Graduation Year
Spring 2014
Document Type
Open Access Senior Thesis
Department
Linguistics and Cognitive Science
Reader 1
Judith LeMaster
Reader 2
Susan Castagnetto
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
© 2014 Emily R. Lindburg
Abstract
This study examined relationships between facial appearance, gender-linked traits, and feminist stereotypes. Naïve college students rated traits based on facial appearance of female CEO's whose companies appeared in the Forbes 1000 list. The photos of each female CEO (n=35) were randomly combined with two descriptive identifiers; an occupation (n=9) and an interest area (n=9), including 'feminist'. Participants then rated the head shots of the CEO's on a 7 point Likert scale of communal (expected feminine) traits like attractiveness, warmth, compassion and cooperativeness, and on agentic (expected masculine) traits like ambition, leadership ability and intelligence. If college students hold negative stereotypes of feminists, feminist identified women are expected to be rated lower on levels of attractiveness, warmth, compassion and cooperativeness, but higher in leadership ability, ambition, and intelligence. Results demonstrated that participants did not hold negative stereotypes of feminists as they rated them similarly to environmentalists, progressives, and liberals. Results demonstrated that participants held negative stereotypes about conservatives and republicans.
Recommended Citation
Lindburg, Emily R., "Feminist Stereotypes: Communal vs. Agentic" (2014). Scripps Senior Theses. 398.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/398
Included in
Cognitive Psychology Commons, Gender and Sexuality Commons, Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Ethnicity in Communication Commons, Personality and Social Contexts Commons, Politics and Social Change Commons, Social Psychology Commons, Social Psychology and Interaction Commons
