Subject: Who Stereotypes Less Favorably?: Adolescent Self-Reported Gender
Typicality and Stereotypes about Gender
Abstract:
Gender is one aspect of identity that becomes salient during
adolescence. Consequently, adolescents assess how typical for their gender
they feel, as well as how they stereotype members of their gender in and
out group. Past findings disagree on whether or not how much adolescents
feel like a “typical” boy or girl (i.e. gender typicality) is related to
positive in-group and negative out-group stereotypes. The mixed findings
may in part reflect past studies’ use of a difference score between
positive gender in-group and negative gender out-group stereotype
endorsement. To counter this, the current study uses separate linear
regression analyses to investigate how gender typicality is related
to positive gender in-group and negative gender out-group
stereotypes respectively, in an ethnically diverse sample of adolescents
(N=4,613; 41% Latinx, 16% Black, 26% White, 17% Asian). Preliminary
findings suggest that gender typicality is endorsing positive gender
in-group stereotypes. Analyses also reveal a novel finding: Youth reporting
less gender typicality endorse more *negative *stereotypes about the gender
out-group compared to youth who report feeling more gender typical.