The Psychology of Gender 4th Edition

42 Chapter 2

who is blind to the purpose of the study, es-

pecially the hypotheses. In this situation, your

only concern is that the experimenter brings

to the study her or his lay perceptions of how

women and men differ. A better solution is

to have the experimenter blind to the par-

ticipant’s sex. One way to accomplish this,

although not always feasible, is to provide

standardized instructions or questions to par-

ticipants via an audiotape or intercom, so the

experimenter cannot see the participant.

Data Interpretation. The experimenter

can influence the outcome of the study by

the way he or she interprets the data. One

problem in the area of gender is that we

might interpret the same behavior differently

depending on whether the person is male

or female. In one study, college students

rated a professor’s written lecture on sex

discrimination at work differently depend-

ing on whether they thought the professor

was male or female (Abel & Meltzer, 2007).

The lecture was viewed as more sexist if fe-

male than male, and more accurate and of a

higher quality if male than female. In many

cases, it is difficult to be blind to the partici-

pant’s sex, especially if you are observing a

behavior. Imagine that you observe someone

screaming. If the person screaming is female,

you may interpret the behavior as hysteria; if

the person screaming is male, you may inter-

pret the behavior as anger. Recall the study

of preschoolers that showed they were more

likely to infer sadness in a female and anger

in a male (Parmley & Cunningham, 2008).

Imagine how you might respond differently

to someone who is sad versus angry!

Communication of Results. Finally, the ex-

perimenter can influence the impact of a study

by how the findings are communicated. Exper-

imenters may report only results that support

and female experimenters smiled more and

glanced more at same-sex participants than

other-sex participants while giving the ex-

perimental instructions. He concluded that

men and women are not in the same ex-

periment when the experimenter is aware of

their sex. More recently, researchers found

that the sex of the target influenced how an

emotion is interpreted. When preschoolers

were shown a picture of a face that was am-

biguous with respect to its emotion, children

thought the target was angry if male but sad

if female (Parmley & Cunningham, 2008).

The experimenter can influence par-

ticipants’ behavior by giving subtle cues like

nodding of the head to indicate the correct

response is being given. An experimenter

who believes that women self-disclose more

than men might unintentionally elicit dif-

ferences in self-disclosure by revealing more

personal information to female than to male

participants. The experimenter might pro-

vide subtle nonverbal cues that encourage fe-

male disclosure (e.g., head nodding, smiling)

and subtle cues that discourage male disclo-

sure (e.g., looking bored, not paying atten-

tion, shifting around anxiously in one’s seat).

The experimenter’s beliefs can influ-

ence her or his own behavior, which then

encourages participants to respond in a way

that confirms the experimenter’s beliefs.

That is, the experimenter’s beliefs lead to a

self-fulfilling prophecy. In these cases, ex-

perimenters are probably not intentionally

influencing the outcome, but their beliefs are

subtly influencing their own behavior and,

consequently, the participant’s behavior. It

may be difficult for experimenters to treat

female and male participants equally because

most experimenters are aware of gender-role

stereotypes and the norms for female and

male behavior. One way to minimize this bias

is for the investigator to hire an experimenter

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