| Abstract: | Three studies were undertaken to assess the accuracy of people's estimates of the attitudes of men and women. In Exp 1, attitudes of male and female college students were assessed on a broad range of social and political issues. In Exp 2, 30 male and 30 female college students estimated the attitudes of typical males and females on the same statements. These estimates were used to select a set of stereotypic male statements and a set of stereotypic female statements. In Exp 3, 44 male and 53 female college students estimated the attitudes of male and female students on the 2 sets of statements. Results of the 1st 2 studies indicated that both men and women expected larger gender differences in attitudes than actually exist. In the 3rd study, this result was confirmed and it was found that people were least accurate in their estimates of the attitudes of men. Partial support was obtained for the hypothesis that in-group stereotypes would be more accurate than out-group stereotypes. Men were more accurate than women in estimating the attitudes of men but men and women were equally accurate in estimating the attitudes of women. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
