The Malleability of Gender-Science Implicit Bias

Women in STEM are underrepresented in the media, which leads to the strengthening of the implicit bias that females do not belong in STEM fields since humans form expectations based on patterns that they observe. Past studies on racial implicit bias have shown that implicit bias can be temporarily shifted through exposure to images that go against stereotypical expectations. Therefore, the research question for this paper is: how will gender-science implicit bias shift when a participant from Grassfield High School is exposed to an advertisement containing varying degrees of female representation in STEM fields? A survey was distributed to participants at Grassfield High School that collected demographic data in addition to providing instructions for participants to take and record their scores from a gender-science Implicit Association Test, watch an advertisement of varying degrees of female representation in STEM, and then retake the gender-science IAT. The research hypothesis was that participants who were exposed to advertisements including counter stereotypes of women in STEM would have IAT results that were less stereotypical than the results from the initial test, and vice versa. The results indicate that females who are exposed to counter stereotypical media will have more stereotypical implicit associations, possibly due to the presence of stereotype threat. Although it became clear that gender-science implicit bias is not easily shifted, counter stereotypical media may not be an ideal way to reduce the gender-science implicit bias of young women at Grassfield High School against women in STEM.