Reexamining the Relationship Between Gender and Abstraction: Does Context Matter?

Men communicate more abstractly than women. In addition, lay people hold a gender abstraction stereotype such that people expect men to think more abstractly than women. The current research examines whether gender differences in abstraction as well as gender stereotypes about abstraction are moderated by context (cognitive task versus communicative task). Study 1 demonstrates that gender differences in abstraction are stronger in communication contexts than cognition contexts. Study 2 provides evidence to show that people hold descriptive and prescriptive gender stereotypes about both cognitive and communicative abstraction. Given that both cognitive and communicative abstraction are associated with greater leadership attributions, understanding gender differences and stereotypes related to abstraction is important to our understanding of gender disparities in leadership emergence.