title: Ironic Effects of Sexual Minority Group Membership: Are Lesbians Less Susceptible to Invoking Negative Female Stereotypes than Heterosexual Women?
abstract: The traditional stereotype of the typical woman has been described as "nice, but incompetent." However, such general gender stereotypes are applied to individual targets only under certain conditions: They are used to "fill in the blanks" (Heilman, 2012) if little personal information is provided about a target. "Typical lesbians" are regarded to have more typically masculine (agentic) characteristics such as task competence than the typical woman does. We thus hypothesized that if a woman displays behavior coinciding with the stereotype of the typical woman, it is more readily interpreted as stereotypically female if performed by a heterosexual woman than by a lesbian. Participants (N = 296) read a hypothetical job interview in which we manipulated the target's sexual orientation (between subjects). Findings demonstrated that a lesbian was judged as more competent than a heterosexual woman in the presence of behavior that may be interpreted as gender-stereotypical (Experiments 1 and 2). This difference in competence judgments was not found in the absence of gender-stereotypical behavior (Experiment 1). Judging the heterosexual woman as low in masculinity was related to a judgment of lower competence (Experiment 2). Our findings demonstrate that there are conditions under which lesbians, a group often stereotyped negatively, are less susceptible to invoking negative female stereotypes than heterosexual women are.
authors.affiliation: Department of Social and Economic Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, University of Koblenz-Landau, Fortstraße 7, 76 829, Landau/Pfalz, Germany, niedlich@uni-landau.de.
authors.forename: Claudia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Niedlich
authors.forename: Melanie C
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Steffens
authors.forename: Jacqueline
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Krause
authors.forename: Elisabeth
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Settke
authors.forename: Irena D
authors.initials: ID
authors.lastname: Ebert
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003463:Cues; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005260:Female; D020010:Heterosexuality / Q000523:psychology*; D018452:Homosexuality, Female / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D057228:Masculinity; D008913:Minority Groups; D012725:Sexual Behavior / Q000523:psychology; D012938:Social Perception; D013240:Stereotyping; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires