Morality stereotyping as a basis of women’s in-group favoritism: An implicit approach

Abstract

Four studies used three different implicit methods (the _BriefIAT, Affect Misattribution Procedure, and Lexical Decision Task) to measure women’s gender stereotypes of violence, strength, competence, trustworthiness, and sociability. Analyses of response latencies in Study 1 (N = 100) showed that these stereotypes were based more in in-group favoritism than out-group derogation. Consistent with recent evidence that morality is central to the positive evaluation of in-groups, it was the implicit stereotype of women as more trustworthy that best predicted their implicit in-group favoritism across studies, r(249) = .27. Only by examining such specific stereotype content could we assess the moral stereotype of trustworthiness as distinctly tied to in-group favoritism. Alternative analyses of the two global dimensions of group evaluation (i.e., agency/competence and communion/warmth) obscured differences between the more specific stereotypes. Implications for theory and research on stereotype content, as well as the group favoritism of disadvantaged groups, are discussed.