Gender stereotype threat: ANOVA analysis

  • Due May 17, 2024 by 11:59pm
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This assignment was locked May 17, 2024 at 11:59pm.

Gender Stereotypes and Cognitive Performance

How do gender stereotypes impact ability to perform a cognitive task?  An article by Marina A. Pavlova, Susanna Weber, Elisabeth Simoes and Alexander N. Sokolov on "Gender Stereotype Susceptibility" in the open-source journal PLOS  used ANOVA to analyze their experimental observations.

Citation: Pavlova MA, Weber S, Simoes E, Sokolov AN (2014) Gender Stereotype Susceptibility. PLoS ONE 9(12): e114802. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0114802

In this study, 117 university students were assigned to one of three groups.  Each individual was given the same task, one frequently used in psychological testing.  The subject gets several sets of cards.  Each portrays a story involving human characters, but the cards are presented out of order.  The task is to rearrange each set of cards in order to tell the story by inferring the characters' intentions and desires. The score (from 1 to 19) depends both on accuracy and completion within a specified time limit.  

The control group got standard gender-neutral instructions without any gender-related message.  The second group was additionally told that males usually perform worse on this task and the third group was told that females usually perform worse.

Graphical Summary of Results

ANOVA results are frequently displayed using box (or "box-and-whisker") plots.  

Figure 1

Figure 1
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0114802.g001 (Links to an external site.)
1.  How did the results for women and men compare in the standard control ("S") group?  In Group 2 ("N_M")?  In Group 3 ("N_F")?   How would you interpret these results?
2.  How did the results for women compare based on which message they received?  
3.  How did the results for men compare based on which message they received?  
You may wish to refer to the article to read the authors' description of these results.
Based on their findings, the researchers conducted a follow-up study in which two additional groups were given explicit "positive-female" instructions ("women usually do better on this") or explicit "positive-male" instructions ("men usually do better").  
Figure 2
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0114802.g002 (Links to an external site.)
4.  How did women and men compare when there was a "positive-female" message? 
5.  How did women and men compare when there was a "positive-male" message?
6.  Looking only at the women, summarize the effect of messaging on women's scores.
7.  Looking only at the men, summarize the effect of messaging on men's scores.

More on statistical methodology:

8.  The authors note that "as assessed by the Shapiro-Wilk test, the data were normally distributed."  Why does this matter?
9.  For the first study, they report that "The outcome reveals a main effect of Message (F(2,111) = 3.74, p<0.027) and a Message by Gender interaction (F(2,111) = 3.41, p<0.037)."  What do the p-values tell us?
10. For the second study, they report that:  "The outcome reveals main effects of Message (F(4,192) = 3.69, p<0.007), Gender (F(1,192) = 8.21, p<0.005), and a Message by Gender interaction (F(4,192) = 5.31, p<0.0004)."  Interpret each of these three p-values.

Conclusions:

There is much more in this study, which includes both one-way, two-way and three-way ANOVA analyses.  The authors concluded that:

"The outcome reveals: (i) Stereotyping affects both females and males, with a more pronounced impact on females. Yet an explicit negative message for males elicits a striking paradoxical deterioration in performance of females. (ii) Irrespective of gender and directness of message, valence of stereotype message affects performance: negative messages have stronger influence than positive ones. (iii) Directness of stereotype message differentially impacts performance of females and males: females tend to be stronger affected by implicit than explicit negative messages, whereas in males this relationship is opposite."

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0114802#pone-0114802-g001 (Links to an external site.)

Now please post in the Discussion: Stereotype Threats

1716015599 05/17/2024 11:59pm