An Experimental Study On Implicit Occupational Gender Stereotype

As an important field in implicit cognitive research, the study on implicit stereotype has focused on the research of gender,race,age and occupation, etc.. Over a long time, the classification of occupation has been influenced by the sex-typed stereotype, but other factors such as capability,knowledge,interest,personality have been neglected. As a result, people hold a firmly view that some work fit male only and others fit female only. This fixed, rigid and single over-simplified view of occupational classification will result in a rigid impression of occupations, and will, therefore, influence people's career choice and professional development in the future. This study on occupational gender stereotype using GNAT is aimed at exploring the existed form, influential factors, the development of occupational sexual stereotyping and occupational gender stereotype how to influence people's career choice with the expectation of leading people to choose and develop their future career in a more correct way.There are two experiments in this study, named experiment One and experiment Two. Using occupations (masculine, feminine) and name (masculine, feminine) as experimental materials in GNAT, experiment One is to test the hypothesis that implicit occupational gender stereotype exists and if it is confirmed, to explore its developing tendency; At the same time, this experiment want to exam the GNAT's effect. Using occupations (masculine, feminine) and adjective (positive, negative) as experimental materials with the same method, experiment Two aims at testing whether implicit occupational gender stereotype also exists with the form of different evaluate giving to different occupation and the degree of this stereotype influencing people, also exploring whether educational status will influence occupational gender stereotype. The experimental results showed: (1) The implicit occupational gender stereotype existed significantly among people. As a whole, the strength of male's occupational stereotype was significantly stronger than that of female's, and the limitation of male towards the female occupations was more strict than that of female towards themselves; (2) The sex-typing of occupation decreases gradually with age. However, a relative increase was observed among the adults represented by university teachers; (3) Educational status would significantly influence occupational gender stereotype; (4) Occupational gender stereotype existed with two forms and its content included two aspects; (5) Occupational gender stereotype influenced people deeply.