Smyth Frederick L, Nosek Brian A
Department of Psychology, College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Charlottesville, VA, USA.
Department of Psychology, College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Charlottesville, VA, USA ; The Center for Open Science, University of Virginia Charlottesville, VA, USA.
Front Psychol. 2015 Apr 27;6:415. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00415. eCollection 2015.
Women's representation in science has changed substantially, but unevenly, over the past 40 years. In health and biological sciences, for example, women's representation among U.S. scientists is now on par with or greater than men's, while in physical sciences and engineering they remain a clear minority. We investigated whether variation in proportions of women in scientific disciplines is related to differing levels of male-favoring explicit or implicit stereotypes held by students and scientists in each discipline. We hypothesized that science-is-male stereotypes would be weaker in disciplines where women are better represented. This prediction was tested with a sample of 176,935 college-educated participants (70% female), including thousands of engineers, physicians, and scientists. The prediction was supported for the explicit stereotype, but not for the implicit stereotype. Implicit stereotype strength did not correspond with disciplines' gender ratios, but, rather, correlated with two indicators of disciplines' scientific intensity, positively for men and negatively for women. From age 18 on, women who majored or worked in disciplines perceived as more scientific had substantially weaker science-is-male stereotypes than did men in the same disciplines, with gender differences larger than 0.8 standard deviations in the most scientifically-perceived disciplines. Further, particularly for women, differences in the strength of implicit stereotypes across scientific disciplines corresponded with the strength of scientific values held by women in the disciplines. These results are discussed in the context of dual process theory of mental operation and balanced identity theory. The findings point to the need for longitudinal study of the factors' affecting development of adults' and, especially, children's implicit gender stereotypes and scientific identity.
在过去40年里，女性在科学界的代表性有了显著变化，但并不均衡。例如，在健康和生物科学领域，美国科学家中女性的代表性现在与男性相当或超过男性，而在物理科学和工程领域，她们仍然明显是少数。我们调查了各科学学科中女性比例的差异是否与每个学科的学生和科学家对男性有利的显性或隐性刻板印象的不同程度有关。我们假设，在女性代表性较好的学科中，“科学是男性的”刻板印象会较弱。这一预测通过对176935名受过大学教育的参与者（70%为女性）进行抽样测试，其中包括数千名工程师、医生和科学家。这一预测在显性刻板印象方面得到了支持，但在隐性刻板印象方面没有得到支持。隐性刻板印象的强度与学科的性别比例不对应，而是与学科科学强度的两个指标相关，对男性呈正相关，对女性呈负相关。从18岁起，在被认为更具科学性的学科中主修或工作的女性，其“科学是男性的”刻板印象比同一学科的男性要弱得多，在最具科学性的学科中，性别差异大于0.8个标准差。此外，特别是对于女性来说，各科学学科中隐性刻板印象强度的差异与女性在这些学科中所持科学价值观的强度相对应。这些结果在心理操作的双过程理论和平衡身份理论的背景下进行了讨论。研究结果表明，需要对影响成年人尤其是儿童隐性性别刻板印象和科学身份发展的因素进行纵向研究。
