Many mickles make a muckle: Evidence that gender stereotypes re-emerge spontaneously via cultural evolution

We explore whether societal gender stereotypes re-emerge as social information is repeatedly passed from person to person. We examined whether peoples’ memories for personality attributes associated with female and male social targets became increasingly consistent with societal gender stereotypes as information passed down social transmission chains. After passing through the memories of just four generations of participants, our initially gender-balanced micro-societies became rife with traditional gender stereotypes. While we found some evidence of the re-emergence of gender stereotypes in Expt. 1, we found the effects were stronger when targets appeared in a feminine stereotyped occupational context (Expt. 2) and in a masculine stereotyped occupational context (Expt. 3); conversely, the reemergence of gender stereotypes was attenuated when targets appeared in a single gender context (Expt. 4). The current findings demonstrate that gender schematic memory bias, if widely shared, might cause gender stereotypes to be maintained through cultural evolution.