Gender Essentialism Leads to Biased Learning Opportunities That Shape Women’s Career Interests
研究发现，持有性别本质主义信念的人会为女性和男性提供不同的学习机会，这反过来影响了女性的职业兴趣，可能导致职业性别差距的自我实现。
Gender differences in occupational interests are often assumed to reflect sex differences in empathizing or systemizing preferences. Do such essentialized explanations lead people to provide gender-biased learning affordances that constrain women’s career interests? In Study 1 ( N = 292), North American STEM professionals endorsing a biologically essentialized (vs. sociocultural) explanation for gender differences in occupational interests provided women (men) with more empathizing (systemizing) learning affordances in a mock management task. Study 2 replicated these gendered affordances by experimentally manipulating essentialized explanations ( N = 379; participants were North American men with management experience in male-dominated fields). In Study 3, North American undergraduate women ( N = 300) who received gendered learning affordances reported greater interest in, and possible alignment with, empathizing work assignments, whereas those who received countergendered affordances reported greater interest in, and possible alignment with, systemizing assignments. These results reveal that gender-essentialist beliefs can foster self-fulfilling gender gaps in occupational interests.