Explaining the unexpected : sense-making and the perpetuation of gender stereotypes
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This project explores individuals' affective motivations to perpetuate macrolevel beliefs. Specifically, I argue that as individuals constantly process and interpret social information, they strive to align their social realities with pre-existing cultural stereotypes in an effort to make sense of the world around them and ensure smooth and seamless social interaction. I refer to this process as sense-making. Using gender as one instantiation of sense-making, I point to two sense-making strategies by which stereotype maintenance occurs in the face of inconsistent information. First, I posit that attribution processes allow individuals to "explain away" stereotype-inconsistent information. Consequently, I argue that successes and failures by low-status individuals (e.g. women) generate different patterns of attributions than do similar successes and failures by high-status individuals (e.g. men). Second, I draw on GSS analysis and in-depth interviews and show how women who hold gender egalitarian ideologies but do not self-identify as feminists are able to reconcile this inconsistent information through the adaptation processes of redefinition and contextualization. I argue that through attribution and adaptation processes, individuals reinstate traditional cultural meanings into their otherwise more progressive social realities. Thus, I suggest that these processes may be partly responsible for the persistence of gender stereotypes despite the significant progress in economic and social realities.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2013 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Tucker, Traci |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Sociology. |
| Primary advisor | Correll, Shelley Joyce |
| Primary advisor | Ridgeway, Cecilia L |
| Thesis advisor | Correll, Shelley Joyce |
| Thesis advisor | Ridgeway, Cecilia L |
| Thesis advisor | Grusky, David B |
| Advisor | Grusky, David B |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Traci Tucker. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Sociology. |
| Thesis | Ph.D. Stanford University 2013 |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2013 by Traci Nicole Tucker
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Also listed in
Loading usage metrics...