Efectele perverse ale stereotipului de gen
The perverse effects of gender stereotype

Summary/Abstract: Psycholinguistics and cognitive psychology research showed that l’anguage is influencing the way people process information. On the other hand, new approaches in social cognition stress that stereotypes are part of the normal functioning of our mind (e.g. Fiske & Taylor, 1991). Starting from these points and from some results of previous research regarding the role of ethnic stereotype in social information processing (Iacob & Lungu, 1999; Lungu & Iacob, 2000) we hypothesized that some linguistic structure of Romanian language may influence the ethnic stereotype application. We consider that the fact that nations’ names are all masculine (in Romanian language) will influence the ethnic stereotypes Romanians may have about different nations. In order to check this general hypothesis we made three experimental studies. First one measured general influence of gender stereotype in social information processing. Second one analyzed the influence of ethnic stereotype in a neutral context. Finally, the last one assessed to what extent gender stereotype influence ethnic stereotypes application. The results of all studies confirmed our general hypothesis and assessed some of the influencing mechanisms.

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