Sex Bias in Evaluating Motor Performance

Abstract

The phenomenon of women being prejudiced against women in situations involving judgmental or evaluative-type motor tasks was examined. In Study 1, conducted in 1971, 26 male and 26 female college students evaluated both a male and a female accomplice who performed a muscularendurance task. Actual time of task performance was kept constant at 120 sec. Subjects made two estimates for each accomplice: a preperformance time and postperformance time. ANOVA indicated that subjects, regardless of sex, estimated preperformance and postperformance times significantly higher for male accomplices than females. Observers overestimated actual performance of male accomplices but underestimated females. Study 2 replicated Study 1 six years later to examine possible changes in judgmental bias over time. Results replicated the preperformance findings, and partially replicated postperformance results. In contrast to the earlier study, all subjects overestimated actual performance but male accomplices were overestimated to a greater extent than females.