Age, Gender, And Occupational Label: A Test of Social Role Theory

Abstract

Two studies tested the social role theory (Eagly, 1987) prediction that role information would override the age-related agency stereotype. Although results of Study 1 showed that employed people were viewed similarly in agency regardless of target age, interpretation was limited because employed targets were most often imagined to be male and young homemaker targets were most often imagined to be female. To control for this, target gender was added as an independent variable in Study 2. As expected, agency and communion ratings of employed targets and targets who cared for a home did not differ by target age, but agency ratings of average targets were higher for 35-year-old than for 70-year-old targets. Communion ratings for average targets did not differ by target age. Target gender effects on the agency measure replicated Eagly and Steffen's (1984, 1988) results. The importance of context to understanding stereotypes of the elderly is illustrated.