Bias in Evaluation: The Effects of Stereotypes and Environment
Date
1995
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Haverford College. Department of Psychology
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Award
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eng
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Haverford users only
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Abstract
A study was designed to replicate and expand on Goldberg's 1968 study on evaluation bias. Evaluation bias is discrimination based on gender when assessing an individual's competence. 24 females and 24 males from Swarthmore College, and 42 females from Bryn Mawr College were asked to evaluate 3 published articles in the fields of Physics, Feminist & Gender Studies and History (perceived as masculine, feminine and neutral domains). Each article was written by a different author: a male, female, or an author whose name was initialized. The combinations of author and field of article were different for different groups of subjects. It was predicted that, as there was no individuating information about the author, the subjects would rely on stereotypes when evaluating the individual's work. The main hypothesis was that subjects would rate essays differentially according to gender of author; that is, raters would rely on negative stereotypes of women and thus women's work would be devalued. Another hypothesis, which was unique to this particular study, was that environment would influence the content of stereotypes; specifically, that students from a coeducational school would evaluate women differently than would students from an all female school. Results indicated that the articles were not differentially perceived and evaluated according to the name of the author; findings gave no evidence of evaluation bias. However, there were effects of school indicating the role of environment. Furthermore, almost all the significant effects were within the feminine domain.