On Gender Facilitation And The Mediation Of Attention Direction

When one is performing a task in the presence of opposite sex, the performance is usually different than in the presence of the same sex. This phenomenon, a special field of social facilitation, is referred to as"gender facilitation", which is first posed formally in 1989 by Shenghua Jin, a standing-out Chinese scholar. This phenomenon can be tentatively interpreted through one of or the combination of these theoretical constructs: drive theory, social cognitive theory, and the physipsychosocial model. This dissertation is conducted to probe into the characteristics of gender facilitation when 13—16 olds are performing a modified stroop word-color test,and the mediation of the subject's attention direction during the process of performing. The results are explained tentatively mainly through social cognitive theory.The first experiment purports to be a pilot study, and its results are as follows: in the course of task performing, (1) male subjects exhibit a medium gender facilitation, while female ones show a smaller one; (2) male's facilitation is mainly due to"doing more quickly", while female's mainly due to"doing more correctly", and partly due to"doing more quickly". This experiment serves as the basis of experiment 2.The second experiment, only involving male subjects and containing a new factor called"attention direction", is conducted to look into the mediation of this new cognitive factor. The results are as follows: (1) in the experimental condition of attention internally directed, there exists a significant gender facilitation; (2) in the condition of attention externally directed, however, only a far smaller facilitation is observed; (3) and the patterns of facilitation are along the similar line in the two experiments for the male performers, that is they do more quickly rather than more correctly.