Implicit Social Cognition: Sex - Leadership Stereotypes

Since Greenwald and Banaji brought the definite concept of implicit social cognition in 1995, implicit social cognition became one focus in social cognition field. Being the main content of implicit social cognition study, implicit stereotype study has made a great progress with new research methods based on past concerning results, however , still exists much questions. Because there is few studies of"gender------leadership" stereotype, it is the study object in this dissertation, whichcan help us understand the unconscious process mechanism of implicit stereotype.This study uses implicit association test(IAT) developed by Greenwald to imploreimplicit "gendei------leadership" stereotype, its first goal is to study "gendei------leadership" stereotype; secondly, we want to use implicit memory researching method study same object to know if implicit association is a valid way in implicit social cognition field. Otherwise, we investigate the malleability. This study has scholastic value and social meaning, and includes five parts.The first part contains the study background and hypothesis . it mainly introduces implicit social study' history , study methods, study content, and discuss implicit association test , then according to the concerning research and social phenomenon, bring the study problems.The second part consists of three experiments which is to study "gendei------leadership"stereotype..The first experiment uses implicit association . it finds our that there isimplicit "gendei------leadership" stereotype in participants. Compared the correlationbetween implicit association and explicit test, the link is very weak which indicates implicit stereotype and explicit is independent cognition constuct.The second experiment uses a implicit memory study method , the results proves that there is experimental disassociation phenomenon between recognition test and preference test in participant, which is same as the first experiment. It is said that the implicit "gendei------leadership" stereotype exists surely.The third experiment uses mental counter—stereotype imagination to test implicit stereotype malleability, the results indicate that the implicit "gender— leadership"stereotype can be changed, but is not avoidable.The third part is study conclusion. Through the results of three experiments, it discuss implicit "gendei—leadership"stereotype.The fourth part is the whole discuss, it analyzes the mechanism of implicit association aspects and so on .The fifth part is about the consideration of this study. According to the views of psycho—analysis, we analyze the concerning results and the tendency of the concerning study.