The Stereotype Content Model (SCM) provides a functional explanation for why stereotype content is organized into these two dimensions, suggesting that the degree of agency and communion is determined by societal status and perceived competitiveness of the group ( Fiske et al., 2002 Caprariello et al., 2009 Durante et al., 2013 Kervyn et al., 2015). Agency consists of social content relevant for goal achievement and task functioning, while communion consists of social content relevant to relationship maintenance and social functioning ( Abele and Wojciszke, 2014). Stereotype content has been found to generally vary along two dimensions of social content: agency and communion ( Abele and Wojciszke, 2014 Fiske, 2019). Stereotypes are thus both characteristics seen as common within a social group, for instance, “gay men are fashionable,” and something that influences social categorization, for instance, “because that man is fashionable he is probably gay” ( Cox and Devine, 2015). Stereotypes are cognitive schemas that incorporate culturally shared representations of social groups and influence information processing related to social categorization ( Dovidio et al., 2010 Yzerbyt, 2016). Theoretical and methodological implications for future research into intersectional stereotype content are presented, including how the findings inform the co-dependent relationship between a binary gender structure and a heteronormative ideology. Implicit associations between “women” and “warmth” were significantly stronger than associations between “men” and “warmth.” There were no other significant relations between implicit associations to warmth/competence and gender or sexual orientation. Homosexual and bisexual groups were rated as more similar to their non-congruent gender category than same gender heterosexual categories were, but stereotype content for sexual minority groups did not overlap with either general gender categories, thus showing only incomplete gender inversion of stereotype content. Results from both studies show that the stereotype content for the general categories “women” and “men” overlap with the stereotype content for heterosexual same-gender targets.
In Study 2, a nationally representative Swedish sample ( N = 424) performed the same rating task, and in addition completed Single-Category IATs (SC-IATs) for warmth and competence. In Study 1, a community sample from Sweden ( N = 824) rated perceived communion and agency for women and men in general, as well as hetero-, homo-, and bisexual women and men. This research addresses this gap by investigating stereotype content at the intersection of gender and sexual orientation, including stereotype content for general gender groups, heterosexual groups, homosexual groups, and bisexual groups. However, there is limited research on how stereotype content for general groups relate to stereotype content for subgroups with intersecting category memberships. For sexual minority stereotypes, a gender inversion has been found, whereas homosexual women are seen as more similar to men in general than to women in general, whereas homosexual men are seen as more similar to women in general than to men in general. Research shows that for stereotypes about the general gender categories of “women” and “men,” there is an ambivalent pattern of communion and agency, where high levels on one dimension are associated with low levels on the other. 2Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, SwedenĪccording to the Stereotype Content Model (SCM), the content of stereotypes differs on two dimensions: communion and agency.1Department of Psychology, Lund University, Lund, Sweden.Amanda Klysing 1 *, Anna Lindqvist 1,2 and Fredrik Björklund 1