Publication Date

Spring 2018

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Psychology

Advisor

Megumi Hosoda

Keywords

Computer-Mediated Communication, Email, Gender, Gender Role

Subject Areas

Gender studies; Web studies; Communication

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to examine how evaluations of an email sender would be influenced by gender role and sex of the sender. It was hypothesized that male senders would be liked more and perceived as more competent than females and that agentic male and communal female senders would be liked more and perceived as more competent than communal male and agentic female senders, respectively. Senders would also be ranked in the following order from most positive scores to least: agentic males, communal females, agentic females, communal males. Using a 2 (sex of participants: male vs female) x 2 (sex of the sender: male vs female) x 2 (gender role: agentic vs communal) between-subjects analysis of variance (ANOVA) and data from 150 college students, it was found that there was no effect of sex of the sender and gender role to support the first three hypotheses. However, communal senders were found to be liked more and perceived as more competent than agentic senders. The results of this study suggest that requests and other interactions online be written using communal language.

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