Similarities and Differences between Parents and Children with Respect to Gender Prejudice: the Intertwinement between Family and Cultural Stereotype Effect

Abstract

Few studies have investigated the similarities and differences in gender prejudice between parents and their offspring. This work is divided into two phases: our goal in Phase I was to investigate whether any similarity exists in the prejudice response profiles of parents and their young adult offspring. Phase II sought to uncover the levels of unique similarity between parents and child in gender prejudice (cultural stereotype effect). Participants were 293 Italian families (young adult child, mother and father, for a total of 879 people). Each participants completed the Ambivalent Sexism (Glick & Fiske, 1996) and Ambivalence toward Men (Glick & Fiske, 1999) scales. As our research included family data, specific analysis were used, such dyadic indexes (Kenny, Kashy & Cook, 2006). Results reveal that (1) the response profiles of parents and offspring are dissimilar, and (2) the slight shared variance between them is determined by the cultural stereotype effect