The Gender Stereotype Effects On The College Students’ Spontaneous Trait Inference

Personality traits are one of the core concepts of psychology and whichimplying the cross-situational consistency or temporal stability. In everydaysocial interactions, this feature normally enables people inference thepersonality traits according to the behavioral information of others, thusforming the impression to the other party. When conscious trait inferencebecome habitual people will inference the traits automatically, namely thespontaneous trait inference. Studies have pointed out that automatic socialcognitive process happened is not all or nothing, but there are conditions.Stereotypes may have an important influence on the automatic socialcognitive process and this influence is unintentional and needs littlecognitive resources. Spontaneous trait inference is an important automaticsocial cognitive process and gender stereotype is a kind of common socialphenomenon, so gender stereotypes are likely to influence the process ofspontaneous trait inference. The foreign existing researches havepreliminary discussion to the effects of stereotypes on spontaneous traitinference，but systematic researches on the effects of gender stereotypes onspontaneous trait inference is still a minority.In this study, on the basis of making a more detailed literature reviewof the prior researches, the existing problems in this field were analyzed.Based on those, the study has the following two purposes, one is to explorethe problem that whether college students in our country could inferencetraits spontaneously by the recognition probe paradigm and the reactiontimes of correct rejection was used as index. The gender stereotype effectsexisted in college students’ spontaneous trait inference was further examined.The other one is to explore the influence factors of the gender stereotypeeffects existed in college students’ spontaneous trait inference by therecognition probe paradigm and the reaction times of correct rejection wasused as index.Through the collation and analysis of experimental data, we draw thefollowing conclusions:1. In the Chinese culture background, the college students of ourcountry could make spontaneous trait inference to the trait sentences.2. Gender stereotypes could influence the process of college students’ spontaneous trait inference, the influence showed that they makespontaneous trait inference for neutral and stereotype-consistent traitsentences, but don’t make spontaneous trait inference for allstereotype-inconsistent trait sentences.3. Enhance the connection between gender stereotypes and actors couldinfluence the gender stereotypes effects on the college students’ spontaneoustrait inference. The influence showed that with presented the category labelssupraliminally and told the directivity of the category labels, Andsubjects’ process of spontaneous trait inference were facilitated to someextent by stereotype-consistent informations prior to the behavior.4. With different patterns of presenting the category labels, genderstereotypes could make different effect on adolescents’ spontaneous traitinference. When presented category labels subliminally, subjects makespontaneous trait inference for neutral and stereotype-consistent traitsentences, but don’t make spontaneous trait inference for allstereotype-inconsistent trait sentences.When presented category labels supraliminally, subjects makespontaneous trait inference for neutral and stereotype-consistent traitsentences, but don’t make spontaneous trait inference for allstereotype-inconsistent trait sentences. And responses onstereotype-consistent trait sentences were significantly slower thanresponses neutral ones, that is stereotype-consistent informations enhancedthe process of subjects’ spontaneous trait inference.