Bogus resumes were evaluated by 212 business professionals to discover what mediates sex discrimination in hiring decisions. We hypothesized that discrimination against women and men who applied for stereotypically "masculine" and "feminine" jobs, respectively, could be reduced by providing individuating information suggesting that the applicant was an exception to his or her gender stereotype and possessed traits usually associated with the opposite gender. We also hypothesized that individuating information consistent with stereotypes about an applicant's gender would decrease the probability that an applicant would be evaluated favorably for a job usually considered appropriate for the other gender. We found that individuating information eliminated sex-typed personality inferences about male and female applicants and affected applicants' perceived job suitability; however, sex discrimination was not eliminated. We suggest that sex discrimination is mediated by occupation stereotypes that specify both the personality traits and the gender appropriate for each occupation.Although researchers have repeatedly documented the existence of sex discrimination in access to jobs, relatively little attention has been devoted to discovering the mediators of such effects (Arvey, 1979). Perhaps the reason for this neglect is that the answer seems obvious: Stereotypes about men and women are responsible. However, as Arvey has noted, "although the notion of stereotyping is frequently invoked to explain why differential evaluations occur. . . the precise nature of how stereotypes operate and produce these different evaluations is not well specified" (p. 743). By exploring the psychological mediators of sex-discrimination effects we may not only gain insight into the general question of how people's judgments of others are affected by social stereotypes but also discover methods to circumvent the application of stereotypes that lead to unfair discrimination in hiring decisions. The latter aim is of special importance because research indicates that subsequent discriminatory treatment of minorities in the workplace may be reduced when minority members gain greater access to work roles traditionally dominated by the majority (Martinko & Gardner, 1983).Stereotypes may affect people's evaluations of others in several ways. For instance, if the traits associated with a particular social category are undesirable, then members of that category may be consistently discriminated against when applying for jobs (Arvey, 1979). Some researchers have invoked this explanation to account for discrimination against women because of the fact that "more of the characteristics that our Western societies value are associated with men than with women" (Deaux & Wrightsman, 1984, p. 257). However, considerableThis research was supported by a grant from Lawrence University. We gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments of
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