Attributional Errors and Gender Stereotypes: Perceptions of Male and Female Experts on Sex-Typed Material

Observers frequently commit the fundamental attribution error by failing to make adequate allowance for contextual influences in favour of dispositional explanations. The present experiment tested whether people would attribute a quizmaster's knowledge of the quiz topic to personal factors (personally knowing the answers) or to situational factors (reading the answers), and whether this varied by the gender of the topic. Participants listened to a staged quiz show that varied the sex of the quizmaster (male or female) and the stereotypical gender of the quiz topic (masculine or feminine). When the topic was masculine, female quizmasters were rated as having less knowledge and expertise. Male participants rated female quizmasters as less knowledgeable than male quizmasters, regardless of the topic. (Contains 1 note.)