Abstract
Prior studies have used the perspective of the social function of social power (such as how power affects interpersonal interaction between the powerful and the powerless) to explore how powerful people stereotype powerless people. In the present research, we further explored how high and low levels of social power affect occupational gender stereotyping from the perspective of how social power affects cognitive processing, that is, social categorization. We proposed that higher social power-primed participants, compared to low social power-primed participants, would be more inclined to use category-based representation and thus use stereotyping. In two studies, we investigated these effects and found that high social power, compared to low social power, increased occupational gender stereotyping in Chinese culture.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Explore related subjects
Discover the latest articles, news and stories from top researchers in related subjects.Notes
The results of a 2 (social power: high versus low) × 2 (occupations: stereotypical occupations versus neutral occupations) ANOVA was the same as the analysis in the text. The analysis revealed that the social power × occupation interaction was significant, F(1, 49) = 4.43, p < .05, \(\eta^{2}\) = .08. A simple effects analysis demonstrated that the scores on stereotypical occupations for the HSPP participants were significantly higher than the scores for the LSPP participants, F(1, 49) = 5.61, p < .05, \(\eta^{2}\) = .10. Alternatively, there were no significant differences between the scores on neutral occupations for the HSPP participants and the scores for the LSPP participants, F(1, 49) = .15, p > .10, \(\eta^{2}\) = .03.
References
Allport GW (1954) The nature of prejudice. Addison-Wesley, Reading
Bargh JA, Chartrand TL (2000) The mind in the middle: a practical guide to priming and automaticity research. In: Reis HT, Judd CM (eds) Handbook of research methods in social and personality psychology. Cambridge University Press, New York, pp 253–285
Bass BM (1998) Transformational leadership: individual, military and educational impact. Mahwah, Erlbaum
Bodenhausen GV, Kramer GP, Süsser K (1994) Happiness and stereotypic thinking in social judgment. J Personal Soc Psychol 66(4):621–632. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.66.4.621
Brewer MB (1988) A dual process model of impression formation. In: Srull TK, Wyer RS (eds) Advances in social cognition. Erlbaum, Hillsdale, pp 177–183
Brinol P, Petty RE, Valle C, Rucker DD, Becerra A (2007) The effects of message recipients’ power before and after persuasion: a self-validation analysis. J Personal Soc Psychol 93(6):1040–1050. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.93.6.1040
Chen S, Ybarra O, Kiefer AK (2004) Power and impression formation: the effect of power on the desire for morality and competence information. Soc Cognit 22(4):241–391. https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.22.4.391.38296
Claypool HM, Bernstein MJ (2014) Social exclusion and stereotyping: Why and when exclusion fosters individuation of others. J Personal Soc Psychol 106(4):571–589. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035621
De Dreu CKW, Van Kleef GA (2004) The influence of power on the information search, impression formation, and demands in negotiation. J Exp Soc Psychol 40(3):303–319. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2003.07.004
Dovidio JF, Evans N, Tyler RB (1986) Racial stereotypes: the contents of their cognitive representations. J Exp Soc Psychol 22(1):22–37. https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-1031(86)90039-9
Emerson RM (1962) Power-dependence relations. Am Soc Rev 27(1):31–41. https://doi.org/10.2307/2089716
Fiske ST (1993) Controlling other people: the impact of power on stereotyping. Am Psychol 48(6):621–628. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.48.6.621
Fiske ST (2001) Effects of power on bias: power explains and maintains individual, group, and societal disparities. In: Lee-Chai AY, Bargh JA (eds) The use and abuse of power: multiple perspectives on the causes of corruption. Psychology Press, New York, pp 181–193
Fiske ST, Dépret E (1996) Control, interdependence and power: understanding social cognition in its social context. Eur Rev Soc Psychol 7:31–61. https://doi.org/10.1080/14792779443000094
Fiske ST, Neuberg SL (1990) A continuum model of impression formation: from category-based to individuating processes as a function of information, motivation, and attention. In: Zanna MP (ed) Advances in experimental social psychology. Academic Press, New York, pp 1–74
Förster J (2009) Relations between perceptual and conceptual scope: How global versus local processing fits a focus on similarity versus dissimilarity. J Exp Psychol Gen 138(1):88–111. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014484
Goodwin SA, Operario D, Fiske ST (1998) Situational power and interpersonal dominance facilitate bias and inequality. J Soc Issues 54(4):677–698. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1998.tb01243.x
Goodwin SA, Gubin A, Fiske ST, Yzerbyt VY (2000) Power can bias impression processes: stereotyping subordinates by default and by design. Group Process Intergroup 3(3):227–256. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430200003003001
Guinote A (2007a) Power affects basic cognition: increased attentional inhibition and flexibility. J Exp Soc Psychol 43(5):685–697. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2006.06.008
Guinote A (2007b) Power and goal pursuit. Personal Soc Psychol B 33(8):1076–1087. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167207301011
Higgins ET (1996) Knowledge activation: accessibility, applicability, and stimulus salience. In: Higgins ET, Kruglanski AW (eds) Social psychology: handbook of basic principles. Guilford Press, New York, pp 133–168
Keltner D, Gruenfeld DH, Anderson C (2003) Power, approach, and inhibition. Psychol Rev 110(2):265–284. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.110.2.265
Lammers J, Stoker JI, Stapel DA (2009) Differentiating social and personal power opposite effects on stereotyping, but parallel effects on behavioral approach tendencies. Psychol Sci 20(12):1543–1549. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02479.x
Leyens JP, Dardenne B, Fiske ST (1998) Why and under what circumstances is a hypothesis-consistent testing strategy preferred in interviews? Br J Soc Psychol 37(3):259–274. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8309.1998.tb01171.x
McCrea SM, Wieber F, Myers AL (2012) Construal level mind-sets moderate self- and social stereotyping. J Personal Soc Psychol 102(1):51–68. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0026108
Müller F, Rothermund K (2014) What does it take to activate stereotypes? Simple primes don’t seem enough. Soc Psychol 45(3):187–193. https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-9335/a000183
Neely JH (1977) Semantic priming and retrieval from lexical memory: roles of inhibitionless spreading activation and limited capacity attention. J Exp Psychol Gen 106:226–254. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.106.3.226
Overbeck JR (2010) Concepts and historical perspectives on power. In: Guinote A, Vescio TK (eds) The social psychology of power. Guilford Press, New York, pp 19–45
Overbeck JR, Park B (2001) When power does not corrupt: superior individuation processes among powerful perceivers. J Personal Soc Psychol 81(4):549–565. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.81.4.549
Ranganath C, Rainer G (2003) Neural mechanisms for detecting and remembering novel events. Nat Rev Neurosci 4(3):193–202. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn1052
Rucker DD, Galinsky AD (2009) Conspicuous consumption versus utilitarian ideals: How different levels of power shape consumer behavior. J Exp Soc Psychol 45(3):549–555. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn1052
Smith PK, Trope Y (2006) You focus on the forest when you’re in charge of the trees: power priming and abstract information processing. J Personal Soc Psychol 90(4):578–596. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.90.4.578
Stephan WG, Stephan CW (1993) Cognition and affect in stereotyping: parallel interactive networks. In: Mackie DM, Hamilton DH (eds) Affect, cognition, and stereotyping: interactive processes in group perception. Academic Press, San Diego, pp 111–136
Theeuwes J (1994) Stimulus-driven capture and attentional set: selective search for color and visual abrupt onsets. J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 20:799–806. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-1523.20.4.799
Torelli CJ, Shavitt S (2011) The impact of power on information processing depends on cultural orientation. J Exp Soc Psychol 47(5):959–967. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2011.04.003
Van Dijke M, Poppe M (2006) Striving for personal power as a basis for social power dynamics. Eur J Soc Psychol 36(4):537–556. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.351
Wang X, Zhang J, Xu ZY, Xu Z (2008) Risk dominance strategy in imperfect information multi-player game. In: Proceedings of the 8th international conference on intelligent systems design and applications, vol 2, pp 596–601. https://doi.org/10.1109/isda.2008.228
White M, White G (2006) Implicit and explicit occupational gender stereotypes. Sex Roles 55:259–266. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-006-9078-z
White M, Kruczek T, Brown M (1998) Occupational sex stereotypes among college students. J Vocat Behav 34:289–298. https://doi.org/10.1016/0001-8791(89)90021-3
White KR, Crites SL Jr, Taylor JH, Corral G (2009) Wait, What? Assessing stereotype incongruities using the N400 ERP component. Soc Cognit Affect Neurosci 4:191–198. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsp004
Yantis S (1998) Control of visual attention. In: Pashler H (ed) Attention. Psychology Press, Hove, UK
Zhang X, Li Q, Sun S, Zuo B (2018) The time course from gender categorization to gender-stereotype activation. Soc Neurosci 13(1):52–60. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470919.2016.1251965
Funding
This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (31760287, 31400902, 31571147) and the Humanity and Social Science Youth Foundation of the Ministry of Education of China (14YJC190025).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding authors
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.
Additional information
Handling editor: Concetta Pastorelli (Sapienza University of Rome); Reviewers: Two reviewers who prefer to remain anonymous.
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Zhang, X., Li, Q. & Zuo, B. Higher social power increases occupational gender stereotyping in Chinese culture. Cogn Process 20, 339–347 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-018-0899-9
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-018-0899-9