Perceptions of Communality in College Professors: Gendered Expectations Prevail

Undergraduate Honors Thesis

Citations

Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/undergraduate_honors_theses/1v53jz48d

Abstract

The STEM profession has long been associated with agentic traits, including ambition, rationality, and logical thinking; similarly, fields such as English are often associated with communal traits such friendliness, compassion, and empathy. In a replication of past research, this study aimed to show that assumptions of communality and agency in professors of Physics and English are moderated by the gender of said professors. In the current study, women were rated as significantly higher than men in both agency and communality regardless of field; similarly, English professors were rated as higher in communality and Physics professors as higher in agency regardless of gender. The ratings of gender, however, did not moderate those of field, as no significant interaction was found. Overall, this study confirms past research detailing the gendered expectations of men and women, as well as men and women-dominated fields, but a higher power is needed to examine how gender truly affects field ratings.

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