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Giving Directions: Gender and Perceived Quality
Author(s) -
Devlin Ann Sloan
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2003.tb01961.x
Subject(s) - schism , psychology , perception , quality (philosophy) , social psychology , epistemology , political science , politics , law , philosophy , neuroscience
Two related studies examined gender differences in directions given between 2 campus buildings (Experiment 1) and the rated quality of these directions and their authorship in terms of gender (Experiment 2). In the first experiment, 95 participants gave written directions for newcomers to their college campus. No significant gender differences were found in 6 assessment categories adapted from Ward, Newcombe, and Overton (1986). In the second experiment, 14 sets of directions from Experiment 1 were evaluated by 111 participants in a between‐subjects design, half evaluating them in terms of the gender of the author and half in terms of the quality of the directions. Results indicated that length (in terms of gender) and errors (in terms of quality) most clearly differentiated the directions. The findings are discussed in terms of the schism between performance and perception.