Poster #226 - Popularity and Gender Prototypicality: An Experimental Investigation

• In Event: 1-169 - Poster Session 04
  In Poster Session: PS 04 Section - Social Relationships

Integrative Statement

Peer popularity is correlated with attractiveness for boys and girls, and with gender-stereotyped behaviors and attributes (e.g., athletic involvement for boys and having stylish clothes for girls; (Vaillancourt & Hymel, 2005)). This suggests that gender typicality may be an important pathway to social power in adolescence (Jewell & Brown, 2014). This study investigated the association between popularity and gender typicality experimentally. We hypothesized that participants in a popularity prime condition would rate gender typical peers higher, and gender atypical peers lower, on popularity-related descriptors, compared to participants in a control condition.
Participants were 331 undergraduates who were randomly assigned to one of two conditions. The popularity prime asked students to provide three adjectives describing their popular high school peers. The control condition asked students to provide three adjectives describing their favorite college professor. Next, students were presented with a series of photographs of adolescents who varied in terms of their biological sex and gender presentation. Half of the photos depicted adolescents (two boys, two girls) who were gender-typical in self-presentation. Half of the photos depicted adolescents (two boys, two girls) who were gender-atypical. Participants rated each adolescent on their level of popularity and seven associated characteristics (kindness, bullying, attractiveness, having many friends, good leadership, power, well-liked), on a 7-point Likert scale.
We ran eight 2 (condition) X 4 (gender typical/atypical boys and girls) repeated measures ANOVAs with gender typicality and target sex as within-subjects variables. Dependent variables were the mean ratings of popularity and popularity-related attributes. Of specific interest were main effects of condition (there were none) and interactions involving condition (there were four). The interaction of condition X gender typicality was significant for ratings of popularity (F (1, 327) = 12.96, p < .001, η2 = .04), power (F (1, 327) = 10.38, p < .001, η2 = .03), and attractiveness (F (1, 327) = 4.92, p < .03, η2 = .02). For ratings of popularity, this interaction was further qualified by an interaction with target sex, F (1, 327) = 3.91, p < .05, η2 = .01.
To explore the effects for power and attractiveness, one-way ANOVAs tested the effect of condition on ratings of gender-typical and gender-atypical adolescents (see Figures 1 and 2). For power and attractiveness, the effect of condition was significant for ratings of gender-typical adolescents (power: F (1,327) = 5.70, p < .02; attractiveness: F (1, 327) = 7.05, p < .01). In both cases, participants primed with popularity rated gender-typical adolescents as more powerful than did control participants. The three-way interaction of condition X gender typicality X target sex was explored via two one-way ANOVAs testing the effect of condition on ratings of popularity for gender typical versus atypical adolescents. The effect was significant for gender-atypical girls (F (1, 327) = 10.56, p < .001). Participants in the control condition rated gender-atypical girls as more popular than did participants in the popularity prime condition. These results support the hypothesis that popularity is ascribed to gender-prototypical peers.

Authors

• Maggie Kleiser, University of Oklahoma
  Presenting Author

• Lara Mayeux, University of Oklahoma
  Non-Presenting Author