This article presents a four-category framework to characterize the contents of prescriptive gender stereotypes. The framework distinguishes between prescriptions and proscriptions that are intensified by virtue of one's gender, and those that are relaxed by virtue of one's gender. Two studies examined the utility of this framework for characterizing prescriptive gender stereotypes in American society (Study 1) and in the highly masculine context of Princeton University (Study 2). The results demonstrated the persistence of traditional gender prescriptions in both contexts, but also revealed distinct areas of societal vigilance and leeway for each gender. In addition, they showed that women are seen more positively, relative to societal standards, than are men. We consider the implications of this framework for research on reactions to gender stereotype deviants and sex discrimination. Gender stereotypes are highly prescriptive. The qualities they ascribe to women and men tend also to be ones that are required of women and men. For example, the stereotypic belief that women are warm and caring is matched by a societal prescription that they should be warm and caring. Similarly, the stereotypic belief that men are strong and agentic is matched by a societal prescription that they should be strong and agentic. Recent interest in the prescriptive aspect of gender stereotypes has been sparked by two observations: First, gender stereotypes are closely linked to traditional social roles and power inequalities between women and men (Eagly, 1987).

Four studies examined the relation between college students' own attitudes toward alcohol use and their estimates of the attitudes of their peers. AH studies found widespread evidence of pluralistic ignorance: Students believed that they were more uncomfortable with campus alcohol practices than was the average student. Study 2 demonstrated this perceived self-other difference also with respect to one's friends. Study 3 tracked attitudes toward drinking over the course of a semester and found gender differences in response to perceived deviance: Male students shifted their attitudes over time in the direction of what they mistakenly believed to be the norm, whereas female students showed no such attitude change. Study 4 found that students' perceived deviance correlated with various measures of campus alienation, even though that deviance was illusory. The implications of these results for general issues of norm estimation and responses to perceived deviance are discussed.

No abstract

Providing people with information about the behavior and attitudes of their peers is a strategy commonly employed by those seeking to reduce behavior deemed harmful either to individuals (e.g., high alcohol consumption) or the collective (e.g., high energy consumption). We review norm-based interventions, detailing the logic behind them and the various forms they can take. We give special attention to interventions designed to decrease college students' drinking and increase environment-friendly behaviors. We identify the conditions under which norm information has the highest likelihood of changing the targeted behavior and discuss why this is the case.

Two studies sought to validate the distinction between common-identity groups, which are based on direct attachments to the group identity, and common-bond groups, which are based on attachments among group members. Study 1 focused on members of selective and nonselective university eating clubs. Study 2 focused on members of a diverse sample of campus groups. Both studies revealed asymmetries in group and member attachments: Individuals in common-identity groups were more attached to their group than to its members, whereas individuals in common-bond groups were as attached to the members as to the group (or more so). Study 2 also demonstrated that attachment to the group was more strongly related to various evaluations of individual group members in common-bond than in common-identity groups. The authors discuss the implications of these results for the development of groups over time and speculate on how the dynamics of the two types of groups might differ.

Psychological essentialism is an ordinary mode of category representation that has powerful social-psychological consequences. This article reviews those consequences, with a focus on the distinctive ways people perceive, evaluate, and interact with members of human categories they essentialize. Why and when people engage in this mode of thinking remain open questions. Variability in essentialism across cultures, categories, and contexts suggests that this mode of representing human categories is rooted in a naturalistic theory of category origins, combined with a need to explain differences that cross category boundaries.

Effect size is becoming an increasingly popular measure of the importance of an effect, both in individual studies and in meta-analyses. However, a large effect size is not the only way to demonstrate that an effect is important. This article describes 2 alternative methodological strategies, in which importance is a function of how minimal a manipulation of the independent variable or how difficult-to-influence a dependent variable will still produce an effect. These methodologies demonstrate the importance of an independent variable or psychological process, even though they often yield effects that are small in statistical terms.

No abstract