The Malleability of Men's Gender Self-Concept

Men with a subordinate status expressed automatic self-concepts that were more stereotypically masculine than men who were in a high-status position.

• Male participants in the subordinate condition were 142 milliseconds faster at associating themselves with leadership traits (stereotypically associated to men) than with learner-like traits (stereotypically associated to women) in an implicit association test.  Males in the superior position were equally as fast in associating themselves with learning as with leadership qualities.
• Male participants who were paired with a female partner in the study were more likely to exhibit stereotypically masculine self-concepts than males who had a male partner.
• Participants’ implicit and explicit beliefs were consistently associated with their assigned social position, so that those who were subject to low social status were also more likely to compensate by describing themselves as having leadership traits.   

In this lab experiment, fifty-eight males were randomly assigned a subordinate or a superior role relative to a male or a female partner. In the subordinate case, they had to perform a public speaking assignment and were then evaluated by their (male or female) partner who was presented as an expert in public speaking, while in the superior case, they had to evaluate the public speaking performance of their (male or female) partner, who was presented to them as a graduate student. Subsequently, implicit and explicit self-concepts of their leadership and learning abilities were evaluated with an implicit association test (IAT) and a self-rating test respectively. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to test if the status of the participant and the gender of their partner had an impact on their implicit and explicit beliefs, as measured by the IAT tests and self-reported rankings respectively.