Research Symposium

BIO

Adam Nguyen is a 4th year psychology major at FSU. His research interests revolve around understanding how to create resilient social support systems. Aside from those topics, he tends to enjoy participating in activities surrounding singing. Currently he is a part of FSU’s Tenor-Bass Acapella Group, Reverb, and FSU's auditioned choir University Singers. After his graduation, he hopes to pursue a PHD in Clinical Psychology or a Master's Degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling.

Are Mothers Subconsciously Judged Differently Based On Everyday Parenting?

Abstract

Previous work has found that people form impressions of others spontaneously and those impressions can be colored by social biases. The present study examines whether spontaneous evaluative inferences (SEIs) can be influenced by biased expectations about parenthood (i.e., motherhood and fatherhood) that have been documented previously, specifically rewarding parents that coincide with their gendered roles as caretakers (mothers) and breadwinners (fathers). Two hundred participants completed a task that measures SEIs from simple behaviors on the Prolific Academic survey platform. Specifically, participants observed 16 faces paired with a behavior entailing successful parenting, an ordinary parenting mistake, or a completely neutral behavior. The second phase instructed participants would see each face again, paired with a subliminal word, being “good or bad,” needing to use their gut reactions to ascertain which word was shown. However, no subliminal wording was programmed, rather these choices were used to measure participant SEIs. When presented with mothers, participants were more likely to select the option consistent with the result of their failures (i.e., bad) and successes (i.e., good), when compared to ones paired with neutral behaviors, indicating that SEIs were formed when reviewing mothers’ behaviors. However, SEIs for fathers were not affected by their specific behaviors as strongly. The implications of these findings postulate a societal sensitivity towards the actions of mothers, and a desensitization to the efforts of fathers. While previous work portrays parenthood in relation to social rewards and penalties, the current work suggests more complex processes for the evaluation of everyday parenthood.

Keywords: Parental Roles, Spontaneous Impressions, and Perceptions of Parenthood