Are women perceived as worse magicians than men? Gender bias when evaluating magic tricks

Gygax, Pascal; Thomas, Cyril; Didierjean, André and Kuhn, Gustav. 2019. Are women perceived as worse magicians than men? Gender bias when evaluating magic tricks. Social Psychological Bulletin, 14(3), e33574. ISSN 1896-1800 [Article]

[img]
Preview
Text
GENDER STEREOTYPE AND MAGIC.pdf - Accepted Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial.

Download (374kB) | Preview

Abstract or Description

We present two experiments investigating the effect of the perceived gender of a magician on the perception of the quality of magic tricks. In Experiment 1, tricks performed by an allegedly female magician were considered worse than those by an allegedly male magician. In Experiment 2, participants had to generate possible solutions to how the tricks were done. Under these conditions, male participants were better at explaining the tricks, but the gender effect found in Experiment 1 disappeared. We discuss the gender bias in Experiment 1 and the lack of bias in Experiment 2 in terms of specific social and cognitive mechanisms (e.g., cognitive dissonance).

Item Type:

Article

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.32872/spb.v14i3.33574

Keywords:

Magic, social biases, stereotypes

Departments, Centres and Research Units:

Psychology

Dates:

DateEvent
19 September 2019Accepted
13 November 2019Published

Item ID:

26997

Date Deposited:

23 Sep 2019 15:11

Last Modified:

03 Aug 2021 15:03

Peer Reviewed:

Yes, this version has been peer-reviewed.

URI:

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/26997

View statistics for this item...

Edit Record Edit Record (login required)