The Effects of Counter-Stereotypical Behavior in a Traffic Stop Situation - Research Paper Example

The Effects of Counter-Stereotypical Behavior in a Traffic Stop Situation Abstract Gender discrimination however, has significantly reduced in the past decade due to countless motions and operations that have reduced the levels of gender based discrimination. Descriptive gender stereotypes are the characterization of male and female individuals in regards to their ordinary behavior and tendencies. Conversely, prescriptive gender stereotypes are based on what each sex or gender should be like and the activities that they should engage and not participate in. This research assesses the influence of gender stereotypes, particularly prescriptive stereotypes in traffic decision and interpersonal perceptions about traffic controls. 102 participants were selected in and around West Florida University to participate in the research through administration of questionnaires involving traffic violations and the influence of prescribed gender stereotypes in the issuing of traffic fines. Three dependent variables considered in the research are ticket justification, fine and social attractiveness. Crying made male violators (John) less popular to the respondents than it did in female violators' (Jane) case. Women receive less traffic violation fines and tickets due to their increased social attractiveness as compared to male violators. Key words: ticketing, traffic violation, traffic violators, social attractiveness, crying in traffic violators, gender stereotypes, backlash, traffic officers’ gender judgment Introduction Sex and gender stereotyping is an issue that might never end. Gender discrimination however, has significantly reduced in the past decade due to countless motions and operations that have reduced the levels of gender based discrimination. Sex and gender are two related but different perspectives in that gender is the traits ascribed to a person being male or female, whereas sex is the biological description of a man or a woman, in relation to hormonal releases, body structure and sex organs. Sex stereotyping on the other hand relates directly to assumptions about people from a certain gender, based on their roles and their capabilities. Gender stereotypes are both descriptive and perspective. Descriptive gender stereotypes are the characterization of male and female individuals in regards to their ordinary behavior and tendencies. Conversely, prescriptive gender stereotypes are based on what each sex or gender should be like and the activities that they should engage and not participate in. Gender stereotypes in this context will entirely be based on one main activity, which is traffic violation. The relationship between gender and traffic offences is the main basis of comparison for respective gender stereotypes. The research is based on both firsthand and secondhand sources of information for assessment of the research question; are traffic offences connected to gender, and what are the main stereotypes held by traffic officers and people on the road? Derlega and Chaikin (1976) conducted a research on sex stereotypes based on levels of self-disclosure among both men and women. The research findings of the research indicate that women have a high chance of disclosing information about themselves, both based on intimacy and personal issues about themselves. The research based on 120 subjects indicated that women are more inclined to self-disclosure as compared to men. The disclosure levels were based on two main parameters, which were High Disclosure and non-disclosure. For high disclosure, the measure for male subjects only recorded a 3.086 out of 10, whereas the female high disclosure scale indicated a 7.124 score. In cases of nondisclosure, the male respondents reported a 3.875 whereas the female respondents reported a 7.219. Prentice and Carranza (2002) conducted a research on a number of traits and their ratings of both men and women. The research is mainly based on prescribed stereotypes, which establishes what traits are expected from both men and women. Different traits were evaluated and their score out of ten recorded. For intensified prescriptions such as kindness, sensitivity, loyalty, friendliness, cooperation, flirtation and excitability, women generally scored higher than men did in all categories. However, for relaxed prescriptions, such as intelligence, maturity, self-esteem, principality, efficiency, discipline, decisiveness, ambitiousness among other similar traits, the men scored a higher score than the women. Women were also found to be weaker, naïve, emotional and yielding than the men, whereas the men were found to be more rebellious, stubborn, controlling and arrogant. Implicit stereotypes are descriptive stereotypes, which are unconscious characteristics ascribed into a person from a certain gender, whereas explicit stereotypes are likewise similar to prescribed stereotypes, which are expectations people have from people from a given sex (White & White, 2006). The research, based on implicit and explicit stereotypes and their judgment into certain occupations where certain professions, especially those involving tasking jobs such as engineering, construction and other similar jobs were mainly assigned to men. Jobs involving caregiving such as elementary teachers were more preferable to women, due to their caregiving capacities, whereas tasking jobs such as engineering were mainly given to the men, for their masculinity, tolerance, patience and other suchlike traits. Some occupations however, such as accounting were found to be neutral to both genders as seen. Gender stereotypes are based on countless assessments such as temptation bias, which is the ability to resist temptation of activities that might have long-term negative features. A study focusing on 215 undergraduate students on the temptation bias between gender stereotypes indicated that women have higher temptation bias than the men (Garos et al, 2007). Women have significantly higher resistance into engaging in highly tempting but potentially negative activities as compared to men. As such, women score higher self-control rates and levels as compared to men. Such stereotypes ignore certain variables, such as differing personalities and differing aspects about the society. The focus of the research was mainly on sexual related studies, which indicated that women had higher tendencies to resist temptation as compared to men. This research assesses the influence of gender stereotypes, particularly prescriptive stereotypes in traffic decision and interpersonal perceptions about traffic controls. One of the variables used in this case include the likes of the social attractiveness of men as compared to women. Another major variable considered in this case included crying behavior and its impact on decisions made about traffic offences by officers. The research uses both male and female students and the issuing of traffic tickets. The research mainly covered what were the feelings about certain tickets given to them, and how justified they believed the tickets to be. Secondly, the number of traffic tickets given to men compared to the number given to women was also considered as a parameter for measurement of the results for this research. Social likeability was the final parameter considered in the issuing of the tickets to all participants. Hypothesis 1. Women are more socially likeable than men and thus will receive fewer tickets as compared to the men, and this thus results into more road accidents being caused by women, but the men eventually paying more for the mistakes done by their female counterparts. 2. Women issued tickets will generally accept the tickets given to them, feeling that the tickets they received were justified, whereas most men will not feel that tickets given to them are justified. 3. Prior research finds that men and women may be penalized or viewed more negatively for acting in ways that are not consistent with how a men or women stereotypically behave. Method Participants Participants for this research were selected randomly where voluntary selection was employed, meaning that all participants could withdraw for the research at their wish, with no penalties being enacted. All participants were either students of West Florida university as well as graduating students from the same university, whose responses were crucial to the completion of this research. The participants selected encompassed all races and both genders ensuring that the results were not biased by any means. The mean age of the participants had a mean age of 25.8, with the standard deviation from the mean of the ages being 9.89. 35 male participants were included in the research and 66 of the female participants were feminine. Therefore, the percentage of male respondents was 34.3, whereas 66.7% of the respondents were female. 1 of the respondents failed to answer the questions effectively as expected by the research, therefore his or her results were not included in the result analysis process of this research. In terms of race the majority of the respondents were white scoring a 68.6% of the total population, 12.7% were black or African American, 4.9% constituted the Hispanic population among the respondents, 2% were Alaskan or native American, 5.9% were Asian, pacific islanders and native Hawaiians, 4.95 multi-racial, whereas 1% was unaccounted for. 79.5% were undertaking their undergraduate studies, whereas 20.6% held bachelor degrees in various fields. 67.5% were students, with psychology majors constituting 14.7% of the population and nursing being the second most popular field with a 3.9% representation. 63.7% were traffic violators with a mean of 2.1 violations, and a standard deviation of 2.7. The research followed all ethical requirements of the American Psychological association, as is the requirement of all research taken in this field. All participants were issued a list of rules and regulations pertaining to the research, followed, by a requirement for their approval that they understood all requirements of the participation. Their names were not included in the research, hence an observance of utmost ethical collection of data procedures was reinforced by the privacy clause of all research proposals. The IRB also requires an approval for any research to be conducted and was hence obtained for the research to be completed successfully. Procedure Before the official research was conducted, a document containing all details that the participant required to understand and be aware of from the research were handed to all participants, who upon completion were required to fill out a basic questionnaire required to get a general scope about the subjects and their observance to traffic laws. From the questionnaire a case study and a vignette was passed down to all researchers who were required to assess John and Jane’s cases and offer their overall feeling about the measures instituted by the researchers. A second questionnaire was administered to understand how much they related to vignette. After filling the second questionnaire, a demographic questionnaire, requiring participants to indicate their gender, ethnicity and their marital status was administered to each of the participants. A debriefing about their participation and an indication of the appreciation given to them for participating was included in the original documents for all participants. Research participants were also included in the research and given contact details to assess the overall outcome of the research that they had just contributed to. Several variables were used in the research, which were mainly the influence of crying on traffic police due to their stereotypical observations were included in the research followed by their prescriptive stereotypes about both genders and their involvement in traffic offences. Social desirability and attractiveness was also a key variable used in this research. Based on firsthand sources of information, the research and hence the validity and reliability of the research is ultimately high. There were 102 participants, of which 1 of the participant’s results were omitted or nullified due to obstruction of the research requirements. This thus shows that the results of this research are 99% valid and reliable for future and current reference. The overall alpha of the research reliability was .847 for the first variable of justification of the traffic offence. For the second measure, which was the fine, only one item was considered, whereas for social attractiveness 7 items were considered, indicating a reliability alpha of 0.8. No independent variable was considered in the research. There were three dependent variables considered in the research, which were ticket justification, fine and social attractiveness. For the first dependent variable, the key consideration was on 2 main levels, with each response having two options. 1 level was used for fine as a dependent variable, whereas a scale of 1 to 5 was employed for the final dependent variable, social attractiveness. A Case study, descriptive research design was used for the research. Statistical analysis conducted was quantitative and it was categorized in three levels as a strategy to indicate the responses obtained from each of the dependent variables used for this research. Results The first variable was the justification of the ticket issuing process. From the interpretation of the stem leaf plot obtained in this research, it indicates that crying made John less popular to the respondents than it did in Jane’s case. The results indicate that on a scale of 1 to 5, 44% of the respondents believed that it was relatively uncalled for to issue James with a ticket that did not have anything to do with him crying. When crying, John is more desirable to some people, but they largely constitute a small percentage of his overall attractiveness. However, Jane was found to be less hated or disapproved even after crying, and only won her more points with the participants in question in question. As such, crying is one sure way through which Jane can avoid getting multiple traffic related issues. For the second dependent variable, on whether the fine was justified, half of the participants believed that John should have received the fine, with a 75% rating indicating that she is more socially attractive as compared to her counterpart John. This study shows that women are treated fairer as compared to the men. This thus has seen more men get tickets for violating traffic rules as compared to the women. Women are believed to be fairer on the issues of sensitivity, and thus when they start crying, the men have a difficult time adjusting into the crying woman. 50% of the ratings indicated that women scored higher than the men did, with an overall score of 2.0, whereas the men scored poorly indicating a 4.0 on the steam leaf plot diagram. About social attractiveness, women tend to be more socially attractive than men and hence soliciting favors from strangers is a usual thing for women. The results indicated that women are highly likely to avoid traffic offences from countless warnings by male officers, who constitute a larger percentage of the portion. The results indicated that women handle their lives using their social body language and thus indicates that in reality women have some stereotypes that are considerably better than those of men. As such, the research indicates that the research results assess women as stereotypes, which have largely contributed to the decrease of accidents in the vicinity. Justification of the ticket Male Female Marginal Crying 2 4 3 Not crying 4 4 4 Marginal 3 4 3 Fine Male Female Marginal Crying 3 4 3 Not crying 3 4 3.5 Marginal 3 4 3.5 Social attractiveness Male Female Marginal Crying 1 3 2 Not crying 4 4 4 Marginal 2.5 3.5 3 Discussion The aspects of personality and stereotyping have effects on human beings and how they perceive things. With women predicted to be prescribed stereotypes, which are all based on the lovability of women and their ability to have better temptation ethic as compared to the men. However, the findings also indicate that most traffic offenders are not male, but rather female, but due to their social attractiveness, they are constantly let go by police officers, whereas male traffic offenders even lose their cars or license forever. References Derlega, V. & Chaikin, A. (1976). Norms Affecting Self-disclosure in Men and Women. Journal of Consulting and clinical Psychology, 44.3, 376 – 380. Garos, S., Kluck, A. S., Beggan, J. K., Martindale, J., Wheeler, A. E., & Zacchilli, T. L. (2008). Temptation bias: Can self-enhancement limit the influence of gender stereotypes? Sex Roles, 58(5-6), 311-329. Perrin, R. (2012). Pocket Guide to APA Style. Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning. Prentice, D. & Carranza, E. (2002). At women and men should be, shouldn’t be, are allowed to be, and don’t have to be: the contents of prescriptive gender stereotypes. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 26, 269–281. WhiteGwendolen, M. J. (2006). Implicit and explicit occupational gender stereotypes. Sex Roles, 55(3-4), 259-266. Appendix Read More