Stereotyped notions of women and men? Ingvar and
Ingvor Lind revisited
A generation ago, Jan Einarsson (1979) investigated how students reacted to a text presented in two versions. Every second student was given either a version said to have been sent by a male deputy director Ingvar Lind, or one in which the name Ingvar had been altered to the female Ingvor. Ingvar was judged to be more reliable and competent than Ingvor. In this paper I discuss the results of a study performed in the autumn of 2006 to establish whether assessments of spoken language are governed by stereotyped notions of men and women.
Three groups of students took part in a test in which they were asked to assess a 36-year-old male recreation leader, Mattias, and a 36-year-old female journalist, Karin. The informants read an excerpt from a conversation with each person and then judged them using Osgood’s semantic differential – in this case comprising twelve five-point scales, for example educated–uneducated and funny–boring. The informants were also asked to comment on the individual’s way of speaking. One group was given correct information; Mattias was called Mattias and Karin was called Karin. In another group the names were switched: they believed Mattias to be a woman and Karin a man. The third group served as a control, as they also listened to the recordings.
The most evident result is that a man is judged to be funnier and more confident than a woman. Stereotyped notions of different occupations had an influence on the comments, as did stereotyped notions of what to expect from a man or a woman. A man who seems to be devoted to his child is judged to be more warm-hearted and personal than a woman who talks about the same subject. The journalist Karin receives more adverse comments on her language than the journalist Mattias, e.g “It is appalling that a journalist could speak such poor Swedish”.