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Gender Differences in Impression Formation
Article · March 2010
Source: DOAJ

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Bogdana Huma
Loughborough University
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JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE RESEARCH IN
ANTHROPOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY
Copyright © The Author(s), 2010
Volume 1(1): 57-72
ISSN 2068 – 0317
http://compaso
...
It is based on secondary analysis of the data gathered in two previous experiments with
similar conditions
...
The current analysis was conducted on 86 participants, 47 males and 39 females
...
Their task consisted of watching a 14 seconds long video of a female confederate
reading a neutral text and then evaluating her using a semantic differential with four dimensions:
sociability, ethics, power and activity
...
More precisely, the
majority of the studies undertaken in this area compare men and women’s accuracy scores of facial
expressions decoding, yielding mostly significant differences, with women achieving higher
accuracy
...
However, the current experiment
failed to reveal any differences between men’s and women’s evaluations
...
The results are consistent with a small percentage of the studies
conducted on gender differences in social perception and allow multiple interpretations
...
, Dept
...
com

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Journal of Comparative Research in Anthropology and Sociology, Volume 1, Number 1, Spring 2010

Introduction
It is a common sociological practice to resort to gender differences when trying to
explain social phenomena
...
Therefore, even if the
assertion that men are from Mars and women are from Venus is rather farfetched, not
admitting that gender differences exist and that they account for at least a small part of
the individual behavior variance would be a mistake
...
Until now, many studies have addressed this issue, most of them yielding
similar results, which revealed significant differences between the two sexes
...
Moreover, it must be mentioned that the largest part of
the studies in this area addressed the issue of gender differences in impression accuracy
...
Therefore, comparing men and
women’s accuracy might not be the best method for pointing out gender differences in
impression formation
...
Regarding the sex – gender controversy, I agree with the authors of the
anthology Sex Differences
...

al
...
Therefore, since it is rather difficult to ascertain this last distinction, using the
terms as synonyms seems like an acceptable practice
...

Social perception accuracy could be generally defined as the correspondence
between observers’ assessments of a characteristic of the target person and an external
criterion measuring the same concept
...
However, some attributes, such as
sex, age, ethnicity or profession can be objectively appraised
...


58

Bogdana Humă / Gender differences in impression formation

Gender Differences in Empathic Accuracy
As mentioned before, most studies regarding gender differences in social perception
addressed the subject from the viewpoint of male and female empathic accuracy, the
majority of them focusing on facial expressions of emotions
...
They employed high school, college and
university students which were shown pictures of the six fundamental emotions
...
Nevertheless, further
analysis showed that gender accounted for only 2
...
44% of the total variance
...
The stimuli consisted of facial expressions of
emotions shown for a very short period of time (10 s or 20 s)
...
Using a
multiple-point scale, the authors were able to spot other differences between male and
female subjects
...
Similar results were obtained by Katsikitis, Pilowsky and Innes (1997)
...
A second
explanation puts forward the fact that female participants might have been more
confident in their evaluations, thus venturing in selecting the scale’s extreme values as
well as the middle ones
...
Instead of asking
the participants to name the depicted emotion, they inquired about the subjects’ own
affective state, knowing that emotions are highly contagious
...
Moreover, men as well as women were above chance accurate in
recognizing the depicted emotions
...

Similarly, Montagne et
...
(2005, 136) asked if ‘men really lack emotional
sensitivity?’
...
Their stimuli consisted of neutral faces which gradually morphed towards
expressing an emotion
...

The results yielded significant differences between female and male subjects’ accuracy as
well as sensitivity, with women obtaining higher scores
...

Klein and Hodges (2001) offer an interesting interpretation of gender differences in
empathic accuracy
...
Women
performed better than men only when they thought that the task demanded
interpersonal involvement
...

Gender Differences in Personality Traits Assessments
Few studies concerning gender differences in social perception accuracy focused on the
assessment of personality traits, most of them employing the Big Five structure
...

Marcus and Lehman (2002) addressed the subject of gender differences in first
impression formation
...
Nonetheless, it was noted that female participants
evaluated the actors as significantly more sociable and cheerful
...
These divergent outcomes could be
explained by the fact that the mentioned studies show minor methodological
differences, using different stimuli and instruments
...
They concluded that
women were significantly more accurate than men in regard to openness, intelligence
and negative affect, whereas what neuroticism, extraversion and positive affect was
concerned, their evaluations didn’t differ from those of male subjects
...

The only discrepancy observed, involved the evaluation of neuroticism, where female
subjects were more accurate than males
...

The results suggested that women were more accurate in the evaluation of extraversion
and positive affect
...
It
was observed that shy and inexpressive women, as well as not shy men were better at
judging extraversion
...
Furthermore, sociable men were significantly better
judges of a persons’ conscientiousness than were sociable women
...


60

Bogdana Humă / Gender differences in impression formation

Other studies also revealed the influence of different personality characteristics on
social perception accuracy
...
Moreover, Hall and
Halberstadt (1981) investigated the impact of masculinity/femininity, androginy
(masculinity plus femininity) and sex typing (masculinity minus femininity) on the fidelity
on impression formation
...
However the results showed no significant differences between
participants with high/low scores, although males with high masculinity scores tended to
be slightly more accurate
...
Furthermore, partialling out
masculinity/femininity bore no result on accuracy scores of men and women, suggesting
that these characteristics are not the ones behind sex differences in person perception
...
Their evaluations were compared
with evaluations from self, family and friends of the confederate, thus obtaining accuracy
scores
...
As expected, women showed higher
communion scores, as well as significantly higher accuracy ratings
...

Sex differences in impression formation fidelity are sometimes influenced by stimuli
employed in the study
...
Conversely, silent movies or transcripts did not yield significant
differences among sexes
...
However,
only papers concerning emotions and states and not personality traits assessments were
included
...
Nonetheless, the
author draws attention to the fact that studies yielding sex dissimilarities were more
likely to be published than the ones which failed to establish them
...

The earlier mentioned study conducted Vogt and Covin (2003) identified communion as
playing an important role in social perception fidelity, notwithstanding gender
...
His meta-analysis on studies involving children revealed that girls, as
compared to boys, are more inclined towards prosocial behavior, which includes, among
others, empathy and interpersonal sensitivity
...

Nevertheless, the meta-analysis conducted by Eisenberg and Lennon (1983) revealed that
gender differences in empathy occur more often in studies which employ self-ratings or

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Journal of Comparative Research in Anthropology and Sociology, Volume 1, Number 1, Spring 2010

ratings by others and less when physiological measurements are undertaken
...
Moreover, in real life situations
people might often wish to hide their feelings, employing a large variety of strategies,
which render new obstacles for emotional expressions decoding
...
Hence, the author
revised experiments which employed infants, children and adolescents as subjects
...
According to the first,
girls might perform better on facial expression processing tasks only if their neurological
structures underlying facial recognition (the amygdala and the temporal cortex) undergo
an early maturation process
...
Gender stereotypes
play an important role in shaping decoding abilities, yielding different expectations for
men and women
...
It was observed that sex
differences were more likely to occur at an early age, thus sustaining the neurobehavioral
approach
...

McAninch et
...
(1999) looked at children impression formation process
manipulating their expectations towards the target’s behavior
...
Then, the children watched a tape of the
confederate (boy or girl) confirming or disconfirming their expectations
...
The results showed that girls noticed more shy items when judging girls and
overall more neutral information than boys
...
The authors’ explanations drew upon differences in sex
schemes which yield both observer and target impression formation effects
...

In conclusion, the revised literature on gender differences in impression formation
suggests that women, more often than men, turn out to be better judges, yielding more
accurate assessments of targets’ internal states or personality traits
...
Moreover, the nature versus nurture controversy is still far from being
settled, thus rendering more possibilities for accounting for gender differences in social
perception
...
It is hypothesized

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Bogdana Humă / Gender differences in impression formation

that male and female subject will form different impressions of the target person,
underestimating or overestimating their sociability, morality, power and activity
...
The 49 adolescents were recruited from the
Theodor Pietraru high school in Brăneşti and attended the experiment during school
time
...
They took part in the experiment
during the first ten minutes of a course they were attending (Table 1)
...
The participants’ evaluations of the target person were recorded using a
semantic differential, which was adapted and pretested for measuring impression
formation
...
Similar studies (Warner and Sugarman, 1986) have successfully used this
technique, selecting materials on scientific or artistic topics, in order to not reveal
anything about the actor’s personality through their content
...
In the end, only 14 seconds, containing one sentence from the
middle of the passage, were chosen to be shown to the participants
...
However, it is supposed
that these small discrepancies will not interfere with the impression formation
measurements
...
Furthermore, a small number of
participants viewed the video sequence projected on a wall, which implied the use of a
projector, connected to a laptop
...
Nevertheless, in accordance with the ecological perspective on social

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Journal of Comparative Research in Anthropology and Sociology, Volume 1, Number 1, Spring 2010

perception (McArthur and Baron, 1981) video sequences constitute better stimuli for
impression formation tasks, while static images or sounds are considered artificial,
lacking the necessary genuineness
...
It was adapted and pretested for impression formation assessment, thus
acquiring a few special features
...
The author credits
the instruments with the ability to capture the affective meaning of the evaluated
concepts, which is supposed to stem from the reptilian brain, the oldest part of our
brains, common to both men and animals
...

The development of the semantic differential started with consulting studies which
employed similar instruments, which could be used or adapted for this experiment
...
Therefore, I turned to studies
on different topics, using a semantic differential (Osgood 1969; Hartley, 1968; Hay 1970,
Osgood, 1971; Bush, 1973; Fagot, Leinbach, Hort and Strayer, 1997) and selected those
adjectives which could be employed in an impression formation task and grouped them
according to the dimension they belonged to, obtaining 33 items for evaluation, 15 for
power and 12 for activity
...

The validity and fidelity of the instrument was tested prior to the experiment on 141
students of the Faculty of Sociology and Social Work
...
The statistical analysis of the results yielded a four factors
structure, formed of 23 out of the 60 initial items (Table 2)
...
The validity of this outcome stems from the high
internal consistency of the four scales (above 0
...
This theoretical framework
suggests that the characteristics of a target person perceived by an observer yield
certain affordances meaning that they are relevant for their interaction
...
Moreover, the newly emerged scales, sociability and morality,
couldn’t have been encountered in Osgood’s initial structure, since it was designed for
non-living objects and concepts
...

The following arguments are supporting this choice: Whereas, until now, the semantic
differential was employed in the measurement of objects, abstract concepts or people, in
this study, the stimulus consists of a real person, presented to the participants by means
of a short movie
...
Moreover,
since this experiment has an exploratory goal, it was considered better for the subjects
to have more freedom in forming an impression
...
The first impression
is both subjective and semi-conscientious, which makes it difficult to evaluate
...

Design
This study aimed to reveal the effect of gender, the independent variable, on the first
impression, the dependent variable
...
Therefore, the effect of age and education
were also taken into account when conducting the statistical analysis
...
Nonetheless, it is
expected that this minor discrepancies will not significantly influence the outcome of the
experiment
...
Thus, participants were either told they were
attending an experiment on nonverbal communication or an experiment which aimed to
reveal the influence of information presentation on impression formation
...


65

Journal of Comparative Research in Anthropology and Sociology, Volume 1, Number 1, Spring 2010

Procedure
Data collection sessions were conducted on the 18th, 20th of November and the 4th of
December 2008, for the high school group and on the 20th of November and the 4th of
December 2009 for the university students
...
This location was chosen due to its technological facilities (TV set and
DVD-player) and also because of its limited seats
...

In the beginning, the experimenter presented himself and mentioned the subject of
the investigation
...
Furthermore, since every individual is
unique, their personal opinion would be very important and it was therefore not
recommended that they copied their neighbors’ responses
...
Then, they were shown the movie one more time before
evaluating the actor
...

In the university session, the experiment was conducted either in a large classroom
with above 100 seats or in a small classroom with about 30 seats
...
Further, the procedure copied the one used in the high school session,
including instructions, instruments and debriefing sessions
...
Initially, it consisted of 23 adjectives grouped in four dimensions
...
595
...
87% of the data variance and yielding a KMO of 0
...
This structure
was also validated by the individual internal consistency of the four scales: 0
...
770 for ethics, 0
...
810 for activity
...
These impressions, measured using a semantic
differential with four dimensions – sociability, ethics, power and activity – are shown in
Table 4
...
28 scale points
...
96 points, with female subjects underrating the actors’
dynamism
...

Table 4 The mean scores of the four dimensions across gender
Sociability
Ethics
Power Activity
Male
4
...
59
4
...
11
Female
4
...
80
3
...
15

These results suggest that male and female participants might form different
impressions regarding the confederate’s power and activity
...
Firstly, in order to conclude that these results are valid
outside the considered sample, the evaluations should be significantly different
...
The use of inferential statistics is
justified by the number of subjects in each sample (over 30)
...
348, p=0
...
208, p=0
...

Secondly, when interpreting these results the educational level of the subjects has to be
taken into consideration
...
The results of the independent
sample t-tests revealed significant differences between male and female subjects for the
power (t= 3
...
001) and activity dimensions (t=2
...
004)
...
Consequently,
a statistical analysis, using both variables, has to be conducted in order to establish which
bears an influence on the evaluation of the target person
...


67

Journal of Comparative Research in Anthropology and Sociology, Volume 1, Number 1, Spring 2010

In addition, in could be argued that, since most of the high school students were
males and most of the university students females (Table 1), the influence on impression
formation of the two variables cannot be clearly told apart
...
The predictors inserted in the analysis
were: age, gender and education
...
042, p=0
...
845,
p=0
...
The adjusted R square equaled 0
...
68 for activity
...
Education came close to influencing the evaluation of
activity (beta= 0
...
056), suggesting that high school students were more likely to
overrate the target persons’ dynamism, all other factors being held constant
...

In conclusion, the statistical analysis of the collected data was not able to sustain
the study’s hypotheses
...

Discussion
The current study did not reveal an effect of the gender of the observer on the
impression formed of a target person shown by means of short video sequences
...
However, taking age and education into consideration, gender didn’t turn out to
be a significant factor for predicting the participants’ assessments of the actor’s
personality
...
Although it is true
that every aspect of the environment might bear an influence on the studied
phenomenon, the minor differences between the two experimental settings cannot be
held accountable for the obtained results
...
On
the contrary, it is more likely that the differences between the two settings might have
augmented results discrepancies
...
McClure’s (2000) meta-analysis,
which was already mentioned in the first part of this paper, reviews studies on gender
differences in facial expression processing in the attempt to validate either the
neurobehavioral or the social constructivist model
...
The results, based on effect size analysis, revealed highest
scores during infancy
...
Therefore, it can be assumed that age bears an influence on
some aspects of person perception, rendering differences between infancy and the two
other periods
...
Moreover, the paper never intended to
address the influence of age on person perception
...
Based on effects size analysis, she concluded that age bears no influence
on decoding nonverbal cues
...

The Hypotheses
Only one of the four characteristic investigated in this study was employed in two
other papers concerning gender differences
...
While the first study showed significant differences between
men and women in regard to sociability evaluations, the second one failed to reveal such
differences
...

Nevertheless, the lack of dissimilarities in ethics, power and activity assessments
need to be accounted for as well
...
Most of them proposed
different interpretations of gender differences, or their absence
...
It must be mentioned that these studies look at dissimilarities either
in assessment accuracy or just in the evaluation of a target person
...
Alternative explanations for gender differences
Study Gender differences
Explanation
Klein and Hodges (2001)
No
Motivation
Hall and Matsumoto (2004)
Yes
Different information processing
Hall and Matsumoto (2004)
Yes
Women are more confident
Montage et
...
(2005)
Yes
Women are more sensitive
Vogt and Colvin
No
Communion
McAnincg et
...
(1999)
Yes
Sex schemes

Since most of the variables underlying the identified explanations were not employed
when designing the current study, only their post factum assessment can be undertaken
...
Since the subjects were not given any incentives or specific
information about the impression formation task, it can be assumed that their motivation
was to some degree similar
...
Therefore, women, even though they might have had an
advantage in correctly evaluating the confederate, didn’t resort to their abilities when
judging the actor shown in the video
...
An
experiment assessing subjects’ communion and sensitivity, as well as their confidence in
their evolutions together with the manipulation of participants’ motivation might shed
light into this matter establishing once and for all the presence or absence of gender
differences in impression formation
...
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Her current research interests include person perception and impression formation
...


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