Effects of Femininity and Masculinity in Voice and Appearance on Stereotype Judgement

Earlier studies have shown that both gender and masculine or feminine traits affects judgements about a person's qualities. This study builds upon earlier research and investigates the relation between voice and appearance with respect to gender based stereotype judgements, by letting participants listen to and then rate two of totally eight different digital characters, four female and four male. The manipulated variables were the femininity or masculinity of the characters' voices and the femininity or masculinity of their appearance. The ratings regarded the characters perceived competence, intelligence, and empathic abilities. The hypothesis that masculinity would increase ratings for competence and intelligence was unsupported for both male and female characters. Instead the results show that when female characters had matching voice and appearance (both feminine or both masculine), the characters was perceived as both more intelligent and competent. Furthermore, the second hypothesis stated in the study, namely that feminine traits would increase perceived emphatic abilities, found support in the data, however only when comparing female characters. The conclusions drawn from these findings are that it is plausible that common stereotypes might have lost some of its strengths, at least for the population studied and in the domain of medical doctors. Furthermore, the author suspects a matching effect. However, a more extensive study, incorporating a more complex and larger set of stimuli, is required in order to draw more generalised conclusions.