Priming Effects and Performance Expectations in Mixed-Sex Task Groups

I report the results of a laboratory experiment in which I examine the relationship between cognitive categorization processes and status-organizing processes, focusing on how seemingly irrelevant information becomes relevant to the informational structure of a task situation. In phase one, participants completed a task in which they were primed with photographs of women occupying either stereotypical or counter-stereotypical roles. In phase two, participants, along with a partner, completed a collective decision-making task. The two experimental phases were ostensibly unrelated from the participants' point of view. Results indicate that priming manipulations significantly affected patterns of influence in mixed-sex groups. These effects were driven primarily by altering expectations of female group members.