Gender-role stereotyping and stimulus equivalence.

Using a matching-to-sample procedure male and female subjects were trained to relate three occupations traditionally considered to be male to three nonsense syllables, and then to relate these nonsense syllables to three female names. Equivalence tests which included novel comparison stimuli were then performed; the novel stimuli were occupations traditionally considered to be female and they replaced some of the stimuli used during training. Generalization tests were also carried out to examine the possibility that responding would transfer to a new context.

The results indicate that equivalence responding was disrupted by the presence of the novel stimuli for members of both subject groups, but to a greater extent for male subjects than for female subjects. The generalization tests did not provide any evidence for transfer of responding between contexts.

It is suggested that the overall findings may be due to the fact that males exhibit a higher incidence of behavior associated with gender-role stereotyping than do females.