Discriminación de género y dominación socialanálisis de los estereotipos de género y de la influencia del priming subliminal

Resum

In this doctoral thesis gender discrimination is analyzed from an extended perspective. This comprises the postulates of the social dominance theory, the beliefs that underlie gender discrimination and the use of an implicit measure of attitudes, which was subliminal priming. The two first chapters are focused on a theoretical revision. In the chapter 1, we part from classical theories of discrimination and prejudice, and we follow with their most current contributions, as well as with contemporary theoretical approximations. Below, the interest is centred on the contributions of the social dominance theory and its implications in the study of gender discrimination. We end this chapter applying the social role theory in the understanding of the dynamic of gender stereotypes and with the detailed analysis of the basic beliefs that underlie this type of discrimination. These beliefs comprise the gender stereotypes, the gender identity, and the gender ideology. In the second chapter, explicit and implicit measures of attitudes are revised, especially the most utilized for the study of prejudice and discrimination. In addition, the relationship between these measures as well as their ability to predict behaviour is raised, describing the different moderated factors that could explain these relationships. Among the implicit measures, the priming technique is developed in detail, gathering the empiric evidence that highlights the important automatic effect of external stimuli on behaviour, even when they are subliminally presented. Subsequently, the two empirical studies carried out in this doctoral thesis are described. In the first of them, the validity of traditional gender stereotypes is analyzed to identify which features are currently assigned differentially to women and men, and that could be explaining the maintenance of gender discrimination in our society. In the second study, the derived effect of a subliminal priming task on automatic activation and inhibition of gender stereotypes and its consequences on different variables is analyzed. Among these variables the social dominance orientation (SDO), egalitarianism, individualism, gender stereotypes self-assignment, gender ideology, gender identity and the responses to a discrimination task are studied. In addition, taking into account the invariance hypothesis proposed by the social dominance theory, the gender and other variables’ capacity to predict SDO levels is analyzed. Finally, the main conclusions of this doctoral thesis are gathered, emphasizing the contribution of social dominance theory and the studies of the automatic processes for a greater understanding of gender discrimination.