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Describing men, describing women: Sex membership salience and numerical distinctiveness
Author(s) -
PICHEVIN MARIEFRANCE,
HURTIG MARIECLAUDE
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
european journal of social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.609
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1099-0992
pISSN - 0046-2772
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1099-0992(199607)26:4<513::aid-ejsp774>3.0.co;2-y
Subject(s) - optimal distinctiveness theory , salience (neuroscience) , psychology , social psychology , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology
According to McGuire's distinctiveness theory, being a member of a numerical sex minority increases the salience of sex membership in self‐descriptions. The same effect is observed in descriptions of others when the target person belongs to the numerical minority. The purpose of the present experiment was to study variations in sex‐label salience from descriptions of male and female targets, especially as a function of the sex composition of the set of persons to which the targets belong. It was predicted that the target person's sex would have a main effect on its salience and would interact with numerical distinctiveness on this variable. It was found (1) that the salience of the target person's sex was greater when his/her sex was in the minority, as predicted by distinctiveness theory, and (2) that the sex of the target was more salient to female than to male subjects. There were some suggested interaction effects, such as that minority status affected the salience of male targets more than female targets; a significant distinctiveness effect on sex‐membership salience was observed for male targets only. These differences in the cognitive processing of the two sex categories, if confirmed, can be interpreted in terms of membership in socially hierarchized groups, in reference to research on intergroup relations.