UVa study: Bias remains on sexes, science

A new study has found that both men and women hold unspoken stereotypes that males are more easily linked with science than females.

The work’s authors say the stereotypes may contribute to continuing underachievement and under-participation among girls and women in science, furthering the idea that science is a male career.

“I think this is pervasive in our culture, but it is changing,” said Brian Nosek, a University of Virginia psychology professor who led the study. UVa research assistant professor Fred Smyth also helped conduct the study.

The findings suggest that 70 percent of respondents harbored implicit stereotypes associating science with males more than with females. About 500,000 people from 34 countries — with roughly half from the United States — took part in the experiment.

The study was published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It is a part of Project Implicit, a publicly accessible research project headed by Nosek, Harvard University professor Mahzarin Banaji and University of Washington professor Tony Greenwald.

“The project itself came out of our interest in understanding something that we know to be fundamentally true in our field,” Nosek said of implicit biases, or feelings people have outside of their conscious awareness.

The study attempted to measure gender bias in science without explicitly asking about the subject. For this study, respondents were asked to sort out four categories — male and female names and science and humanities words. During the first test, participants grouped male names with science words and female names with humanities words; the second time, they did the opposite.

Nosek said the study found that the test-takers could link male names and science words faster than female names and science words. The time difference was generally used to gauge the bias, he said. The gender stereotype could determine how women engage in science disciplines, and gaps in achievement could also reinforce the biases that exist, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy, he added.

“It can go both ways,” Nosek said.

In comparing science and math test scores from the separate Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, the implicit bias data showed that boys performed better in math and science in countries whose residents stereotyped the most. The implicit thinking measured in the study may also indicate a country’s health in promoting science to both genders, Nosek said.

The United States’ bias levels fell in the bottom third of the 34 countries, which included the United Kingdom, Belgium, Chile, Israel, Japan, Australia and Iran.

Robert Tai, an associate professor at UVa’s Curry School of Education, said the study’s argument was very convincing but that women make just as effective scientists as men do.

“I don’t see that there would be any difference in a female’s capacity to do science versus a male’s,” he said. But the biases may predispose people to be directed toward particular career choices.

“I think it’s more difficult for females to persist in certain fields given the male dominance in those fields,” Tai said.

Tai cited a report that came out last year from the American Association of Medical Colleges that showed the male and female breakdown of medical specialties. More than half of active female physicians in 2007 were in pediatric medicine, but the number of women dropped off drastically when it came to major surgery specialties such as vascular and neurological surgeries.

Of engineering, Tai said, “It’s practically a boys club.”

Nosek said the investigators are trying to figure out when the stereotypes start pervading people’s psyches. Early data suggest that it could be as early as elementary school.

Getting rid of the stereotypes, Nosek said, will be a tricky thing.

“Even becoming aware of them doesn’t make them disappear,” he said. “Changing them is not so simple.”