Explorations in Gender Cognition: Content and Structure of Female and Male Subtypes

The multiple-level view of social categorization holds that stereotypes are cognitive structures representing groups of people at different levels of specificity. The present research examined content and structure of gender subcategories and their relation to the global gender categories in 2 studies. Study 1 analyzed the structure of gender cognition through a combination of cluster-analytic and multidimensional scaling approaches. The results clearly showed that the general sex categories comprise well-differentiated sets of consensually perceived subcategories. Study 2 investigated the multicomponential nature of subtypes and demonstrated that each subcategory has a distinct pattern of how important each of four components (i.e., traits, attitudes, behaviors, physical appearance) is in the respective stereotype. In addition, diagnosticity and typicality were identified as separate facets of subtype features. The discussion focuses on the relationship between the cognition of gender subtypes and global gender stereotypes.