More Skilled and Aware: How Non-Stereotyped Occupational Gender Portrayals Impact Cognitive Performance and Judgements of Competence

Sammanfattning: This research investigated whether non-stereotyped occupational gender portrayals in advertising can impact men and womens' cognitive performance and ability to form accurate judgements of competence. T-test revealed that this may well be the case, although the effects varied between genders. More specifically, women performed significantly better on a cognitive test when exposed to a non-stereotyped ad, compared to a stereotyped one. However, no such effects were found for men. For both men and women, the non-stereotyped ad led to more accurate performance estimates as a result of a decrease in men's estimates and an increase in women's performance, respectively, which in turn generated more equal estimates between men and women. The results also pointed to the ads affecting both genders' likelihood to ask for help, regardless if the task at hand was perceived as feminine or masculine, but no statistically significant conclusions could be drawn for this variable overall because of too high p-values. Finally, ad and brand attitudes were tested; the non-stereotyped ad led to increased attitudes towards the ad, but only for women. No differences were found for brand attitudes for either gender. To interpret the results, the authors draw upon theory on the Dunning-Kruger effect and stereotype threat/lift, and discuss those theories in relation to concepts such as heuristics, ad reactance and signalling-effects. The findings suggest that non-stereotyped advertising in the form of occupational gender portrayals serve as an important tool in leveling men and women's performance and performance estimates across domains. Further, the results indicate the need for marketers to work proactively to craft non-stereotyped advertising, as even seemingly subtle stereotypes can elicit negative effects such as stereotype threat.