Food-gender Stereotype Content And Impression Evaluation

Individuals hold different social regulation about food and dietary behavior in various cultures;the matching degree between individuals and relevant social regulations forms food-gender stereotype,which affects people's impression evaluation towards individuals.Relevant research in western countries is in exploratory stage,and most studies focused on stereotype content about males' and females' preferable food.Based on Stereotype Content Model,this study examines the content of explicit and implicit food-gender stereotype and people's impression evaluation towards(counter)food-gender stereotypical individuals and its evaluation mechanism,which fills a gap in this field,especially under Chinese culture.This study also gives references for individuals' impression management through food choice.Study 1 works out five typical masculine food and five typical feminine food through open questions.Study 1A adopts questionnaire to examine whether individuals hold food-gender stereotype,and the result shows that both sexes hold food-gender stereotype that males prefer masculine food and females prefer feminine food.Study 1B explores implicit stereotype through sematic priming paradigm.2(target gender)*2(participant gender)*2(sematic consistency)repeated measurement indicates that participant gender*sematic consistency interactive effect is significant,both sexes hold explicit food-gender stereotype,but only females hold implicit food-gender stereotype.Study 2A explicitly examines people's differentiated evaluation about competence,warmth,acceptance and friendship willingness towards(counter)food-gender stereotypical targets through questionnaires and t test shows that people hold different impression evaluation toward these four types of targets.Study 2B adopts Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure to test implicit evaluations and t test results reveal that both sexes hold implicit evaluation towards counter-stereotypical male.Study 3 compiles materials about socioeconomic status in pre-study,then combines them with four types of(counter)food-gender stereotypical targets to form priming materials.The dependent variables are competence and warmth.2(socioeconomic status)*2(stereotypical or counter-stereotypical)*2(target gender)*2(participant gender)repeated measurement shows that socioeconomic status*stereotypical or counter-stereotypical*target gender interactive effect is significant,which verifies socioeconomic status' moderation effect in the process of impression evaluation.The conclusions are:(1)Food-gender stereotype has cross-cultural consistence:male and female explicitly holds the stereotypes of "males prefer masculine food,females prefer feminine food."(2)Though males don't have implicit food-gender stereotype,males explicitly show their stereotypes for protecting male identity.(3)To maintain food-gender stereotype,individuals are inclined to give counter gender stereotypical targets more negative evaluation and hold more negative impression evaluation towards(counter)food-gender stereotypical male targets.(4)Social economic status moderates people's competence evaluation towards(counter)food-gender stereotypical targets.