preference for young people as compared to old people). Then, I decided to go back and retake the original Gender-Career IAT with a strong determination to make the results more reflective of my true feelings. Surprisingly, in just 30 minutes my association of Male with Career and Female with Family changed.

I didn’t cheat; I simply concentrated extremely hard, and my “moderate” association change to a “slight” association. This made me somewhat skeptical of the IAT, though because the rating only changed one level and didn’t do something completely unexpected (e.g., show that I more strongly associated them now, or favored Men as Family-oriented) I’m inclined to trust their results.
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Greenwald, A. G., McGhee, D. E., & Schwartz, J. L. K. (1988). Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: The implicit association test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1464-1480.