Let's Talk About Sex..ism!

A general rule of thumb for conversations with people you don’t know is to avoid –ism’s. Racism, Buddhism, Communism, Antidisestablishmentarianism – they’re all out. Despite not being well acquainted with many of you reading this, I’m going to break the rule anyhow. Tonight’s topic is SEXISM!

Sexism is discrimination based on one’s gender. Usually when people think of sexism, they think of obvious things like giving a little boy model cars to play with and giving a little girl a doll, or paying women less than men to do the same job.

I, however, would like to tell you a story involving a sneakier kind of sexism, one we don’t always pick up on when it happens. Ambivalent sexism is comprised of two parts: (1) hostile sexism, which concerns negative feelings about females abilities and worth and (2) benevolent sexism, which concerns affectionate but possibly condescending feelings (Glick & Fiske, 2001a).

What I’ve experienced most in my life is benevolent sexism – guys opening doors for you, offering to carry heavy objects, getting things off of the top shelf. Sure it seems sweet on the surface, but underneath all this chivalry often lurks the patronizing idea that we ladies need protecting.

Interestingly, my most recent experience with this form of sexism actually came from a woman. This summer at my monotonous job as an office assistant, when I wasn’t scanning medical charts, I was taking old ones to the storage room to be shredded.

I rather relished this task as it was my only opportunity to get away from the computer, but one afternoon my supervisor of sorts stopped me as I was carrying a box full of charts.

“Honey, you shouldn’t be lifting that. Let Ethan do it,” Kathy said.

I spun on my heel and said, “I’ve lived on a farm my whole life; I was bred for heavy lifting,” while doing my best not to glare at her, and silently thinking to myself, “Besides, that 95-pound twig of a kid couldn’t lift this anyhow.” (I couldn’t actually say that aloud, because Ethan is the boss’s son, and insulting the offspring of the person who signs your paychecks is never a good idea.)
It’s this kind of sexism that has irked me since elementary school – when Blake and Michael got to leave class to help Mrs. Smith carry old books off to storage and I had to sit in my seat working on my vocabulary assignment, because I was a just a little girl and girls can’t possibly be expected to sweat and lift things for fear that they might break a nail.

This same thing still goes on today, but in a more awkward way. I’ve actually had someone tell me, “You shouldn’t be lifting heavy stuff; you’ll crush your uterus.” To which I could not stop myself from responding with, “Good. I hate kids.”

Because benevolent sexism generally presents itself in the form of a caring, considerate gesture or comment, it often isn’t seen for what is really is: sexism, plain and simple.

Additionally, it is important to note that benevolent and hostile sexism go hand in hand. The two are positively correlated (Glick et al., 2000), so it’s likely that if you feel one way (i.e., that women deserve protecting) you also feel the other way as well (i.e., that women have less value than men).
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Glick, P., & Fiske, S. T. (2001a). Ambivalent sexism. In M.P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 33, pp. 115-188). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

Glick, P., Fiske, S., Mladinic, A., Saiz, J., Abrams, D., Masser, B., et al. (2000). Beyond prejudice as simple antipathy: Hostile and benevolent sexism across cultures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 763-775.

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.

As if I hadn't over-shared enough already...

For as long as I’ve known myself (20 years) I’ve always thought that I was an I-want-what-can’t-have sort of person. It has recently come to my attention, however, that I’m actually an I-want-what-is-consistent-with-my-self-concepts sort of person.

I’ve dumped more than my fair share of truly great guys in my short lifetime. My friends would always say, “He worships the ground you walk on AND he’s gorgeous! Why would you do that?!” My response would always be about how I thought that I liked him, but now that I have him hooked I don’t want him.

In reality, however, it was because they (whomever I was dating at the time) didn’t verify my self-concepts (an individual’s overall beliefs about his or her own personal characteristics). This idea that we all want confirmation of our self-concepts from others is called self-verification (Swann, Hixon, & de la Ronde, 1992). Interestingly, we want this confirmation even if it is negative.

To better explain, I’ll tell you about Mickey (because – let’s face it – I just like talking about boys).



Mickey was such a sweetheart. He sang me songs, made me cupcakes, hung onto my every word. He also showered me with praise, insisting that everything I did was perfect. Normally, one would think this was a good thing, that I should want to date someone who thinks very highly of me. The problem was: I don’t think very highly of myself (at least not on certain traits).

When he would praise me for my singing abilities (of which I have absolutely NONE) or insisted that my looks were goddess-like (again, a clear exaggeration), it would contradict my own beliefs about myself.

There are two reasons such discrepancies are unsettling. The first is intrapersonal; it suggests that I don’t know myself. It’s frightening to think that a person could not know something about themselves; if we don’t then we can’t predict or control things about our own lives. The second reason is interpersonal; it suggests that Mickey had completely unrealistic expectations of my abilities, or that he didn’t actually know me.

Not only do we prefer, remember, and spend more time paying attention to others’ perceptions that are consistent with our own, we intentionally choose to interact with people who corroborate our self-concepts (Swann et al., 1992). This has been shown in everyone from roommates to spouses. In my case, it’s boyfriends.

If my own appraisal of myself were higher, Mickey (and several other all too nice guys) might have confirmed rather than contradicted my self-concepts and we might have lasted longer. Nevertheless, it makes more sense why things work so well with the current beau; he doesn’t even try to stifle his laughter when I sing. He’s smart enough to know when to massage my ego and when to tell the truth.
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Swann, W., Hixon, J., & de la Ronde, C. (1992). Embracing the bitter 'truth': Negative self-concepts and marital commitment. Psychological Science, 3, 118-121.

Through Mischievous Eyes

My dad and I are two peas in a pod. In fact, it wouldn’t even be an exaggeration to call him one of my best friends. Because of our similarities, whenever I would do something reckless or stupid in high school my mother would be the one to fly into a rage and he wouldn’t think of it as a big deal. School pranks, protests, spending too much time with friends – those were all things he did at my age too.

While my dad would stand by during our arguments, my mom and I would play out our respective roles in the actor-observer effect (Jones & Nisbett, 1972; Watson, 1982). The actor-observer effect is the tendency for an individual to attribute his or her own actions to a situational cause (e.g., having a bad day, being sick) and to attribute other people’s actions to a personal cause (e.g., being a bad person, being unintelligent). From my point of view I was the “actor” while my mom filled the role of the “observer.”

To illustrate, we’ll use the night I pulled my senior prank – though it was closer to morning by the time our argument played out. As the “actor” I attributed my desired to climb the football stadium lights with 30-ft banners at 2 a.m. to situational factors; pranks are part of high school and it’s important to do something epic to remember it. As the “observer” my mother attributed my actions to my personal characteristics; I was irresponsible, rebellious, and reckless.

Why was I so sure I wasn’t a bad person for doing it? Why was my mother so sure that I was? There are two simple reasons for this: information and perspective.

As the actor, I had more information about myself and how I act in different situations. I knew that climbing 150 feet above the gridiron wasn’t really all that hard or dangerous. I knew that I was a cautious climber and that I hadn’t actually done anything illegal (i.e., I didn’t damage any property in the process). Moreover, I knew that even though I was being a little wild at the time, on any other day I was normally just a regular kid who followed the rules. My mother didn’t have access to this information.

Additionally, from my perspective I could see the factors outside of myself (e.g., everyone’s hope to commemorate their last year with their life-long friends). My mom could only see me, the “actor,” and was oblivious to the surrounding circumstances.

Interestingly, my father, as my mischievous inspiration (viz., the Texas A&M cafeteria armadillo release of 1978), had access to the information and could see things from the perspective that my mother – a Filipino immigrant who attended an all girls Catholic school (with real live nuns and everything!) – could not. In some ways he was an “actor” just like me. Therefore, the actor-observer effect did not interfere with our fun the way it did with my mom and I.

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Jones, E., & Nisbett, R. (1987). The actor and the observer: Divergent perceptions of the causes of behavior. Attribution: Perceiving the causes of behavior (pp. 79-94). Morristown, NJ: General Learning Press.

Watson, D. (1982). The actor and the observer: How are their perceptions of causality divergent? Psychological Bulletin, 92, 682-700.

Lasting Impressions

[Post Script: 7/11/10, this entry is full of so many lies.. lol]

I fall for (romantically, not literally) good musicians easily and it takes a lot for me to get over them. I attribute this crazy tendency of mine to the primacy effect (Asch, 1946). The primacy effect is our tendency to place a greater weight on information that we receive earlier, rather than later. Essentially, first impressions count more than anything we find out later on about a person.

Once we have formed an impression of another person (or musician) it is easy to succumb to confirmation biases. Confirmation biases are our tendencies to (1) look for more information that agrees with our impression, (2) interpret any vague or unclear information in a way that it fits with our impressions, and (3) ignore any information that does not fit our impression.

To illustrate, I’ll let you in on my high school infatuation with Bob, the tambourine for The Nameless Band. The Nameless Band were a local ska band that I simply had to go listen to every time they played at Fitzgerald’s in Houston. The first time I saw Bob play I went weak in the knees and my heart went all fluttery just watching him.

Needless to say, my initial impression of Bob was a good one. From there I should have seen that it was all down hill, but due to my firmly solidified first impression of him such was not the case.

Because he was in a ska band – and I love ska music – I assumed that he would like the same bands as me, so I found out what his favorites were. They were, indeed, similar to my taste, which served to further reinforce my impression (or infatuation). This manner of unintentionally searching for information to confirm one’s expectations is called confirmatory hypothesis testing (Snyder & Swann, 1978). I didn’t think to ask about his favorite folk musicians; if I had, I would have found out information about him that didn’t support my he’s-so-perfect-for-me impression of him. In other words, because I expected Steve to be a certain kind of person, I asked questions about him that would verify my expectations without knowing it.

Similarly, I eventually began to talk to Bob, but occasionally he would do something rather mean (e.g., ignore me at a party or not respond to my emails). This should have served to sufficiently anger me and bring an end to his good impression. For years I was proved wrong time again; my belief that he was an insightful, charming, artist was discredited, but I still clung to the idea that my initial impression of him was correct – that he really was as awesome as he was the first time I saw him on stage. This tendency for individuals, such as myself, to hold onto their beliefs even after they have been proven wrong is called belief perseverance (Ross, Lepper, & Hubbard, 1975).

In the end, my little crush was, well, crushed. I got over Bob and many more after him, but not before suffering through the primacy effect and the confirmation biases that followed it. I’m now extremely happy with a non-musician with no social psychological concepts involved… I think.
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Asch, S. E. (1946). Forming impressions of personality. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 41, 258-290.

Ross, L., Lepper, M., & Hubbard, M. (1975). Perseverance in self-perception and social perception: Biased attributional processes in the debriefing paradigm. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32, 880-892.

Snyder, M., & Swann, W. B., Jr. (1978). Behavioral confirmation in social interaction: From social perception to social reality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 1202-1212.

Hello hello..

I suppose I'll just ramble a bit for my "welcome" post.

As I said in class, I worked 40-hour weeks scanning medical charts this summer, but I had the time to make a short film inspired by and set to the song "Brain Candy" by Kill Paradise. Watch it. Increase my hits. Make me famous.



It's definitely not my best work, but it's a cute song and it was fun to make. For a better example of my film-making capabilities check out the (embellished) story of my life:



Parts of it are true; others aren't. I'll let you guess which ones.