Activating gender stereotype: A life-span perspective

Most of the research on implicit gender stereotyping to date has been conducted with one age group – young adults. The mechanisms that underlie on-line processing of stereotypical information in other age groups have received little or no attention. This is the first study to investigate on-line processing of gender stereotypes from a life-span perspective. In fact, we investigated the activation of gender stereotypes in four groups of participants, third and fifth graders, young and cognitively-preserved older adults. Participants heard a role noun associated with masculine stereotypical or feminine stereotypical gender followed by a male or female kinship term. Their task was to decide if these two words could describe the same person. Across all age groups, participants were significantly faster to respond, and were more likely to press YES, when the target was preceded by a stereotypically congruent than incongruent prime. These findings suggest that information about the stereotypical gender associated with a role noun is incorporated into the mental representation of this word and activated as soon as the word is heard.