Gender Self-Stereotyping

[differenceblog]

The ability to pick and choose among stereotyped attributes in order to preserve self-esteem is called "selective self-stereotyping." Oswald and Lindstedt (2006) found differences in which gender personality stereotypes men and women applied to themselves. Men showed no difference between how much they thought positive stereotypes were true of

Comments

[charlycrash]

Weird. If i'd had to predict i'd have said it was the exact opposite. Men seem far quicker to say 'all men are bastards.. except me', whereas women are far quicker to turn things into being about 'all women', or saying 'all women will think you're an ass' rather than 'I think you're an ass'. Also q.v. the gender difference in relational aggression, which seems a related phenomenon.

[mycrust]

I'm not too surprised that there were so many negative male stereotypes.

I have this completely unsupported pet theory that the biggest difference between how men and women here is not that negative stereotypes about women predominate. Rather, I think it's that men accept negative stereotypes and say "well, that's just the way men are", whereas women believe in negative stereotypes about themselves but are also convinced that they're supposed to be different.

[astrogeek01]

I'm not surprised that women think ill of other women, but I'm surprised that women think *better* of themselves than they think of other women. Hmm. I may have to think about this a little more...