A Study on Gender Stereotypes and Their Activation Effects in Academic Performance

Abstract

Gender stereotypes in educational settings have emerged as an important issue. While many scholars have recognized the stereotypical beliefs regarding academic performance based on gender and the potential harm they may cause, there is still a lack of sufficient research exploring how these stereotypes specifically impact people's score estimations of students from different genders, as well as the triggering and reinforcement mechanisms of such stereotypes. Therefore, this study examined the experimental dataset of Daphne Lenders and Toon Calders, utilizing methods such as validity analysis, stratified chi-square tests, and visualization techniques. The findings revealed that in the absence of any stereotype activation, individuals tend to rate the academic performance of females higher than males. However, by manipulating stereotype activation, such as Case-based and Statistics, this paper observed variations in the intensity of bias: the difference in score estimations between genders significantly increased, particularly for the Statistics condition. This suggests the existence of inherent gender-based stereotypes in everyday life, which can be reinforced by the daily information received by people. The result helps to make the public aware of the intrinsic existence of performance gender stereotypes, increasing the possibility of mitigating such phenomenon, and point to the way for further research afterward.