Comments | engineer_chicks: STUDY: "Interacting with sexist men triggers social identity threat among female engineers"

ms_geekette in engineer_chicks

STUDY: "Interacting with sexist men triggers social identity threat among female engineers"

Oct 03, 2009 02:15

How do you feel about the statements/data presented in the following abstract? (my thoughts are behind the cut at the end of this entry)

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Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
2009 Volume 96, Issue 6 ( Read more... )

Comments 6

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ms_geekette October 3 2009, 14:08:53 UTC

I guess my issue is that, from the limited info I can currently glean from the abstract, apparently female engineers can "spell" ok after being exposed to sexism, but not "add" ok in a similar circumstance?

So yeah, I certainly want to get my mitts on this paper and see how their tests were set up.

fauxklore October 3 2009, 12:47:31 UTC

I would not find it particularly surprising that being in an environment that undermines one's confidence would affect one's performance.

Some of us are perfectly capable of saying "ha! I'll show them" but plenty of people are not.

The two questions I have are:

1) what exactly was the behavior of the sexist men? It says they acted in "a dominant and sexually interested way towards an ostensible female classmate." That's pretty non-specific. (And what do they mean by "an ostensible female classmate"? Either the classmate was or wasn't female or the woman was or wasn't a classmate.)

2) What actions, if any, are being recommended as a result of this study? If it led to greater vigilance about harassment, that could be a good thing.

ms_geekette October 3 2009, 14:58:40 UTC

"I would not find it particularly surprising that being in an environment that undermines one's confidence would affect one's performance."

If the test subjects were exposed to sexist behavior over a prolonged period of time, THEN I could believe aspects this study, but the abstract sorta gives the impression that it was a "one-time event" sorta thing. Losing your confidence to the point of your work being affected negatively does not necessarily occur overnight. And a person can be led to feel inferior and it not be tied to gender...but does "feelings of inferiority" equal "decreased testing ability"?

I guess I don't totally buy the whole "FEELING 'stupid'" leading to "BEING 'stupid' in engineering subjects *ONLY*." ;-)

Hopefully I'll get my hands on this paper today or tomorrow and perhaps some of our questions will be answered...or at least clarified a bit!

mrs_dragon October 3 2009, 17:03:52 UTC

I guess I don't totally buy the whole "FEELING 'stupid'" leading to "BEING 'stupid' in engineering subjects *ONLY*." ;-)

I suppose it depends on what they were made to feel stupid about. I could see being rattled on a test if I've very recently been given cause to feel like an idiot. (It's like those times you make a mistake and then feel so stupid that you botch trying to fix it.)

Eh, I'd have to see more to know how I feel about it.

As a general rule though you have to remember that the people who conduct these studies are not female engineers, so often they are using stereotypes to formulate their hypotheses and to interpret their results.

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Thread 5

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ms_geekette October 6 2009, 15:40:52 UTC

Late to the party here, but I think you come at this from a different perspective than maybe I do with your background. I guess I'm not a fan of the blanket statements that the abstract puts forth. (And, after reading the full paper once, I still have some problems with claims put forth.)

I was trying to figure out *why* the abstract statement bothered me, and I guess it boils down to I'm tired of the "women are weak/inferior/what have you" insinuation. I'm sure this is not the intent of the study and the authors *at all*, but that is how it struck me, at first.

"It is already well-documented in the literature on stereotype threat that women who are even reminded of their gender (let alone treated badly because of it) before a math test end up doing worse on the test (and men end up doing better), and that it affects high-ability women more (and this isn't just a phenomenon of women - it applies to any subgroup of people that are high-ability in an area where their larger group, like gender or race, is stereotyped as being bad ( ... )