The Psychology of Gender 4th Edition

44 Chapter 2

One remedy is to have a team of scientists with

opposing beliefs conduct research on a topic.

Why do you think this does not happen very

often? Social psychologists have shown that we

are attracted to people who share our beliefs

and values—people who are like us. Therefore,

it is more likely that we will find ourselves col-

laborating with people who share our beliefs

about the outcome of a study. Replication is

one strategy we have built into science as a

check on the influence experimenters have on

research findings. Before taking a finding se-

riously, we have to make sure it has been re-

peated with different samples, with different

measures of both the independent and depen-

dent variables, and by different investigators.

We can be more confident of similarities or

differences between male and female behav-

ior when we see them emerge repeatedly and

across a wide variety of contexts. As shown in

Chapter 5, however, changing the context usu-

ally alters how men and women behave.

Participant Effects

The ways in which participants of an experi-

ment can influence the outcome of a study

are referred to asdemand characteristics.

There are certain demands or expectations

about how to behave as a participant in an

experiment. Participants often conform to

or react against these demands. Thesocial

desirability response biasis one example

of a demand characteristic. That is, people

want to behave in socially desirable ways,

ways in which they appear normal and lik-

able. In our society, it is socially desirable for

men to appear masculine and women to ap-

pear feminine. On self-report inventories of

masculinity and femininity, men typically

rate themselves as high on masculinity and

women rate themselves as high on femininity

regardless of how they really score on traits

a newspaper (as defined by the most recent

presidential candidate endorsed) was as-

sociated with the explanations provided for

sex differences (Brescoll & LaFrance, 2004).

More conservative newspapers were more

likely to emphasize biological explanations.

One of the skills you will gain from read-

ing this text is being able to evaluate reports

about sex differences you read in the popular

press. Start now with Do Gender 2.1.

In summary, we need to be alert to how

experimenter expectancies can shape studies.

DO GENDER 2.1

Comparing Media Reports

to Scientific Reports

Find a news article on gender, most likely

on sex differences, in a newspaper or a

news magazine. Find one that refers to the

original source of the study; that is, it gives

the reference to a scientific journal. Com-

pare the news version of the study to the

scientific report of the study. Answer the

following questions:

1. Did the news article accurately reflect
   the findings of the scientific study?


2. What did the news article leave out,
   if anything?


3. What did the news article
   exaggerate, if anything?


4. Was there anything in the news
   article that was misleading?


5. What did you learn by reading the
   scientific article that you would not
   have learned by reading the news
   article?


6. Why did this particular study appear
   in the news? Was it important? Was
   the finding “catchy”?

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