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I knew you'd understand: How gendered expectations of understanding affect stress
Author(s) -
Straup Maddie L.,
White Justin,
Butterworth Sarah E.,
Dunn Delaney S.,
Tate Kayla E.,
Guermeur Alexandra S.,
Crockett Erin E.
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
personal relationships
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.81
H-Index - 83
eISSN - 1475-6811
pISSN - 1350-4126
DOI - 10.1111/pere.12293
Subject(s) - interview , psychology , affect (linguistics) , nonverbal communication , social psychology , stress (linguistics) , developmental psychology , communication , linguistics , philosophy , political science , law
An experimental design was used to examine the effects of interviewer gender and (mis)understanding on physiological stress (i.e., cortisol). A total of 103 undergraduate students wrote about a recent social conflict and then discussed that conflict with either a male or a female interviewer. During these discussions, the interviewer displayed verbal and nonverbal cues of (mis)understanding toward the participants. Participants' cortisol was assessed four times throughout the study. Results from a 2 × 2 × 4 mixed‐model analysis of variance demonstrated an interaction between the gender of the interviewer, understanding condition, and time such that cortisol decreased the most over time when the interviewer used cues of understanding that matched stereotypical expectations for the interviewers' gender (i.e., when women were understanding and men were misunderstanding).