Describing men, describing women: Sex membership salience and numerical distinctiveness

Abstract

According to McGuire's distinctiveness theory, bemg a member of a numerical sex minority increases the salience of sex membership in self-descriptions. The same effect is observed in descriptions of others when the target person belongs to the numerical minority. The purpose of the present experiment was to study variations m sex-label salience from descriptions of male and female targets, especially as a function of the sex composition of the set of persons to which the targets belong. It was predicted that the target person 3 sex would have a main effect on its salience and would interact with numerical distinctiveness on this variable. It was found ( I ) that the salience of the target person's sex was greater when hislher sex was in the minority, as predicted by distinctiveness theory, and (2) that the sex of the target was more salient to female than to male subjects. There were some suggested interaction effects, such as that minority status affected the salience of male targets more than female targets; a significant distinctiveness effect on sex-membership salience was observed for male targets only. These differences in the cognitive processing of the two sex categories, if confirmed, can be interpreted in terms of membership in socially hierarchized groups, in reference to research on intergroup relations. tel: (33) 42 20 49 05, fax: (33) 42 20 59 05, e-mail. HURPICH@romarin.univ-aix.fr.We are grateful to Guido Peters and to the anonymous reviewers, whose comments and proposals helped us greatly. Thanks are also due to Vivian W a l t z for her translation.

Gender solidarity in hierarchical organizations

“…Discussing this work, Pichevin & Hurtig (1996, p. 514) argue that 'the idea that the two sex categories can, under the same numerical conditions, have consistently different degrees of salience has not been explored'. Clearly the present studies offer such an exploration, and there is some (though at best marginally significant) evidence in this second experiment (like that reported by Pichevin & Hurtig, 1996) that solo status can increase the salience of women's gender identity. But considering the results of these two studies together, it is hard to sustain the conclusion that solo status achieves this end atltomaticalb.…”

Women Assimilate Across Gender, Men Don't: The Role of Gender to the Own-Anchor Effect in Age, Height, and Weight Estimates1

“…It should be noted that females actually mention gender earlier and more often than do males when asked to describe target persons (Pichevin & Hurtig, 1996), which is difficult to assimilate with this alternative possibility of a wider in‐group for females. Further studies are obviously needed to disentangle the two alternatives, but even though the mechanism underlying the results is unknown, it seems safe to conclude that the own‐anchor effect is less restricted by gender in females' estimates than in males' estimates.…”

Group and person attributions in response to criticism of the in‐group

“…Some studies nd that higher-status group members exhibit a greater bias(Islam & Hewstone, 1993;Sachdev & Bourhis, 1991); yet a meta-analysis suggests that this may be more true with lab-created groups than with real-world group memberships(Mullen, Brown, & Smith, 1992).Others (e.g. Brewer, Weber, & Carini, 1995) suggest that minority, not majority, groups are more salient; yet group membership-and thus intergroup boundaries-seems to be more salient for members of minority than majority groups(Mullen, 1983;Pichevin & Hurtig, 1996;Simon & Brown, 1987).…”