Did You Just Assume My Vector? Detecting Gender Stereotypes in Word Embeddings

Gender Stereotypes in Natural Language: Word Embeddings Show Robust Consistency Across Child and Adult Language Corpora of More Than 65 Million Words

Psychological Science ◽

10.1177/0956797620963619 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 32 (2) ◽

pp. 218-240 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Tessa E. S. Charlesworth ◽

Victor Yang ◽

Thomas C. Mann ◽

Benedek Kurdi ◽

Mahzarin R. Banaji

Keyword(s):

Social Cognition ◽

Gender Stereotypes ◽

Social Groups ◽

Age Groups ◽

Written Language ◽

Word Embeddings ◽

Time Periods ◽

Collective Representations ◽

Focal Issue ◽

Semantic Attributes

Stereotypes are associations between social groups and semantic attributes that are widely shared within societies. The spoken and written language of a society affords a unique way to measure the magnitude and prevalence of these widely shared collective representations. Here, we used word embeddings to systematically quantify gender stereotypes in language corpora that are unprecedented in size (65+ million words) and scope (child and adult conversations, books, movies, TV). Across corpora, gender stereotypes emerged consistently and robustly for both theoretically selected stereotypes (e.g., work–home) and comprehensive lists of more than 600 personality traits and more than 300 occupations. Despite underlying differences across language corpora (e.g., time periods, formats, age groups), results revealed the pervasiveness of gender stereotypes in every corpus. Using gender stereotypes as the focal issue, we unite 19th-century theories of collective representations and 21st-century evidence on implicit social cognition to understand the subtle yet persistent presence of collective representations in language.

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The Cinderella Complex: Word embeddings reveal gender stereotypes in movies and books

PLoS ONE ◽

10.1371/journal.pone.0225385 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 14 (11) ◽

pp. e0225385 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Huimin Xu ◽

Zhang Zhang ◽

Lingfei Wu ◽

Cheng-Jun Wang

Keyword(s):

Gender Stereotypes ◽

Word Embeddings ◽

Complex Word

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Quota Women Are Threatening to Men

Swiss Journal of Psychology ◽

10.1024/1421-0185/a000195 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 76 (3) ◽

pp. 107-116 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Klea Faniko ◽

Till Burckhardt ◽

Oriane Sarrasin ◽

Fabio Lorenzi-Cioldi ◽

Siri Øyslebø Sørensen ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Organizational Performance ◽

Gender Stereotypes ◽

Perceived Threat ◽

Preferential Treatment ◽

Public Sector Employees ◽

Different Types ◽

Low Levels ◽

Women In Decision Making ◽

The Impact

Abstract. Two studies carried out among Albanian public-sector employees examined the impact of different types of affirmative action policies (AAPs) on (counter)stereotypical perceptions of women in decision-making positions. Study 1 (N = 178) revealed that participants – especially women – perceived women in decision-making positions as more masculine (i.e., agentic) than feminine (i.e., communal). Study 2 (N = 239) showed that different types of AA had different effects on the attribution of gender stereotypes to AAP beneficiaries: Women benefiting from a quota policy were perceived as being more communal than agentic, while those benefiting from weak preferential treatment were perceived as being more agentic than communal. Furthermore, we examined how the belief that AAPs threaten men’s access to decision-making positions influenced the attribution of these traits to AAP beneficiaries. The results showed that men who reported high levels of perceived threat, as compared to men who reported low levels of perceived threat, attributed more communal than agentic traits to the beneficiaries of quotas. These findings suggest that AAPs may have created a backlash against its beneficiaries by emphasizing gender-stereotypical or counterstereotypical traits. Thus, the framing of AAPs, for instance, as a matter of enhancing organizational performance, in the process of policy making and implementation, may be a crucial tool to countering potential backlash.

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Yes I Can!

Social Psychology ◽

10.1027/1864-9335/a000229 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 46 (2) ◽

pp. 76-92 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

Dries Vervecken ◽

Bettina Hannover

Keyword(s):

Middle Childhood ◽

Gender Stereotypes ◽

Self Efficacy ◽

Vocational Interests ◽

Primary School Students ◽

School Students ◽

Employment Goals ◽

Linguistic Intervention ◽

Male Occupations ◽

Linguistic Backgrounds

Many countries face the problem of skill shortage in traditionally male occupations. Individuals’ development of vocational interests and employment goals starts as early as in middle childhood and is strongly influenced by perceptions of job accessibility (status and difficulty) and self-efficacy beliefs. In this study, we tested a linguistic intervention to strengthen children’s self-efficacy toward stereotypically male occupations. Two classroom experiments with 591 primary school students from two different linguistic backgrounds (Dutch or German) showed that the presentation of occupational titles in pair forms (e.g., Ingenieurinnen und Ingenieure, female and male engineers), rather than in generic masculine forms (Ingenieure, plural for engineers), boosted children’s self-efficacy with regard to traditionally male occupations, with the effect fully being mediated by perceptions that the jobs are not as difficult as gender stereotypes suggest. The discussion focuses on linguistic interventions as a means to increase children’s self-efficacy toward traditionally male occupations.

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Macho Nachos

Social Psychology ◽

10.1027/1864-9335/a000226 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 46 (4) ◽

pp. 182-196 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

Luke (Lei) Zhu ◽

Victoria L. Brescoll ◽

George E. Newman ◽

Eric Luis Uhlmann

Keyword(s):

Gender Stereotypes ◽

Food Packaging ◽

Food Preferences ◽

Healthy Food ◽

Psychological Reactance ◽

Unhealthy Food ◽

Healthy Foods ◽

Gender Schema ◽

Male And Female ◽

Schema Congruity

Abstract. The present studies examine how culturally held stereotypes about gender (that women eat more healthfully than men) implicitly influence food preferences. In Study 1, priming masculinity led both male and female participants to prefer unhealthy foods, while priming femininity led both male and female participants to prefer healthy foods. Study 2 extended these effects to gendered food packaging. When the packaging and healthiness of the food were gender schema congruent (i.e., feminine packaging for a healthy food, masculine packaging for an unhealthy food) both male and female participants rated the product as more attractive, said that they would be more likely to purchase it, and even rated it as tasting better compared to when the product was stereotype incongruent. In Study 3, packaging that explicitly appealed to gender stereotypes (“The muffin for real men”) reversed the schema congruity effect, but only among participants who scored high in psychological reactance.

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Smart Girls, Dumb Boys!?

Social Psychology ◽

10.1027/1864-9335/a000167 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 45 (2) ◽

pp. 112-126 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

Martin Latsch ◽

Bettina Hannover

Keyword(s):

Secondary School ◽

Stereotype Threat ◽

Gender Stereotypes ◽

Secondary School Students ◽

Learning Goals ◽

School Students ◽

Compensatory Strategies ◽

Media Portrayal ◽

Stereotype Lift ◽

The Media

We investigated effects of the media’s portrayal of boys as “scholastic failures” on secondary school students. The negative portrayal induced stereotype threat (boys underperformed in reading), stereotype reactance (boys displayed stronger learning goals towards mathematics but not reading), and stereotype lift (girls performed better in reading but not in mathematics). Apparently, boys were motivated to disconfirm their group’s negative depiction, however, while they could successfully apply compensatory strategies when describing their learning goals, this motivation did not enable them to perform better. Overall the media portrayal thus contributes to the maintenance of gender stereotypes, by impairing boys’ and strengthening girls’ performance in female connoted domains and by prompting boys to align their learning goals to the gender connotation of the domain.

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