Implicit Bias Study Reveals 75% of People Perceive Men to Be Smarter Than Women
Key Takeaways
- According to a new study, men, women, and children in dozens of countries implicitly associate high intelligence with men more than women.
- The study builds on a larger body of research about gender stereotypes, which can affect women's representation in certain academic and career fields.
- Experts say changing implicit stereotypes isn't easy, but it can start with your everyday language, as well as diverse representation in TV shows, films, and advertisements.
Though few people will admit (at least out loud) to being sexist, new research published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology found that nearly 75% of people surveyed in dozens of countries implicitly associate high levels of intelligence or “brilliance” with men more than women.1
That bias, even though it's unconscious, could play a role in why women are underrepresented in fields like science and technology, particularly STEM, where “success is perceived to depend on high levels of intellectual ability,” the study says.1 But it could also extend to other fields and parts of society, like politics, where there are gender stereotypes associated with agency and leadership.
“If you swap out the stereotype about brilliance with other stereotypes, the same kind of mechanisms unfold in other domains where women are underrepresented,” says Andrei Cimpian, PhD, a co-author of the study and an associate professor in the department of psychology at New York University.
What The Study Found
Researchers from NYU, the University of Denver, and Harvard University asked more than 3,600 people (including children) from over 78 countries if they agreed with the stereotype that men were more brilliant than women. They said they didn’t.
But then researchers asked them to take a test that measured their implicit bias, or the attitudes or stereotypes that unconsciously affect our decisions. The result: Across a series of five studies, between 60% and 75% of participants showed some evidence of an implicit stereotype that associated brilliance with men more than women.1
How Implicit Bias Is Measured and Why It Matters
Implicit bias has become reconceptualized in the field of psychology as an important measurement not only of what an individual holds in their mind, but of the surrounding culture as well, says Tessa Charlesworth, a graduate student in the department of psychology at Harvard University and a co-author of the study.
Understanding implicit bias means understanding systemic bias.
“Measures of implicit bias actually pick up the associations that are embedded every day around us,” Charlesworth tells Verywell. “If you take that perspective, then understanding implicit bias means understanding systemic bias.”
As a result, understanding how deeply embedded the association of male as "genius" and female as "happy" or "creative" is in cultures around the world can help psychologists understand why women or people of color are underrepresented in fields that are more likely to value traits like “brilliance” or “genius.”
But how do you measure implicit bias? The researchers used the Implicit Association Test (IAT), which was first released online in 1998.2 The test asks people to quickly sort images and words that appear on the screen using keys on a computer keyboard. Grouping certain words or images together can reveal an implicit bias, but the speed at which a participant sorts matters, too. For instance, if “men” and “brilliant” go together in a participant’s mind due to a stereotype, then it would be faster to sort the stimuli appearing on the screen, Cimpian explains.
Source:https://www.verywellmind.com/75-percent-of-people-see-men-as-more-intelligent-than-women-5078063
