The Intervention Study Of College Students’ Implicit Gender Stereotypes

This paper uses experimental methods to explore the general characteristics ofcollege students’ gender stereotypes and further examines whether anti-stereotypeimagination and emotion would impact such stereotypes. Taking into consideration ofthe current job market, this study also reflects the negative impact of genderstereotypes on female employment from a psychological point of view.This study comprises3experiments:In the first experiment,60college students were randomly selected to test theexistence of the implicit gender stereotypes–male students associated with positiveemployment outlooks while the female students with negative employment prospects.The results show that it is more likely to link male names with positive words andfemale names are more readily associated with negative words. It suggests that implicitgender stereotypes are present among college students. Furthermore, the genderstereotypes differ significantly if comparing the gender of the subjects, but it isinsignificant for the majors of the subjects.The second experiment studied the impact of anti-stereotype on the colleaguestudents’ implicit gender stereotypes on90college students, using a3(differentimagination conditions: stereotype imagination/anti-stereotype imagination/neutral)by2(gender: male/female) between-subjects experimental design. The results showthat the implicit gender stereotypes in the anti-stereotype condition are effectivelysuppressed.The third experiment used a2(reading material or mathematical operation) by2(positive or negative emotions) experimental design with a sample size of100collegestudents. The dependent variable is the values in the implicit association test. Theresults show that in the absence of anti-stereotype, the subjects under the negativeemotional states demonstrate weaker gender stereotypes compared with those in thepositive mood; whereas with the anti-stereotype, the gender stereotypes tend to begreater among the subjects with negative emotions than those with positive emotions.