Doctoral Dissertation Research: Gender Mistakes and Inequality

本项目评估性别错误对不平等的影响。当演员知道他或她错误地对另一个人的性别进行了分类时，就会发生性别错误。这些性别错误可能会对犯错误的演员的行为和态度产生挥之不去的影响，即使在错误得到纠正之后。例如，当一个男人被误认为是女人时，即使在错误被纠正之后，他在这种互动中享受的性别优势也会比错误从未发生时要少。另一方面，如果一个女人被误认为是男人，那么她所遭受的性别劣势就会比没有被误认为是男人所遭受的要小。该项目使用期望状态研究中常见的实验设计来测试这些说法。结果表明，如果性别错误发生在许多互动中，涉及许多参与者，它们可能有助于减少性别不平等和男性在互动中的优势。他们还认为，性别平等是通过在某些社会情境中明确的性别行为和明确的性别分类来维持的。

This project assesses the impact of gender mistakes on inequality. A gender mistake occurs when an actor learns that he or she has incorrectly sex categorized another. These gender mistakes may have lingering effects on the behaviors and attitudes of the actor who made the mistake, even after they are corrected. For example, when a man is mistaken for a women, he will enjoy less of a gender advantage in that interaction, even after the mistake is corrected, than he would if the mistake had never occurred. A women who is mistaken for a man, on the other hand, will suffer less of a gender disadvantage than she would have if the mistake had not happened. The project tests these claims using an experimental design common in expectations states research. The results suggest that if gender mistakes occur in many interactions, involving many actors, they might contribute to reducing gender inequality and the male advantage in interaction. They also suggest that gender equality is maintained by clear-cut displays of gender behavior in certain social situations and distinct categorization of the sexes.