Neural correlates of automatic beliefs about gender stereotypes: Males are more prejudicial

Positive mood enhances gender stereotype activation during semantic integration and re-analysis

Gender stereotypes are deeply rooted in language, and their activation can be influenced by various factors. Behavioural evidence suggests that both positive and negative moods can modulate responses to stereotype-laden linguistic content. Early research also highlights the role of colour-gender associations in language processing. However, the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying the interaction between mood, gender stereotype activation, and colour-gender associations remain underexplored. Here, we provide novel neurocognitive evidence that a positive mood actively facilitates access to stereotype knowledge during the stage of semantic integration and re-analysis. Female participants induced into positive or negative moods made stereotype congruency judgments about sentences that were either congruent or incongruent with gender stereotypes, preceded by gendered (pink/blue circles) or gender-neutral (white circles) visual cues. First, the results showed smaller N200 amplitudes in a positive compared to negative mood only for sentences preceded by gender-neutral cues, suggesting that gender-driven expectancies evoked by gendered cues can override mood effects during early lexico-semantic processing. Second, we found smaller N400 amplitudes in a positive compared to negative mood, indicating overall facilitation of lexico-semantic processing in a positive mood, irrespective of stereotype congruency. Finally, we observed larger Late Positive Complex (LPC) amplitudes for stereotypically incongruent than congruent sentences only in a positive mood, pointing to gender stereotype knowledge modulating semantic integration and reanalysis processes in a positive but not negative mood.

Expectancy Violation: Climate Change Associations May Reveal Underlying Brain-Evoked Responses of Implicit Attitudes

The development of programs and campaigns to promote climate change awareness and actions should account for implicit attitudes to make them effective. Alongside behavioural measures, it is important to investigate and understand the neural mechanisms underlying unconscious beliefs, and opinions and how external factors can influence them. Therefore, this study administered a Single-Category Implicit Association Test to 22 healthy volunteers while acquiring EEG signals. After an automatic preprocessing pipeline was applied, 1000ms-long epochs were extracted from cleaned EEG data for target words only. Latencies and amplitudes were computed in specific brain regions and time intervals for the P1, N1, P2 (both occipital and frontal), P3, and N4 (both frontal and frontocentral) event-related potentials (ERPs). Statistical analysis has highlighted that incongruent associations elicited significantly shorter N1 latencies, which may be due to stimuli familiarisation, longer P3 latencies, which can be related to the allocation of more attentional resources, and larger N4 amplitudes, which suggest greater cognitive efforts. Correlation analysis has also found a significant relationship between the amplitude of the N4 and explicit behaviour. These results suggest that ERPs can highlight different mental processes involved in violating social expectations towards climate change and that their features may be used to support behavioural measures in assessing implicit attitudes more reliably.

The neural representation of self, close, and famous others: An electrophysiological investigation on the social brain

It is well established that the Self has a unique representation in the social brain, as evident from the Self-Referential Effect (SRE). However, the timing and neural mechanisms underlying the representation of individuals with varying degrees of closeness and emotional relevance to the Self remain unclear. Twenty-two participants read 260 personality traits and decided whether they described themselves, a close friend, or an admired celebrity. A strong Self-Referential Effect (SRE) was found at behavioral, ERP, and neuroimaging levels. Three anterior ERP components were identified as sensitive to social information: a P200 (250-350 ms) responding to famous others' traits, a P600 (500-700 ms) responding to self-trait processing, and a late positivity (800-950 ms) responding to self-trait processing and close traits. Source reconstructions revealed partially overlapping but distinct neural sources for each individual. The right precuneus (bodily self) and inferior frontal areas (inner voice) were active only during self-processing, while the right medial prefrontal cortex (BA10) was consistently active across tasks, showing a robust SRE. These findings provide insights into the neural mechanisms underlying the representation of the Self in social contexts.

Norms for gender stereotypically congruent, stereotypically incongruent, semantically correct, and semantically incorrect sentences in Polish and English

The present contribution provides ratings for a database of gender stereotypically congruent, stereotypically incongruent, semantically correct, and semantically incorrect sentences in Polish and English. A total of 942 volunteers rated 480 sentences (120 per condition) in each language in terms of their meaningfulness, probability of use, and stereotypicality. The stimuli were highly controlled for their length and critical words, which were shared across the conditions. The results of the ratings revealed that stereotypically incongruent sentences were consciously evaluated as both less meaningful and probable to use relative to sentences that adhere to stereotype-driven expectations regarding males and females, indicating that stereotype violations communicated through language exert influence on language perception. Furthermore, the results yielded a stronger internalization of gender stereotypes among sex-typed individuals, thus pointing to the crucial role of gender schema in the sensitivity to gender stereotypical attributes. The ratings reported in the present article aim to broaden researchers' stimulus choices and allow for consistency across different laboratories and research projects on gender stereotype processing. The adaptation of this database to other languages or cultures could also enable a cross-cultural comparison of empirical findings on stereotype processing.

Mothers' and fathers' neural responses toward gender-stereotype violations by their own children

Gender stereotypes facilitate people's processing of social information by providing assumptions about expected behaviors and preferences. When gendered expectations are violated, people often respond negatively, both on a behavioral and neural level. Little is known about the impact of family kinship on the behavioral and neural reactions to gender-stereotype violations. Therefore, we examined whether parents show different responses when gender stereotypes are violated by their own children vs unknown children. The sample comprised 74 Dutch families with a father (Mage = 37.54), mother (Mage = 35.83), son, and daughter aged 3-6 years. Electroencephalography measurements were obtained while parents viewed pictures of their own and unknown children paired with toy or problem behavior words that violated or confirmed gender stereotypes. In half of the trials, parents evaluated the appropriateness of toy-gender and behavior-gender combinations. Parents showed stronger late positive potential amplitudes toward gender stereotype-violating behaviors by own children compared to unknown children. Moreover, parents' P1 responses toward gender stereotype-violating child behaviors were stronger for boys than for girls and for parents who evaluated gender-stereotype violations as less appropriate than gender-stereotype confirmations. These findings indicated that gender-stereotype violations by parents' own children are particularly salient and viewed as less appropriate than gender-stereotype confirmations.

Women are expected to smile: Preliminary evidence for the role of gender in the neurophysiological processing of adult emotional faces in 3-year-old children

Children form stereotyped expectations about the appropriateness of certain emotions for men versus women during the preschool years, based on cues from their social environments. Although ample research has examined the development of gender stereotypes in children, little is known about the neural responses that underlie the processing of gender-stereotyped emotions in children. Therefore, the current study examined whether 3-year-olds differ in the neural processing of emotional stimuli that violate gender stereotypes (i.e., male faces with fearful or happy expressions) or confirm gender stereotypes (i.e., female faces with fearful or happy expressions), and whether boys and girls differ in their neural processing of the violation and confirmation of gender stereotypes. Data from 72 3-year-olds (±6 months, 43% boy) were obtained from the YOUth Cohort Study. Electroencephalography data were obtained when children passively viewed male and female faces displaying neutral, happy, or fearful facial expressions. This study provided first indications that happy male faces elicited larger P1 amplitudes than happy female faces in preschool children, which might reflect increased attentional processing of stimuli that violate gender stereotypes. Moreover, there was preliminary evidence that girls had larger negative central (Nc) responses, associated with salience processing, toward female happy faces than male happy faces, whereas boys had larger Nc responses toward male happy faces than female happy faces. No gender differences were found in the processing of neutral and fearful facial expressions. Our results indicate that electroencephalography measurements can provide insights into preschoolers' gender-stereotype knowledge about emotions, potentially by looking at the early occipital and late fronto-central responses.

High - definition transcranial direct current stimulation (HD-tDCS) to the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) alleviates occupational gender stereotypes

Occupational gender stereotypes are widely held misconceptions that individuals use to classify occupations according to gender. Alleviating occupational gender stereotypes would be beneficial for individuals to choose occupations more freely, without the influence of gender-based expectations. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has shown effectiveness in alleviating stereotypical beliefs. The present study aims to explore the positive effects of tDCS targeting the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) on occupational gender stereotypes and uses event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the neural correlates of tDCS in modulating occupational gender stereotypes. Participants (N = 60) were recruited and randomly assigned to either the anodal tDCS group (n = 30) or the sham tDCS group (n = 30). All participants were asked to complete the Implicit Association Test (IAT) in the pre- and post-stimulation, while EEG data were recorded simultaneously. The behavioral results showed a decreased D value and reaction time (RT) after the tDCS in the anodal group. However, no significant difference in ERPs were observed after tDCS between the two groups. This study contributes to our understanding of occupational gender stereotypes and provides further evidence supporting the use of tDCS. The findings highlight the importance of considering the mPFC in research on occupational gender stereotypes and pave the way for future investigations utilizing brain stimulation techniques to address stereotypes.

Exploring the nature of the gender-congruency effect: implicit gender activation and social bias

The aim of the study was to explore the nature of the gender-congruency effect, characterized by a facilitation on the processing of congruent words in grammatical gender. Moreover, we explored whether resemblances between gender identities and gender attitudes with grammatical gender modulated lexical processing. We designed a gender-priming paradigm in Spanish, in which participants decided the gender of a masculine or feminine pronoun preceded by three different primes: biological gender nouns (mapping biological sex), stereotypical nouns (mapping biological and stereotypical information), and epicene nouns (arbitrary gender assignment). We found faster processing of gender congruent pronouns independently of the type of prime, showing that the grammatical gender feature is active even when processing bare nouns that are not conceptually related to gender. This indicates that the gender-congruency effect is driven by the activation of the gender information at the lexical level, which is transferred to the semantic level. Interestingly, the results showed an asymmetry for epicene primes: the gender-congruency effect was smaller for epicene primes when preceding the feminine pronoun, probably driven by the grammatical rule of the masculine being the generic gender. Furthermore, we found that masculine oriented attitudes can bias language processing diminishing the activation of feminine gender, which ultimately could overshadow the female figure.

Strategic Processing of Gender Stereotypes in Sentence Comprehension: An ERP Study

Gender stereotypes are often involved in language comprehension. This study investigated whether and to what extent their processing is under strategic control, by examining both proportion and order effects related to gender stereotypes for role nouns. We manipulated stereotypical gender consistencies, as in “Li’s daughter/son was a nurse…”, the relative proportions of gender-consistent and gender-inconsistent sentences (80%:20% and 50%:50% for high-proportion and equal-proportion sessions, respectively), and a between-participant factor of session order (high-proportion sessions preceding equal-proportion sessions and a reversed order for the high–equal and equal–high groups, respectively). Linear mixed-effect models revealed a larger N400 and a larger late negativity for stereotypically inconsistent compared to consistent sentences for the high–equal group only. These results indicate that even if sentence contexts have already determined the gender of target role characters, gender stereotypes for role nouns are still activated when the first half of the experiment facilitates their activation. The analyses of trial-by-trial dynamics showed that the N400 effects gradually decreased throughout equal-proportion sessions for the equal–high group. Our findings suggest that the processing of gender stereotypes can be under strategic control. In addition, readers may develop other strategies based on sentence contexts, when the processing strategy based on cue validity is not available.

Neural Processing of Sexist Comments: Associations between Perceptions of Sexism and Prefrontal Activity

Sexism is a widespread form of gender discrimination which includes remarks based on gender stereotypes. However, little is known about the neural basis underlying the experience of sexist-related comments and how perceptions of sexism are related to these neural processes. The present study investigated whether perceptions of sexism influence neural processing of receiving sexist-related comments. Participants (N = 67) read experimental vignettes describing scenarios of comments involving gender stereotypes while near-infrared spectroscopy recordings were made to measure the hemodynamic changes in the prefrontal cortex. Results found a significant correlation between participants' perceptions of sexism and brain activation in a brain cluster including the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and inferior frontal gyrus. There was a significant gender difference where female participants showed a stronger negative correlation compared to male participants. Future research can expand on these initial findings by looking at subcortical structures involved in emotional processing and gender stereotype application as well as examining cultural differences in perceptions of gender stereotypes and sexism.

Learning positive social information reduces racial bias as indexed by N400 response

The present study used EEG/ERPs to detect the activation of implicit stereotypical representations associated to other-race (OR) people and the modulation of such activation through the previous presentation of positive vs. neutral social information. Electrophysiological signals were recorded in 40 Italian Caucasian participants, unaware of the overall study's purpose. They were presented with 285 sentences that could either violate, non-violate (e.g., "the Roma girl was involved in a robbery) or be neutral with regard to stereotypical concepts concerning other-race people (e.g. Asians, Africans, Arabic). ERPs were time-locked to the terminal words. Prior to the sentence reading task, participants were exposed to a 10 minutes colourful video documentary. While the experimental group was presented a video containing images picturing other-race characters involved in "prestigious" activities that violated stereotypical negative assumptions (e.g. a black neurosurgeon leading a surgery team), the control group viewed a neutral documentary about flora and fauna. EEG signals were then recorded during the sentence reading task to explore whether the previous exposure to the experimental video could modulate the detection of incongruence in the sentences violating stereotypes, as marked by the N400 response. A fictitious task was adopted, consisted in detecting rare animal names. Indeed, only the control group showed a greater N400 response (350-550 ms) to words incongruent with ethnic stereotypes compared to congruent and neutral ones, thus suggesting the presence of a racial bias. No N400 response was found for the experimental group, suggesting a lack of negative expectation for OR individuals. The swLORETA inverse solution, performed on the prejudice-related N400 showed that the Inferior Temporal and the Superior and Middle Frontal Gyri were the strongest N400 intra-cortical sources. Regardless of the experimental manipulation, Congruent terminal words evoked a greater P300 response (500-600 ms) compared to incongruent and neutral ones and a late frontal positivity (650-800 ms) was found to be larger to sentences involving OR than own-race characters (either congruent or incongruent with the prejudice) thus possibly indicating bias-free perceptual in-group/out-group categorization processes. The data showed how it is possible to modulate a pre-existing racial prejudice (as reflected by N400 effect) through exposure to positive media-driven information about OR people. Further follow-up studies should determine the duration in time, and across contexts, of this modulatory effect.

Measuring implicit mental representations related to ethnic stereotypes with ERPs: An exploratory study

The present investigation used ERPs to detect the activation of implicit stereotypical representations associated to different ethnic groups, by means of an implicit paradigm. 285 sentences were presented to 20 Italian Caucasian participants while EEG signals were recorded from 128 scalp sites. Sentences could either violate (Incongruent condition), non-violate (Congruent condition) or be neutral (Neutral condition) with regard to stereotypical concepts concerning non-Caucasian ethnic groups (e.g. Asians, Africans, Arabs). No awareness or judgment about stereotypes was required. Participants were engaged in a fictitious task, ignoring the overall study's purpose. The results showed that Incongruent terminal words elicited a greater anterior N400 response (300-500 ms) compared to Congruent and Neutral words, reflecting a difficulty in integrating the information incongruent with pre-existing stereotypical knowledge. The participant's individual amplitude values of the N400-Difference Wave (Incongruent - Congruent), showed a direct correlation with the individual racism scores obtained at the Subtle and Blatant Prejudice Scale, administered at the end of the experimental session. Intra-cortical sources explaining the N400 involved areas of the social cognition network such as the medial frontal cortex (BA10) and the inferior temporal gyrus (BA20) which are known to support processing of information about other people and impression formation. Moreover, Congruent terminal words evoked a greater P300 response (500-600 ms) compared to the other conditions, possibly reflecting the merging of incoming inputs with anticipated semantic information. A late post-N400 frontal positivity (650-800 ms) was found to be larger to sentences concerning other-race characters (ether congruent or incongruent) compared to sentences involving own-race characters (neutral). The study corroborated the effectiveness of neurophysiological measures to assess implicit complex semantic representations and circumventing social desirability-related problems.

Facing stereotypes: ERP responses to male and female faces after gender-stereotyped statements

Despite gender is a salient feature in face recognition, the question of whether stereotyping modulates face processing remains unexplored. Event-related potentials from 40 participants (20 female) was recorded as male and female faces matched or mismatched previous gender-stereotyped statements and were compared with those elicited by faces preceded by gender-unbiased statements. We conducted linear mixed-effects models to account for possible random effects from both participants and the strength of the gender bias. The amplitude of the N170 to faces was larger following stereotyped relative to gender-unbiased statements in both male and female participants, although the effect was larger for males. This result reveals that stereotyping exerts an early effect in face processing and that the impact is higher in men. In later time windows, male faces after female-stereotyped statements elicited large late positivity potential (LPP) responses in both men and women, indicating that the violation of male stereotypes induces a post-perceptual reevaluation of a salient or conflicting event. Besides, the largest LPP amplitude in women was elicited when they encountered a female face after a female-stereotyped statement. The later result is discussed from the perspective of recent claims on the evolution of women self-identification with traditionally held female roles.

The influence of male faces on stereotype activation among women in STEM: An ERP investigation

Members of stereotyped groups are vigilant to situational cues signaling threats to their social identity. In one psychophysiological experiment, we examined whether mere exposure to a watching male face would increase attentional vigilance among female STEM students due to the activation of math-gender stereotypes. Male and female students performed an alleged math intelligence task while being primed with male faces or control images. Automatic responses to errors were captured with error-related negativity (ERN), a neural index of error vigilance. Women showed larger ERN upon making errors when primed with male faces compared to control images, whereas no such priming effect occurred among men. Moreover, this face priming effect was pronounced only among women highly invested in pursuing STEM careers. These findings suggest that minimalistic social cues may activate negative stereotypes early in informational processing, thereby selectively shunting attention on errors in stereotype-relevant tasks among individuals invested in the performance domain.

The Comprehension of Metaphorical Descriptions Conveying Gender Stereotypes. An Exploratory Study

In this adjective elicitation study, we investigated the comprehension of Italian sentences where a metaphorically intended noun (e.g., butterfly, nightmare) was used to describe a gender-stereotyped or stereotype-neutral individual (e.g., flute player, engineer, person). Specifically, we explored whether and to what extent meaning availability and the affective valence of these metaphorical descriptions (e.g., This flute player is a butterfly) varied as a function of the stereotypical or stereotype-neutral nature of the sentential subject, the male vs. female direction of the stereotype, and the grammatical gender marked in the subject noun phrase. Our goals were to test whether the meaning of metaphorical descriptions was equally available regardless of the presence and direction of the gender stereotype and of the grammatical gender of the subject, and whether the adjectives expressing the sentential meaning had the same affective valence no matter who was the subject. The results showed that it was easier (i.e., more adjectives came up to mind) to express the sentence meaning when the sentences described male stereotyped individuals than female stereotyped or stereotype-neutral individuals. The adjective valence did not significantly change according to the subject type. Participants produced adjectives with the wrong grammatical gender more often for males in stereotypically female occupations than for females in stereotypically male occupations. These gender errors occurred also when the sentences described females engaged in stereotypically female occupations. Overall, these results extend to metaphorical descriptions previous findings showing that a social group (males) is seen as more normative than another (females), and acts as the unmarked normative group.

Neural correlates of the implicit processing of grammatical and stereotypical gender violations: A masked and unmasked priming study

The aim of this study was to explore the neural correlates of the automatic activation of gender stereotypes by using the masked and unmasked priming technique. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants were presented with an Italian third-person singular pronoun (lui or lei) that were preceded by either a grammatically-marked (e.g., passeggera_FEM, pensionato_MASC) or stereotypically-associated (e.g., insegnante_FEM, conducente_MASC) role noun. Participants were required to judge the grammatical gender of the personal pronoun ignoring the preceding word. This word was presented in a masked or unmasked way. The results revealed slower reaction times and larger N400, in both the masked and unmasked conditions, when the pronouns were preceded by gender-incongruent than gender-congruent grammatical and stereotypical primes. A P300 effect also emerged in both masked and unmasked conditions for the grammatical gender mismatch between the antecedent and the pronoun. These results provide evidence that gender stereotypes can strongly influence our behavior even under unconscious conditions.