Science Gender Stereotype And Its Influence On Mental Rotation Ability Of Cross-Categorized Groups

Science gender stereotype means the stereotypical association of science in general with one gender(usually refer to males).Females account for less in both the field of scientific education and career,compared with males.The reason is that the inherent differences of biological factors between men and women,in addition,the science gender stereotype plays an important role in it.Therefore,researchers have explored the science gender stereotype and its impacts(namely stereotype thereat)on individuals from the implicit and explicit perspectives.However,previous studies on the cross-categorized groups like female science and male arts individuals are insufficient,and there are some other limitations including less strict of the participants selection and experiments operation.Therefore,this study explored the science-gender stereotype of female science and male arts students in experiment 1 through implicit and explicit tests,and explored the impacts of the science gender stereotype on female science and male arts students' mental rotation ability by activating the gender stereotype and the academic discipline stereotype respectively in experiment 2a and 2b.This study has obtained the following conclusions:(1)Male science students and female arts students have the implicit and explicit science gender stereotype.However,female science students only have the implicit science gender stereotype and do not have the explicit science gender stereotype;On the contrary,male arts students only have explicit science gender stereotype and do not have the implicit science gender stereotype.(2)There is no significant relationship between the implicit science gender stereotype and explicit science gender stereotype.(3)The MRT performance of male science students,female science students and female arts students improved significantly under activating the gender stereotype.However,there is no significant difference in the MRT performance of male arts students on the same condition.(4)There is no significant difference in the MRT performance of male science students,female science students and male arts students and female arts students,under activating the academic discipline stereotype.