If You Are Gender Schematic, All Members of the Opposite Sex Look Alike

Sex-typed, androgynous, undifferentiated, and cross-sex-typed subjects of both sexes were asked to recall "who said what" after listening to a taped conversation either among three men and three women (the gender study) or among three blacks and three whites (the race study). An analysis of subjects' errors revealed that both sex-typed and cross-sex-typed subjects confused the members of the opposite sex with one another significantly more than androgynous or undifferentiated subjects did. In contrast, no individual differences related to sex typing emerged in the race study, which suggests that the greater gender schematicity of sex-typed individuals is specific to gender, as Bem's gender schema theory implies. Included in the article is a discussion of (a) the intriguing finding that cross-sex-typed subjects were significantly more gender schematic than anyone else and (b) the apparent inconsistency of the data with Markus's self-schema theory.