Author Preprint: Hegarty, P. & Pratto, F. (2001). The effects of social category norms and
stereotypes on explanations for intergroup differences. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 80, 223-235.
Abstract
A 2-stage model of the construction of explanations for differences between groups is
presented. Category norms affect which of 2 groups becomes "the effect to be explained,"
and stereotypes shape attributions about that group. In 3 experiments, 288 participants
wrote explanations for differences between gay and straight men. Explanations focused on
gay men who were also judged to have more mutable attributes. However, these effects
were not correlated. Participants focused explanations on straight men when explicitly
instructed to do so (Experiment 1). Explanations focused on both groups equally when the
gay men constituted the numerically larger sample, when gay men were more typical of the
overarching category (i.e., people with AIDS) than straight men, or when more straight men
were described as performing the behavior (Experiment 2). Stereotype-consistent
information prompted more essentialist references and fewer reconstructive references to
gay men than did stereotype-inconsistent information (Experiment 3). The relevance of this
model for theories of norms, stereotypes, and for the conduct of social science is discussed.
Author Note
Peter Hegarty, Department of Psychology, Stanford University; Felicia Pratto, Department of
Psychology, University of Connecticut.
This research was completed as part of a doctoral dissertation by Peter Hegarty under the
supervision of Felicia Pratto. The research was partially supported by a graduate research
award from the Dean of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University. We thank
Stephanie Arvai, Scott Clay- pool, Christine McCarroll, Jason Sanchez, Lisa Talbot, Kelly
White, Pete Yu, and Tricia Yuen for research assistance.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Peter Hegarty, who is now at
the Department of Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work, College of Staten
Island of the City University of New York, 2800 Victory Boulevard, Building 4S, Staten
Island, New York 10314.
The effects of social category norms and stereotypes on explanations for intergroup
differences.
Habits of explanation construction are of clear importance to psychologists and
philosophers alike. Explanations are usually defined as claims about antecedent causes of
consequent events, and antecedents that covary with consequent events are typically dignified
as causes of those events (Cook & Campbell, 1979; Mackie, 1974). Psychologists have
studied explanations to elucidate such social-cognitive phenomena as norms (Kahneman &
Miller, 1986; Miller, Taylor, & Buck, 1991), causal attributions (Einhorn & Hogarth,
1986; D. J. Hilton, 1990; D. J. Hilton, Smith, & Kim, 1995; Kanazawa, 1992), and
counterfactual thoughts (Mandel & Lehman, 1996; Roese, 1997; Roese, Hur, & Pennington,
1999). The ways that explanations are habitually constructed and the ways that they deviate from
nonnative models have generated insight into these and other social-cognitive domains (see
Anderson, Krull, & Weiner, 1996, for a review). Our research builds on these theoretical
insights and focuses on how explanations for empirical differences between social groups are
constructed.
Explanations of both the actions of individuals and the differences between groups also
elucidate intergroup phenomena such as stereotyping (Hewstone, 1990; Pettigrew, 1979),
essentialism (Yzerbyt, Rocher, & Schadron, 1997), and the legitimation of social
inequality (Jost & Banaji, 1994; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). Social scientists also generate
explanations of group differences, and many have debated the degree to which their
explanations contribute to intergroup processes (see Azibo, 1988; S. L. Bern,1993; De
Cecco & Elia, 1993; De Cecco & Parker, 1995; Eagly, 1995; Graham, 1992; Hare-Mustin
& Marecek, 1990; Kitzinger, 1994; Mednick, 1989). Because the public understands
scientific explanations to be objective and nonideological, explanations may provide forceful
resources to essentialize stereotypes and legitimate prejudice. For example, neofascists are
clearly racist, but they are also motivated to present their ideologies as objective, and they cite
psychologists' studies on race and IQ to do so (Billig, 1991). The present research
examines how explanations of empirical intergroup differences are habitually constructed.
We argue that such explanations are influenced by stereotypes and category norms
(Kahneman & Miller, 1986) and tend toward essentialist thinking (cf. Yzerbyt et al.,
1997). Our model presumes that category norms first affect which of two groups is taken
as "the effect to be explained" and that stereotypes next shape the attri- butional content of
an explanation. In the usual course of events, these processes lead to explanations that
focus on the essential features of the group taken as the effect to be explained. We
present three experiments that instantiate this model.
Norm Theory and Explanations for Intergroup Differences
The first stage of our model examines how explanations of group differences come to
focus on the attributes of some groups more than other groups. We build on norm theory
(Kahneman & Miller, 1986), which describes how stimuli and category labels create
implicit norms, thereby bringing their own frames of refer- ence into being. Kahneman and
Miller (1986) argued that stimuli and category labels act as memory "probes" that recruit
real and counterfactual exemplars from long-term memory. Probes and exemplars are
represented by features, and features are defined as specific values of attributes. The
features of the recruited exem- plars are aggregated, creating norms that are defined in
terms of attribute ranges. The theory hypothesizes that features of probes that fall beyond
such norms become available and surprising, are taken as the focus of explanations, and are
perceived as mutable. Most norm theory research on explanation has focused on
stimulus norms and the question of whether atypical actions that are mutated by
counterfactual thinking are also dignified as causes of event outcomes. Early research
suggested that this was so (Kahneman & Miller, 1986; Lipe, 1991; Wells & Gavanski,
1989). However, Mandel and Lehman (1996) observed that actions mu- tated in
counterfactual thinking are typically considered to be the actions that might prevent a
negative outcome but not those that are identified as causes of that outcome. Similarly,
N'gbala and Branscombe (1995) found that actions mutated during counterfac- tual thinking
were not necessarily blamed for those negative out- comes. Branscombe, N'gbala,
Kobrynowicz, and Wann (1997) argued that the mutation of events and attributions for those
events are separate processes. These authors showed that the choice of action to mutate to
undo an outcome is relatively consistent and not affected by social biases. However,
explanations of that event were strongly influenced by self-serving and in-group-serving
biases. Finally, Roese et al. (1999) found that additive counterfac- tuals (which mutated an
inaction) typically focus on sufficient causes of events, whereas subtractive counterfactuals
(which mu- tated an action) typically focus on necessary causes of events. Roese et al.'s
results expand on previous studies (e.g., Mandel & Lehman, 1996; N'gbala &
Branscombe, 1995) on explanation content and event mutability, which have focused
largely on sub- tractive counterfactuals and necessary causes of negative events. In contrast,
Kahneman and Miller's (1986) claims about cate- gory norms have received little research
attention. Norm theory postulates that when people encounter a reference to a category,
they recruit category members to instantiate a category norm. Researchers have
hypothesized that typical and more recently mentioned category members are more likely
to be included in the category norm. Miller et al. (1991) tested this hypothesis linking
typicality and the contents of category norms. They showed that when asked to think of a
typical voter, most people first call to mind a male exemplar. However, when asked to
explain gender gaps in voting behavior, participants referenced more attributes of women,
and most judged women's voting behavior to be more mutable than men's. Miller et al.
(1991) argued that category norms for voters are constituted by male exemplars, such that
the attributes of women voters fall beyond these norms, are rendered mutable, and become
available as explanations of group differ- ences. Indeed, such "androcentrism" is
common (S. L. Bern, 1993); both attitudes and stereotypes have been found to be more
heavily influenced by male exemplars than by female exemplars (e.g., Black & Stevenson,
1984; Eagly & Kite, 1987; Haddock, Zanna, & Esses, 1993).
These findings prompt the questions of how one social group becomes more normative than
another and whether or not that group is normative in all contexts. Miller et al. (1991,
Experiment 3) found that female exemplars constituted the norm for the category elementary
school teachers. Explanations for gender differences within this category focused about
equally on men and women, and attributes of male teachers were judged to be more
mutable than were those of their female counterparts. These findings demonstrate the
importance of category typicality but also raise the question of the importance of relative
group size in determining normativity. Miller et al. (1991) noted that categories in which
women are the typical exemplars always contain a majority of women, yet categories for
which men are typical do not necessarily contain more men. Furthermore, McGill and Klein
(1995) suggested that higher status groups are perceived to have less mutable attributes than
are lower status groups, overall. Miller et al.'s (1991) Experiment 3, using a female-typical
social category, mitigated but did not reverse the usual focus of explanations on women's
attributes.' Thus, a gender-linked characteristic such as status may well be a determinant of
normativity. Thus, category typicality may be only one of many determinants of explanation
content.
Our model presumes that the determination of one group as an "effect to be explained" is
influenced by category norms. However, our research goes beyond Miller et al.'s (1991) in
three regards. In addition to category typicality, we examine majority and minority status
as determinants of category normativity. Second, Miller et al. (1991) assumed that
category typicality first determines mutability and that mutability in turn determines
explanation content, but they provided no direct evidence of such mediation. Given that
subsequent research has questioned this link in other domains (e.g., Mandel & Lehman,
1996; N'gbala & Branscombe, 1995), we chose to assess this link empirically. Finally, the
studies reported by Miller et al. (1991) used stereotype-irrelevant gender differences.
The second stage of our model describes how stereotypes further constrain the content of
explanations of intergroup differences.
Stereotypes and Explanations
Norm theory describes how one group is selected as the effect to be explained, but
researchers have not explored the implications of this finding for stereotyping and attribution
processes. When people explain behavior, dispositional attributions predominate (Jones &
Harris, 1967). However, this tendency is moderated by the stereotype relevance of the
behavior. Several lines of research show that such stereotype-consistent information is
more likely to be attributed to an underlying disposition and to be generalized to the entire
stereotyped group than is stereotype-inconsistent information (Allport, 1954; Jackson,
Sullivan, & Hodge, 1993; Maass, Salvi, Arcuri, & Semin, 1989; Pettigrew, 1979;
Sanbonmatsu, Akimoto, & Gibson, 1994; Wilder, Simon, & Faith, 1996; see Fiske,
1998; J. L. Hilton & von Hippel, 1996, for reviews). However, most research on
stereotyping has involved judgments of individual targets who have been identified as
members of particular social groups. Such methods reveal little about the processes through
which particular groups are selected as targets of attributional attention. Our model draws
on stereotyping re- search but further claims that attributional effects depend on the prior
effects of category norms. We argue that attributions about the group dignified as the
effect to be explained, but not attributions about the group deemed to be normative, are
mediated by stereotypes. Thus, stereotypes are exercised in regard to marked groups
more than in regard to unmarked groups, because category norms are more likely to lead
the attributes of marked groups to be perceived as surprising and available. As our
model assumes that the effects of category norms are primary and those of stereotypes are
secondary, we predict that the stereotype relevance of the differences described will not
affect which groups are selected as the effect to be explained.
We used Miller et al.'s (1991) methods to test our claims about stereotyping. Although
we are not the first to assert that stereo- types influence attributions, previous work on
attribution has been criticized for constraining participants' responses and compromising
ecological validity (e.g., Antaki & Leudar, 1987; Edwards & Potter, 1993; D. J. Hilton,
1990). Hewstone (1990) has suggested an alternative, arguing that open-ended methods
and content coding fitted to the particular domain of interest are the best means of
observing the effects of stereotypes on attributions. Thus, although Miller et al. (1991) did
not examine stereotypes, their methods are well-suited for examining how stereotypes
affect the attributional content of explanations.
Empirical Differences Between Sexual Orientation Groups
Whereas previous research on category norms has focused on gender (e.g., McGill,
1998; McGill & Klein, 1995; Miller et al., 1991), we examined explanation
construction in regard to sexual orientation. This domain first allowed us to examine
category typicality and relative group size as causes of normativity; hetero- sexuality is
culturally constructed as a central or typical component of masculinity norms in
contemporary American culture, in which these experiments were conducted (Herek,
1986; Kimmel, 1997). However, straight men also constitute a statistical majority of all
men in that culture. Two of the three experiments focus on the controversial claim that
straight men recall more gender- conforming childhood experiences than gay men do (cf.
Bailey & Zucker, 1995; Bell, Weinberg, & Hammersmith, 1981; D. J. Bem, 1996, 1998;
Paul, 1993; Peplau, Garnets, Spalding, Conley, & Veniegas, 1998; Ross, 1980). As these
empirical results are ste- reotype relevant (cf. Kite & Deaux, 1987; Martin, 1990), these
two experiments allowed us to test the second stage of our model. Furthermore, social
cognition has been criticized for its removal from real world concerns (e.g., Sampson,
1981), and studies of norms have been criticized for their reliance on trivial vignettes
(Davis, Lehman, Wortman, Silver, & Thompson, 1995; Roese & Olson, 1995). To
avoid such criticisms, we chose to make our studies relevant to a real, ongoing
scientific controversy.
The Present Research
The three experiments below test different aspects of our model. Experiment 1 examines
whether Miller etal.'s (1991) claims about category norms and explanations can be
extended from gender to sexual orientation. Experiment 2 also focuses on the first stage
of the model and examines the effects of category typicality and majority status on
explanations. Experiment 3 tests both stages of the model, examining both how gay
men become the effect to be explained, whereas straight men are taken as the norm, and
how stereotypes affect attributions about gay men.
Experiment 1: Norms, Explanations, and Instruction Explicitness
In Experiment I, we aim to extend previous claims about category norms from
gaps between genders to gaps within a gender by presenting participants with
stereotype-consistent results and asking them to explain these results. Our model
predicts that category norms that are constructed on-line render the at- tributes of
atypical groups available and that this is why they become the effect to be
explained. However, there are many popular stereotypes of gay men (cf. Simon, 1998)
and fewer about straight men. A focus of explanations on gay men may result from
participants' greater explicit "knowledge" about gay men than about straight men.
Alternatively, stereotypes about gay men may block all other possible explanations of
these results, including those that refer to straight men's attributes (cf. Sanbonmatsu et
al., 1994). However, our model predicts that explanation content is determined by the
availability of the atypical group's attributes. Thus, explanations typically ought to
focus on the attributes of gay men, but participants also ought to be able to construct
explanations about straight men when required to do so.
Method
Participants. Twenty-nine female students and 13 male students en- rolled in a social
psychology class at the University of Connecticut par- ticipated in this experiment as
volunteers (mean age = 20.5 years, range = 19 to 25 years).
Materials. Two forms of a one-page questionnaire titled "Reasoning About Childhood
Differences" were constructed. Both questionnaires pre- sented the following empirical
result:
Interview studies show that homosexual and heterosexual men have very different
childhood experiences. When asked about the activities they enjoyed in childhood and
the jobs they thought about doing when they were grown up, heterosexual men describe
about fifty percent more male-typed activities (such as football and baseball) and jobs
(such as construction work) than homosexual men.
This verbal description was accompanied by a bar chart with sexual orientation on the
abscissa and number of childhood experiences on the ordinate. The implicit-instructions
form of the questionnaire continued with the item "Explain why you think this difference
was observed." The explicit-instructions form of the questionnaire continued with the item
"Drawing on your knowledge of heterosexual men, explain why you think this difference
was observed." Next, a mutability item was presented, as in Miller et a!. (1991): "If this
difference were to go away under certain conditions, which group do you think would be
most likely to change?" followed by the group labels heterosexual men and homosexual
men.
Procedure. Participants were randomly assigned to experimental conditions and were
supervised as they completed the materials individually in class time. All explanations were
transcribed verbatim. Two raters who were unaware of the experimental condition and
hypothesis coded each explanation for references to each group. Two ratings were required
for each participant, as each participant produced a number of references to gay and to
straight men. Interrater reliability was calculated separately for references to each group
and was high overall (r = .98 for references both to gay and to straight men). The raters
agreed on 75 of the 82 ratings, and disagreements were resolved by discussion.
Results
Explanations. We performed analysis of variance (ANOVA) on the number of attributes
referenced, with group referenced (gay men vs. straight men) as a within-subject factor and
instruction type (implicit vs. explicit) as a between-subjects factor. There were no main effects,
both Fs < 1, but a significant interaction was observed, F(l, 40) = 8.25,p < .01. This
interaction was due to the low number of references to straight men in the implicitinstructions condition. Significantly more references to gay men than to straight men were
produced in the implicit condition, and more references to straight men were produced in the
explicit condition than in the implicit condition (see Table 1). In all experiments, except
where otherwise stated, the post hoc test we used was Tukey's honestly significant
difference test, with an alpha level of .05.
Mutability. Two participants did not complete the mutability item. We computed a chisquare on the basis of the number of the remaining participants who judged each group more
likely to change (see Table 1). Contrary to our predictions, we observed a nonsignificant
tendency to rate straight men more likely to change, chi-square (1, N = 40)= 0.53.
Discussion
Participants who read implicit instructions focused the content of their explanations on gay
men more than on straight men by a ratio of about 3:1. Participants who were explicitly
instructed to focus on straight men significantly increased the number of refer- ences to
straight men. Paradoxically, participants constructed more even-handed explanations if they
were asked to consider the par- ticular attributes of the more typical group. This experiment
demonstrates that people can construct explanations that focus on straight men but do not
habitually do so.
The explicit instructions shifted the content of the explanations in other ways, too. A rater
who was unaware of both the study hypotheses and the experimental manipulation coded
each of the explanations as reconstructive (i.e., suggesting that the differences were due to
selective recall in adulthood), dispositionalist (i.e., suggesting the differences were due to
internal entities such as traits, preferences, or biological factors), or situationist (i.e.,
suggesting that the differences were due to situational factors such as norms, stereotypes, or
peer pressure). Each explanation could be coded within more than one category.
Reconstructive references were rare overall (N = 2). Most of the explanations in the
implicit- instructions condition contained dispositionalist and situationist content (N = 16
and 15, respectively). Whereas most of the explanations in the explicit-instructions condition
were situationist (N = 16), few were dispositionalist (N = 6). This may be due to the fact
that participants generally used dispositionalist explana- tions when referring to gay men
and situationist explanations when referring to straight men, often in the same explanation
(e.g., "Heterosexual males are forced into doing more male activities. It is a social norm for
males to fit into male type activities. Whereas homosexual males are better at female type
activities").
The results of Experiment 1 suggest that explanations can focus on an atypical group in the
absence of judgments that that group's attributes are more mutable. However, this
experiment does not provide strong evidence against Miller et al.'s (1991) claim that
mutability mediates the relationship between category typicality and explanation content.
Differences between sexual orientation gaps and gender gaps may have rendered the use of
Miller et al.'s (1991) mutability measure unsuitable in the present experiment. One
participant who did not answer the mutability item wrote that she "felt uncomfortable"
answering it. More generally, participants may have been reticent to rate gay men "most
likely to change" because of an implied endorsement of antisocial efforts at mutating gay
men's sexual orientation. Mindful of participants who might infer that mutability items
referred to identity change rather than to attribute change, we used other methods of
assessing mutability in later experiments.
Experiment 2: Why Do Gay Men Become the Effect to Be Explained?
Experiment 1 shows that straight men are taken as more normative than are gay men but
reveals little about the determinants of that normativity. Experiment 2 examines category
typicality and majority status as potential causes of that normativity. To manipulate
typicality, we used the stereotype associating gay men with AIDS in Experiment 2 (Herek
& Glunt, 1988). We hypothesized that in contrast to most categories of men, gay men
are more typical members of the category men living with AIDS. To the extent that
typicality is a determinant of normality, therefore, straight men ought to become "the effect
to be explained" when the overarching category is men living with AIDS.
Participants who focus explanations on smaller groups and who rate smaller groups as more
mutable may simply be following prescribed reasoning principles. "Positive test strategies"
focus explanations on minority cases, and these strategies are prescribed in many
hypothesis-testing environments (Klayman & Ha, 1987,1989). Larger samples are more
stable estimates of population means and, as such, are less mutable estimates of those means
than are smaller samples. Although we could not plausibly manipulate participants' beliefs
about the number of gay and straight men in the population, .in this experiment we
manipulated the relative size of the gay and straight samples that we described. If sample
size is a determinant of normativity, then norms ought to be constructed from gay
exemplars when gay men make up the larger sample.
In Experiment 2, we operationalized mutability by asking par- ticipants to predict the results
of a second study that revealed no group differences. Previous studies had shown that
students at the university where Experiment 2 was conducted both expressed tolerant
attitudes toward gay men and lesbians and perceived that the claim that sexual orientation is
mutable expresses heterosexism (Hegarty, 2000). A new measure avoided the ambiguities
of the previous measure and provided a continuous measure of mutability more consistent
with norm theory's claims that norms are represented by continuous attribute ranges.
Method
Pretest. To test the assumption that people call to mind gay men when thinking about men
with AIDS and straight men when thinking about men with cancer, we distributed II 0
questionnaires as part of a larger packet to a class of introductory psychology students at
Stanford University. Each questionnaire asked the participant to imagine a man living in San
Fran- cisco with either AIDS or cancer, to assign him a first name, an age, a job, and a
hobby, and to assign his partner a first name. We examined the partner's assigned gender
to assess whether the participants imagined the man to be gay or straight. Forty-two
completed cancer questionnaires and 47 completed AIDS questionnaires were returned. Five
cancer questionnaires and 9 AIDS questionnaires were not coded, either because the partner
was assigned a gender-ambiguous name (e.g., Pat; n = 9), because the partner item was left
blank (n = 4), or because the respondent asserted that the person had no partner (n = 1). A
significant majority (84%) of the remaining cancer questionnaires assigned the man a female
partner, Chi-square (1, N = 37) = 16.9, p < .01. A significant majority (74%) of the
remaining AIDS questionnaires assigned the man a male partner, Chi-square (I, N = 38) = 8.5,
p < .05. These patterns are significantly different from each other, Chi-square (1, N = 75) =
25.1, p < .001.
Participants. Fifty-one men, 76 women, and 2 participants who did not identify their gender in
an introductory psychology class at Stanford University completed the questionnaire in
return for partial course credit (mean age = 18.8 years, age range = 17 to 23 years).
Materials. We constructed eight forms of a three-part questionnaire. Part 1 presented a
scenario and a table such as the following under the heading "Explaining Medical
Outcomes."
Imagine you are a psychologist helping a team of doctors study a new treatment for
people living with cancer. The complicated treatment involves a combination of
experimental drugs, dietary supplements, relaxation therapy, and regular exercise. This
therapy helps patients with cancer live longer, but many patients find it difficult to follow
the complicated treatment regimen. When patients do not follow the regimen the
treatment has very little effect.
As a psychologist, your job is to provide explanations for why some patients follow this
difficult regimen but others do not. In the first study, the treatment was administered to
1,000 men in San Francisco living with cancer. Three hundred men were gay, and 700
were heterosexual. At the end of the study, it was noted that the hetero- sexual men
had followed the treatment regimen for a much higher percentage of days than the gay
men.
Heterosexual
Gay
Men
Men
Total number of patients
700
300
Average percentage of days that the treatment was followed
70%
40%
In your own words, explain this difference.
We produced eight forms of this scenario by manipulating three details. In the cancer
conditions the questionnaires were as above, whereas in the AIDS conditions the patients
were described as living with AIDS. The straight majority form of the questionnaire was as
above, whereas in the gay majority form the samples were described as containing 700 gay
men and 300 heterosexual men. Finally, the straight conforming form of the questionnaire
was as above, whereas in the gay conforming form the percentage of each sample who
followed the regimen was reversed. Part 2 of the questionnaire, titled "Predicting Medical
Outcomes," was as follows.
A second study was carried out using a completely new group of gay and heterosexual
male cancer patients. In this study there was NO DIFFERENCE between the two
groups in the percentage of days that they followed the regimen.
Indicate what you think the results of this second study will look like by filling in the
following table.
Total number of patients
Heterosexual
Gay
Men
Men
700
300
Average percentage of days that the treatment was followed
Part 2 was consistent with Part 1 in regard to the proportion of gay and straight study
participants and the disease with which these participants were living.
Procedure. Introductory psychology students completed the questionnaire as part of a larger
take-home packet in return for course credit. Two raters who were unaware of condition
coded each explanation for references to each social group. There were no disagreements
between raters.
Results
Explanations. A 2 X 2 X 2 X 2 ANOVA was performed on the number of references in
the explanations with disease (cancer vs. AIDS), majority group (gay men vs. straight
men), the more conforming group (gay men vs. straight men), and social group
referenced (gay men vs. straight men) as independent variables. The first three variables
were between-subjects variables, and the last was a within-subject variable.
Across the experiment as a whole, fewer references to straight men (M = 0.49) than to gay
men (M = 0.78) were produced, F (l, 122) = 6.20, p < .05 (see Table 2). No other main
effects approached significance, all Fs < 1. This main effect was qualified by 3 two-way
interactions, and there were no significant three-way or higher order interactions, all Fs <
l (see Table 2). First, a significant interaction between social group referenced and majority group was observed, F(l, 122) = 5.13, p < .05. Planned contrasts revealed that
significantly fewer references to straight men than to gay men were produced in the
straight majority condition (Ms = 0.36 and 0.90, respectively), t(63) = 3.17, p <.01,
whereas equivalent numbers of references to straight and gay men were produced in the
gay majority conditions (M = 0.62and 0.65, respectively), t < 1. This finding supports
the hypothesis that relative group size is a determinant of explanation content and implies
that having majority status helps a group become normative. Second, the interaction
between social group referenced and disease was marginally significant, F(1, 122) =
2.91, p = .09. Because of its theoretical importance, we investigated this mar- ginal
interaction further with planned contrasts. Significantly fewer references to straight
men (M = 0.42) than to gay men (M = 0.88) were produced in the cancer conditions,
t(59) = 2.53, p < .0 I. In the AIDS conditions, equivalent numbers of references to
straight men (M = 0.56) and to gay men (M = 0.69) were produced, t < I. This
result supports the hypothesis that category typicality is a determinant of explanation
content.
Finally, an unpredicted significant interaction between social group referenced and the
more conforming group was observed, F(l, 122) = 4.86, p < .05. Fewer references
to straight men (M = 0.41) than to gay men (M = 0.98) were produced in the gay
conforming conditions, t(70) = 3.26, p < .01, but in the straight conforming conditions
equivalent numbers of references to straight men (M = 0.56) and to gay men (M
= 0.61) were produced, t < 1. This unpredicted interaction may simply be an effect of
the greater availability of unmarked comparatives such as more compared with marked
comparatives such as less, fewer, and not as many (cf. Clark, 1969). Indeed, the
unmarked comparative more appeared with greater frequency (n = 69) than did all of the
marked comparatives combined (n = 17) in the explanations, x2 (1, N = 86) = 31.44, p <
.001. Furthermore, the use of the word more in the explanations was positively correlated
with the number of references to gay men in the gay conforming conditions (r = .52, p
< .001) but not in the straight conforming conditions (r = .11, ns). Similarly, the use of
the word more was positively correlated with the number of references to straight
men in the straight conforming conditions (r = .51, p < .001) but not in the gay
conforming conditions (r = .03, ns). Thus, it appears that lower quantities are more
likely to become the implicit contrastive back- ground for larger quantities, because of
the greater availability of unmarked comparatives.
Mutability. Mutability was operationalized as the participants'estimated percentage
change of each group from the first to the second study. All materials presented a 30%
gap between the two groups, such that the mutability of the two groups summed to 30%
in all cases and a change of more than 15% for either group indicated that the
group was perceived as more mutable. Twenty- two participants were excluded from
this analysis because they did not complete this item, gave different estimates for the two
groups, or gave answers outside of the 40-70% range.
Across all conditions, participants predicted less change for straight men (M =
12.1%) than for gay men (M = 17.9%). This value was significantly different from a
theoretical mean of 15% for both groups, t(l07) = 3.34, p < .01. To assess whether
relative mutability varied by condition, we performed a 2 X 2 X 2 ANOVA
with disease, majority group, and more conforming group as between-subjects
factors. No significant main effects or interactions emerged, all Fs < 1.2, all ps > .15.
Thus, no effects of group size, typicality, or the more conforming group on muta- bility
were observed. Finally, mutability judgments were not cor- related with the number of
references to gay and straight men across the experiment as a whole (both rs < j.llj,
ns).
Discussion
Experiment 2 shows that several factors contribute to explana- tion content. First,
typicality affected the content of explanations, as in Miller eta!. (1991, Experiment 3).
The interaction involving typicality was only marginally significant. This may have been
due to the difficulty of finding a social category for which gay men are typical members;
a full 21% of our pretest respondents called to mind a gay man with cancer or a
straight man with AIDS. As in Miller et al.'s (1991, Experiment 3) study, when the
lower status group was more typical of the overarching category, we found that the
tendency to take that group as the effect to be explained was mitigated but not
reversed. Second, participants focused explanations on the smaller of the two samples.
This effect of group size on explanation content may reflect an influence of positive test
strategies. Third, explanations unexpectedly focused on the group that conformed to the
regimen more often. This effect is most likely due to the greater availability of
unmarked adjectives.
Our results suggest that explanation content and mutability judgments are
independent effects of norms. Our participants always mutated gay men more than
straight men rather than consistently mutating the less typical group. This contrasts with
the results of Miller et a!. ( 1991, Experiment 3), in which attributes of male elementary
school teachers were judged to be more mutable than were those of their female
counterparts. Furthermore, the lack of a significant correlation between explanation
content and mutability judgments prevents the interpretation that mutability constitutes
a causal link between category typicality and explanation content. Finally, in spite of
normative reasons to do so, there was no tendency to mutate the smaller group more
than the larger group. This latter result is well described by the phenomenon of base
rate neglect (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974).4
Experiment 3: The Joint Effects of Norms and Stereotypes on Explanations
Experiment 3 tests both stages of our model. The stimulus content of Experiment 1
was ecologically valid but also contained a confound: The straight men were always
ascribed the more gender conforming behavior (i.e., remembering more male-typed
experiences). Norm theory predicts that abnormal events will be more mutable than
normal events. Thus, it is possible that the participants in Experiment 1 focused their
explanations on gay men because that group's behavior was described as more atypical
rather than because gay men were members of an atypical cate- gory. To provide a
stronger test of the first stage of our model, it is necessary to demonstrate that
explanations focus on gay men even when they perform more typical actions and
when straight men perform more atypical actions. For that reason, we manipulated
which group was described as more typically masculine in two different ways in
Experiment 3. Whereas a stereotype- expectancy model or an event-norm model
would predict that whatever group is described as stereotype inconsistent would
become the group to be explained, our two-stage model states that the nonnormative
group (i.e., gay men) is first selected as the effect to be explained, and that stereotypes of
that group influence the attributional content of those explanations. Therefore, in
Experiment 3, we expected participants to construct explanations of differences between
gay and straight men that were explicitly about gay men, regardless of which group
was described as more typically masculine, and to draw on stereotypes of gay men
to construct those explanations.
Thus, our model predicts that participants will draw on knowledge about gay men to
construct explanations, even for stereotype- inconsistent results. Stereotypes provide
people with flexible means to construct explanations, such as recruiting exemplars from
the stereotyped group for whom the stereotyped trait is irrelevant, reinterpreting the
meaning of the stereotyped trait, and constructing grounds for subtyping group deviants
(cf. Yzerbyt eta!., 1997). Thus, stereotype-inconsistent results should lead participants
to draw on supposed attributes of gay men in ways that minimize the importance of the
stereotype-inconsistent results. More specifically, we predicted that stereotypeconsistent results would lead to explanations about gay men that made the differences in
childhood behavior appear to be real or "essential" differences, whereas stereotypeinconsistent results would lead to explanations that suggested that those differences
were reconstructed after the fact. This distinction between essentialist and
reconstructive explanations was suggested by a reading of the scientific literature on
this topic. Researchers who argue that childhood gender conformity and sexual
orientation are causally linked minimize the importance of reconstructive memory
processes (e.g., Bailey & Zucker, 1995; Bell et a!., 1981; D. J. Bem, 1996), whereas
researchers who contest this causal link emphasize the importance of such processes
(e.g., Paul, 1993; Peplau et al., 1998; Ross, 1980). Thus, we predicted that participants'
explanations would similarly focus on reconstructive processes to a greater degree when
the results contradicted their stereotypes rather than confirmed them.
Method
Participants. Sixty-nine male and 48 female Stanford undergraduates (mean age = 20.5
years, range = 18 to 25 years) were paid $2 each for completing the materials.
Materials. We constructed four forms of a two-part questionnaire that varied in
stereotype relevance and recall content. Part I was labeled "Reasoning About Childhood
Differences" and presented an intergroup difference that varied in its stereotype relevance
(consistent vs. inconsistent) and content (masculine activities vs. feminine activities). The
stereotype-consistent masculine questionnaire read as follows.
Interview studies show that gay and straight men recall very different childhood
experiences. In one study, 90% of the straight men inter- viewed recalled enjoying
extremely "male-typed" activities from childhood (e.g., football, baseball). 65%
of gay men interviewed recalled enjoying such activities.
Social group
% who enjoyed activities
Straight men
90
Gay men
65
In the stereotype-inconsistent masculine questionnaire, these percentages were reversed
and the data describing gay men were presented first.
In the two feminine forms of the questionnaires, the sample activities described were dolls
and hopscotch. In the stereotype-consistent form, 10% of straight men and 35% of gay
men were described as recalling enjoyment of such activities. These percentages were
reversed in the stereotype- inconsistent form. In all feminine questionnaires, the group who
recalled enjoying the activities less frequently was described first. In all conditions,
participants were asked to explain the contrast in their own words. The second part of
the questionnaire was titled "Predicting Childhood Differ- ences" and consisted of the
following mutability item.
In a second study, a completely new sample of gay and straight men were
interviewed. In this study there were no differences between the two groups in the
percentage of men who recalled enjoying [mascu- line/feminine] activities.
What percentage of men in the second study do you think recalled enjoying these
activities?
Finally, two items asked respondents to report their age and gender.
Procedure. Participants were recruited through undergraduate dormitories and were
randomly assigned to experimental condition. Explanations were transcribed and
coded by two raters as in previous experiments. The number of references to each
group in the explanations was reliable across raters (r = .95 for references to gay
men, r = .93 for references to straight men). The raters agreed on 223 of 234 cases.
Disagreements were resolved by discussion. Next, each reference was coded as
either an essentialist or a reconstructive reference. Essentialist references assumed that
the men had actually experienced different child- hoods. Reconstructive references
assumed that the men had reconstructed their memories of their childhoods or
otherwise misrepresented them. Two raters coded 269 cases and agreed on 91% of
them. Fifteen of the remaining 25 cases were resolved by discussion, and 10 were
coded as ambiguous and excluded from the attributional analyses presented below.
Results
Explanations. We performed an ANOVA on the number of references produced, with
stereotype relevance (consistent vs. in- consistent) and recall content (masculine vs. feminine)
as between- subjects factors and social group referenced (gay men vs. straight men) and
attribute type (essentialist vs. reconstructive) as within- subject factors. Two significant main
effects were observed. Fewer references to straight men (M = 0.51) than to gay men (M =
1.60) were produced overall, F (1, 113) = 46.27, p < .001. Also, more essentialist
references (M = 1.45) than reconstructive references (M = 0.68) were produced, F(1, 113)
= 15.59, p < .001. These two main effects were qualified by a significant two-way interaction, F(1, 113) = 27.27, p < .001. Participants produced more essentialist references to
gay men (M = 1.21) than reconstructive references to gay men (M = 0.39) or essentialist or
reconstructive references to straight men (Ms = 0.22 and 0.29, respectively). No other main
effects were significant, both Fs < 1 (see Table 3).
We observed two other higher order interactions that are relevant to the second stage of our
model. We observed a marginally significant interaction between stereotype relevance and
attribute type, F(1, 113) = 2.85,p < .10. This was qualified by a significant three-way
interaction between group referenced, attribute type, and stereotype relevance, F(l, 113)
= 4.40, p < .05. Planned contrasts revealed that more essentialist references to gay men
were produced in the stereotype-consistent conditions than in the stereotype-inconsistent
conditions, t(115) = 2.78, p < .01. Also, more reconstructive references to gay men were
produced in the stereotype-inconsistent conditions than in the stereotype-consistent conditions,
t(l15) = 1.96, p < .05. As we predicted, equivalent numbers of essentialist and
reconstructive references to straight men were produced across the stereotypeconsistent and -inconsistent conditions (see Table 3). Thus, when
stereotype-inconsistent results are presented, gay men remain the effect to be explained but
explanations reference more reconstructive causes and fewer essentialist causes of the
intergroup difference. How- ever, stereotype relevance does not affect the content of the
small number of references to straight men.
Finally, we observed a marginally significant three-way inter- action between group
referenced, recall content, and stereotype relevance, F(l, ll3) = 2.91, p < .10. As in
Experiment 2, the tendency to take gay men as the effect to be explained was attenuated
when straight men were described as recalling more of the behavior (i.e., the masculineconsistent and feminine- inconsistent conditions; see Table 3). This interaction may have
been a consequence of lexical marking. As before, the comparative more was used more often
than were all of the marked comparatives (i.e., fewer, less, not as much) in the experiment
(N = 67 and 7, respectively), Chi-square (l, N = 74) = 48.65, p < .001. The use of more
was positively correlated with the number of references to gay men in the conditions in
which they recalled more of the behavior (r = .45, p < .001) but not in those in which they
recalled less of the behavior (r = .01, ns). However, the use of more was not correlated
with the number of references to straight men in either of these types of conditions (both
rs < !.06!, ns). Here as before, we observed a tendency to compare larger quantities against
smaller ones that appears to be an effect of the greater availability of unmarked
comparatives.
Mutability. Mutability was operationalized as the estimated percentage of change of
each group from the first to the second study, as in Experiment 2. All materials
presented a 25% gap between the two groups, such that a shift of greater than 12.5%
indicated that the group was perceived as more mutable. Four participants in each of
the masculine conditions and 3 in each of the feminine conditions predicted proportions
that were outside the range of the two percentages presented in the questionnaire. As in
Experiment 2, these data were omitted from this analysis.5
The predicted change for straight men was less than that for gay men (M = 11.2% and
14.8%, respectively). This pattern was significantly different from a theoretical mean
change of 12.5% for both groups, t(lOl) = 3.25, p < .005. An ANOVA using recall
content and stereotype relevance as independent between-subjects factors revealed
neither effects of stereotype relevance, F( I, 98) = 2.07, p > .15, nor of recall
content, F < 1, nor of an interaction between them, F < I (see Table 3). As in
Experiment 2, mutability was not correlated with the number of references to gay or
straight men across all conditions (both r < 0.30, ns) or within each individual
condition of the experiment.
Discussion
Explanations of differences between straight and gay men fo- cused on attributes of gay
men even when straight men were presented as the less gender-conforming group. In all
conditions, gay men were judged to have more mutable attributes. These findings
support our claim that group membership is a stronger determinant of normativity than
is the typicality of behavior. Moreover, as in Experiment 2, explanation content and
mutability judgments were not correlated in this experiment. This casts fur ther doubt on
the possibility that mutability mediates the causal link between category norms and
explanation content. Our model's predictions about stereotyping were also supported.
Stereotype- inconsistent results led to more reconstructive attributions to gay men than did
stereotype-consistent results, and stereotype- consistent results led to more essentialist
attributions to gay men than did stereotype-inconsistent results. As we predicted,
attributions of straight men's recall were not affected by stereotype relevance.
Closer attention to the explanations revealed more subtle effects of stereotype relevance.
Thirteen of the participants (22%) in the stereotype-consistent conditions explained the
difference by citing the greater enjoyment of the activities by one of the groups (e.g.,
"Homosexual men were more likely to have enjoyed extremely 'feminine' activities as
children than straight men"). However, when participants were explaining stereotypeinconsistent difference, enjoyment became something recalled but not actually experienced
(e.g., "Gay men recall enjoying these activities more simply because they remember the
'male-typed' activities more than straight men"). References to compensation or
overcompensation on the part of the gay men were common in the stereotype- inconsistent
conditions (n = 6; e.g., "Maybe the gay men were overcompensating to convince
themselves and others that they were not gay") but absent in the stereotype-consistent
conditions. Finally, 6 participants (10%) used homosexual interest as an essentialist
explanation of gay men's involvement in male activities (e.g., "A possible explanation is
that gay men enjoy activities involving other men because of early sexual attraction"),
but only 1 used heterosexual attraction to similarly explain straight men's involvement in
female activities (i.e., "Straight guys like chicks, hanging out with chicks").
General Discussion
In three experiments, participants' explanations of differences between gay and straight men
focused on gay men more than on straight men, straight men's attributes were deemed less
mutable, and references to the attributes of gay men in explanations were influenced by
stereotypes. Explanations focused on gay men when straight men were a majority group and
when straight men were more typical of the social category within which the groups were
compared. We have argued that these results are observed because of a two-stage process
through which explanations are shaped by category norms first and by stereotypes second.
We now consider the implications that this model has for research on group differences in
the social sciences, previous accounts of norms and stereotypes, and new conceptualizations
of group prejudice.
Group Difference Research in the Social Sciences
In the present research, lay people were asked to explain dif- ferences between groups that
allegedly or actually were scientific findings. However, lay people not only produce
explanations but also consume scientists' explanations for group differences. Thus, our model
bears on the debate over how scientists should or should not present group differences. The
stimuli in Experiment 1 were based on the results of Sexual Preference, Volume 1 by Bell et
al. (1981), the largest empirical study linking adult sexual orientation to childhood gender
confor- mity using retrospective recall data. Bell et al. (1981) argued for theories of sexual
orientation that explain heterosexuality and homosexuality with equal ease and critiqued
existing studies that analyzed homosexuality "against a backdrop of stereotypic untested
assumptions about heterosexuals" (p. xi). However, in two chapters in which these authors
explained the gay-straight differ- ences observed in their study (i.e., Chapters 16 and 18),
there are about three times as many references to gay persons (n = 168) as to straight
persons (n = 52), Chi-square (1, N = 220) = 61.16, p < .001. This ratio renders these
explanations remarkably similar to those produced by our participants in Experiments 1
and 3 above. Chapter 17 focused on differences within the gay, lesbian, and bisexual
group, including ethnic differences. Here also, marked groups were more frequently
explained; the text contains about twice as many references to Black participants (n =
49) as to White participants (n = 25; these were the only two ethnic groups in the study),
,('(1, N = 74) = 7.78, p < .05.
Thus, even the explanations of scientists, who are trained to be objective and who are
conscious of the problems of focusing theory on atypical groups, may take such groups as
the effect to be explained. To lay people, scientific group differences such as those used in our
experiments seem to implicitly refer to some groups more than to others and then to
suggest that it is the essences shared by atypical and minority groups that give rise to such
differences. To the extent that scientists' explanations for group differences do the same
thing, scientific discourse allows for the communication of category norms and the exercise
of stereotypic thinking. However, scientific claims may be most easily communicated when
they rely on rather than contest their audiences' norms. Miller and Prentice (1996, pp. 808809) suggested that norms are communicated through what people implicitly take for
granted, but the taking of certain groups as implicit standards of comparison in scientific
explanation may become a subtle but powerful way of communicating that their identities are
more normative than are those identities that need to be explained. Thus, our research justifies
fears that social science research on group differences may lead to essentialist explanations
of marked groups (e.g., Hare-Mustin & Maracek, 1990; Hegarty, 1997).
Norms and Explanations
Clearly, further research on how category norms influence the communication of
stereotypes and other forms of group bias is warranted, for our experiments are only the
second series exam- ining norm theory's predictions about category norms and explanations. Like Miller et a!. (1991), we found that category typicality shapes explanation
content, but we also found that content to be affected by relative group size and the
availability of unmarked comparatives. Furthermore, as in Miller et a!. (1991, Experiment
3), in our second experiment we found that when the marked group was more typical of the
overarching category, the tendency to focus on that group was attenuated but was not
reversed. This suggests that category typicality is only one of several factors that contributes
to the robust tendency to focus explanations on marked groups. Our results do not support
Miller et al.'s (1991) claim that category norms affect explanation content as a result of
increased mutability. Mutability judgments and explanation content were uncorrelated in
Experiments 2 and 3. In Experiment 2, two ma- nipulations that shifted explanation
content had no effect on mu- tability. These findings suggest that mutability and explanation
content may be more independent than Miller et al. (1991) suggested.
Our findings, taken together with Miller et al.'s (1991), suggest that some factor that is
linked to sexual orientation but not necessarily to gender, and that is neither group size nor
category typicality or action atypicality, determines mutability judgments. It may be that
mutability judgments express the "ought" component of normality (cf. Deutsch & Gerard,
1955) and play a role in mediating conformity processes. It is possible that groups who
transgress standards for a group's behavior, such as men who are gay or men who do
female-typed work, are particularly likely to be considered to have mutable attributes.
This tentative claim suggests similarities between ascriptions of attribute mutability and
ascriptions of event mutability. Roese (1997) argued that counterfactua1s are triggered by
negative affect, mutate controllable events, and prepare the individual to avoid negative
outcomes in the future (McMullen, Markman, & Gavanski, 1995; Roese & Hur, 1997).
Similarly, straight people often experience negative affect in response to lesbians and gay
men (Montieth, Devine, & Zuwerink, 1993) and shift their opinions to avoid being similar
to lesbians and gay men (Wood, Pool, Leek, & Purvis, 1996), and they have been observed
here to judge attributes of gay men to be mutable. Of course, Roese's (1997) model argued
that counterfactual thinking is largely functional, whereas processes that lead people to
dislike attributes of stigmatized groups and to avoid those attributes in themselves would
clearly be more aptly described as dysfunctional consequences of prejudice and as
components of stigmatization. However, these two views of functionality and mutability are
not incompatible; Roese's model examined the functions of counterfactual thought for the
individual organism, whereas our view considers consequences both for those who do the
explaining and for those who are explained.
Stereotyping and Essentialist Explanations
Whereas Miller et al. (1991) avoided examining gender differ- ences that were stereotype
relevant, the present research shows how group norms and stereotype use are related.
Stereotype con- sistency of the results does not affect which group is explained, although
stereotype-consistent results lead the stereotype to be invoked directly, whereas stereotypeinconsistent results lead to explanations that minimize the importance of the results by invoking other attributes of the group to be explained. In recent research, we have also replicated
the findings of Experiment 3 using both female and male targets (Hegarty, Sanchez, Arvai,
& Pratto, 2000). Similar to Branscombe et al.'s (1997) account of event explana- tion, our
model assumes that social biases affect the attributional content of explanations only after
norms determine which entities will be taken as the target of explanation.
Our model suggests that stereotyping theories need to pay greater attention to how and
why groups become normative or otherwise. Definitions of stereotypes as beliefs about the
values of attributes of social groups posit no asymmetries between normative and
nonnormative groups, yet stereotyping researchers have begun to observe that the attributes
of marked groups are fore- grounded against norms constituted by unmarked groups.
Categorization experiments show that White and male are implicitly taken as more basic
ascriptions than are Black or female (Zarate & Sandoval, 1995; Zarate & Smith, 1990),
ensuring that "women. have gender, and blacks have race, more than men and whites
respectively do" (Fiske, 1998, p. 366). The present results show that in addition to Whites
and men, straight people are considered to be more normal kinds of people. More generally,
our model explicates why stereotypes are "about" marked groups, even if people possess
beliefs about the attributes of unmarked groups. Explanatory attention focuses on
nonnormative groups, and stereotypes of those groups are called to mind and used in
discourse far more often than are stereotypes of normative groups. Indeed, stereotypes of
marked groups are more accessible, better known, and perhaps even more automatized than
are stereotypes of unmarked groups (Devine, 1989).
Similar to our model, Yzerbyt et al. (1997) drew on exemplar models of social categories
to argue that stereotypes lead people to produce essentialist explanations. They argued that
people reason as if social categories had defining features or "essences" (see also Medin &
Ortony, 1989; Rothbart & Taylor, 1992), although social categories are represented by a
variety of subtypes that may have few attributes in common (cf. Andersen & Klatzky, 1987).
Yzerbyt et al. (1997) argued that stereotypes make essentialist explanations available but said
little about the process of explanation construction. Our research suggests that essentialism
occurs both because essentialist explanations about nonnormative groups are the de- fault
and because stereotype-inconsistent information does not disrupt the focus on such groups.
As in Experiment 3, people explain stereotype-inconsistent data by reconstructing the
meaning of the stereotyped trait or by recruiting a different subtype to essentialize the
category. When gay men are described as masculine, the essentialized view of them as
"natural sissies" can be protected by explaining that their masculinity is an
overcompensation or is evidence of sexual interest in other men. Thus, theories of
essentialism need to examine why marked nonnormative groups are essentialized more than
are unmarked normative groups. One possibility is the greater entitativity accorded to
marked groups and lower status groups (Haslam, Rothschild, & Ernst, 2000), as
entitativity is an important component of essentialism on which dispositional attributions
about groups depend (Yzerbyt, Rogier, & Fiske, 1998).
Much research has examined whether stereotype-inconsistent information about stereotyped
groups can lead to stereotype revision (see Fiske, 1998, for a review). Our research
suggests that such interventions collude with the marking of such groups as the effect to be
explained. Experiment 1 provides an alternative means of disrupting stereotyping. When
required to consider the unmarked group, people not only do so but also appear to make
fewer dispositional attributions and, ironically, produce even-handed explanations that focus
equally on both groups. Increasingly, social scientists can draw on theories that examine the
particularities of unmarked identities such as Whiteness (e.g., Fine, Weis, Powell, & Wong,
1997), masculinity (e.g., Edley & Wetherell, 1995) and heterosexuality (e.g., Katz, 1995;
Wilkinson & Kitzinger, 1993). The present model suggests that rather than attempting to
prove stereotypes of marked groups wrong, one might reduce group bias by having people
question the frequently unexamined normalcy of unmarked high-status groups.
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Notes:
1. In Miller et al.'s (1991, Experiment 3) study, an equivalent number of references to
women (M = 0.78) and to men (M = 0.67) were produced when participants were asked
to explain gender gaps among elementary school teachers. These estimates of means are
based on Miller et al. (1991, Table I) and assume equal cell size.
2. To test whether our conclusions depended on the choice of labels used to describe social
groups, in some experiments we described the groups as homosexual and heterosexual men,
and in others as gay and straight men. In reporting all experiments, we refer to gay men
and straight men.
3. This procedure did not affect the conclusions of the study. An analysis including outliers who
gave responses outside of the 40-70% range produced the same statistical conclusion.
4. Larger samples are more stable estimates of population means and should be afforded
greater weight in estimating population means. When we extrapolate normatively from two
samples of 700 and 300 cases that give population mean estimates that differ by 30%, we
find that the best estimate of the population mean is given by mutating the larger sample by
9% and the smaller sample by 21%:
(700 X 30%) + (300 X 0%)
1000
= 21%.
No tendency to use sample size information in this way was observed (see Table 2).
5. In contrast to Experiment 2, different conclusions were reached when the outliers were
included or excluded from the analysis of this experiment. A second method for dealing with
outliers is to assign the group closer to the mutability estimate a score of 0% and the other
group a mutability score of 25%. For example, a prediction of 50% in the masculinestereotype- consistent condition would receive a gay mutability score of 0% and a straight
mutability score of 25%. Such an analysis leads to the conclusion that straight men were
rated less mutable than gay men, (Ms = 11.6% and 14.4%, respectively), t(115) = 2.53,
p < .05. An ANOVA with stereotype relevance and content as independent factors also
revealed a significant effect of stereotype relevance, F(l, 112) = 6.30, p < .05. Gay men
were predicted to change more than straight men were in the stereotype-inconsistent
conditions, t (58) = 3.35, p < .005, but the groups were predicted to change equally in the
stereotype-consistent conditions, t < I. No other main effects or interactions were observed,
both Fs < 1. This main effect is most likely an artifact of the task's design. There was a
highly reliable tendency for outliers to fall within the range that included 50%, Chi-square
(1, N = 14) = 10.28, p < .01. The stereotype-consistent contrasts presented gay men's
performance as closer to 50%, such that outlier responses in this range decreased gay
men's mutability. The stereotype- inconsistent contrasts presented straight men's
performance as closer to 50%, such that outlier responses in this range decreased straight
men's mutability. Perhaps the respondents believed that the results presented to them
underestimated the proportion of men who had gender- nonconforming experiences.
Table 1: Mean References to Gay and Straight Men in Explanations by Instruction
Type and Frequency of Participants Judging Each Group More Likely to Change
(Experiment 1).
Explanations
Implicit
Mutability
Explicit
Implicit
Explicit
9
6
Gay men
M
SD
2.32b
2.02
Straight men
M
SD
1.35ab
1.63
12
0.68a
1.55
13
2.55b
2.84
Table 2: Mean Number of References to Each Group and Predicted Percentage
Change by Condition (Experiment 2)
Cancer
Group and
Statistic
M
GM
Majority Straight
AIDS
Majority Gay
Cancer
SM
GM
SD
1.33
1.22
0.81
0.98
1.00
1.15
0.70
1.00
1.06
1.26
0.53
0.94
0.62
0.77
0.39
6.30
M
0.00
0.62
1.00
0.37
0.76
0.30
0.73
0.50
0.92
0.35
1.06
0.62
0.87
1.00
0.70
SD
SM
GM
SM
AIDS
GM
SM
Predicted % change
GM
M
SD
SM
M
SD
14.4
7.7
20.9
13.1
17.3
9.6
20.4
9.6
18.1
7.3
15.0
7.1
15.8
6.3
19.1
8.6
15.6
7.7
9.1
13.1
12.7
9.6
9.6
9.6
11.9
7.3
15.0
7.1
14.2
6.3
10.9
8.6
Table 3: Mean Essentialist, Reconstructive, and Total References to Gay and Straight
Men by Stereotype Relevance and Recall Content (Experiment 3)
Sexual Orientation
And Type of
Consistent
Masculine
Inconsistent
Feminine
Masculine
Feminine
Reference
References in explanations
To gay men
Essentialist
Reconstructive
1.38.(1.32)
0.14b (0.35)
1.45a (1.50)
0.38ab (0.68)
1.24.(1.41)
0.48b (0.74)
0.77.(1.10)
0.57.(0.94)
Essentialist
Reconstructive
0.34b (0.67)
0.21b (0.62)
O.!Ob (0.41)
0.41b (1.01)
0.14b (0.44)
0.17b (0.47)
0.30.(0.70)
0.37a (0.93)
Gay men
Straight men
1.52 (1.27)
0.62 (0.86)
1.83
0.52
1.90 (1.50)
0.34 (0.77)
1.50 (1.07)
0.67 (1.12)
(1.47)
(1.06)
Predicted % change
Gay men
Straight men
13.4
11.6
(5.8)
(5.8)
15.0
10.0
(8.6)
(8.6)
14.1
10.9
(5.8)
(5.8)
16.6
9.4
(7.8)
(7.8)