"Is Feminine Not Professional?" Presentation Styles and Audience Perceptions: A Proposed Study
Annaliese Weiss
Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematical fields (STEM) are often an underrepresented and marginalized population (Blair et al., 2017). My poster presentation will present the details of a study I intend to conduct next year, as a member of Dr. Southard-Dobbs’s Stress and Cognition Lab. My interactions with the audience will help refine my methodology and may help identify other research questions to consider. This study is influenced by J.D Hall’s (1998) and Manning and Lawless’s (2011) examination of audience perceptions of gendered presentation style. Both studies investigated gender expression when presenting a lesson or a website. This proposed study is largely influenced by Hall’s (1998) research, which included video presentations with feminine and masculine designs and speakers. Whereas Hall (1998) focused on audience perceptions of the speaker, I intend to focus on audience perceptions of the presentation content. Manning and Lawless (2011) examined first impressions of websites with differently gendered styles, interfaces, and aesthetics. Hall (1998) found that a feminine speaker with a feminine presentation was preferred by participants, while Manning and Lawless (2011) found that a more masculine design was preferred over both neutral and feminine. I hypothesize that a more feminine design would be rated as less professional than a more masculine design. In contrast, I hypothesize that those shown a feminine design will score higher on a knowledge test than those shown a masculine design. Participants will be Psychology 101 students from Lander University and will view four different video-style presentations about a topic in psychology. The four videos will have the exact same script and topic, but they will differ in their combination of feminine/masculine presentation style and feminine/masculine voice. Participants will watch these videos and then answer questions about their perceptions of professionalism, and information quality. In my presentation, I will explore the rationale for my hypotheses and details of my planned methodology.
Annaliese Weiss is a junior psychology and criminology major, and a human services minor from Clemson, SC. She is an undergraduate research assistant in Dr. Southard-Dobbs's Stress and Cognition Lab. After undergrad, she plans on attending graduate school for experimental psychology.