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1. Recognition of Subtle Bias Tempers Explicit Gender Stereotyping Among STEM Students

   Slade Morris, D.; Burley, L C.; Sekaquaptewa, D.; & Meadows, L. A. (January 2022, Zone 1 Conference of the American Society for Engineering Education)

   The overarching goal of this research project is to provide a novel contribution to perceived bias research by testing the hypothesis that mere exposure to instances of subtle gender bias in STEM settings can have important effects on observers, depending on whether they recognize such events as gender bias or do not see it as bias. The goal of the first of five experiments was to assess how witnessing subtle gender bias events influences explicit stereotype activation among people who recognize the events as gender stereotyping as well as those who do not. We utilized video materials that were developed and tested in our previous NSF research that show a group of four engineering students, 2 women and 2 men, working together on an engineering design task. There are two versions of the video: one in which the students engaged in subtle gender bias (bias version), and one in which the students engaged in neutral interactions (control version). Over 400 participants were recruited from a large midwestern research university from computer science and engineering majors in which 30% or fewer majors are women. The survey included assessments of perceptions of gender stereotyping in the video, general stereotype endorsement and STEM stereotype endorsement, and three individual difference measures (gender-based rejection sensitivity, sexism sensitivity and negative emotionality) used as covariates in analyses. We found that participants who saw the bias video reported greater explicit stereotyping when they failed to recognize gender bias in the video. When they did recognize bias, they reported explicit stereotyping at levels similar to those in the control condition. This pattern suggests that exposure to subtle gender bias events may have activated gender stereotypes, but when participants recognized the events as gender bias, they tempered their explicit stereotyping. 

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2. Recognition of Subtle Bias Tempers Explicit Gender Stereotyping Among STEM Students.

   Slade Morris, D.; Burley, L C.; Sekaquaptewa, D.; Meadows, L. A. (January 2022, Zone 1 Conference of the American Society for Engineering Education)

   The overarching goal of this research project is to provide a novel contribution to perceived bias research by testing the hypothesis that mere exposure to instances of subtle gender bias in STEM settings can have important effects on observers, depending on whether they recognize such events as gender bias or do not see it as bias. The goal of the first of five experiments was to assess how witnessing subtle gender bias events influences explicit stereotype activation among people who recognize the events as gender stereotyping as well as those who do not. We utilized video materials that were developed and tested in our previous NSF research that show a group of four engineering students, 2 women and 2 men, working together on an engineering design task. There are two versions of the video: one in which the students engaged in subtle gender bias (bias version), and one in which the students engaged in neutral interactions (control version). Over 400 participants were recruited from a large midwestern research university from computer science and engineering majors in which 30% or fewer majors are women. The survey included assessments of perceptions of gender stereotyping in the video, general stereotype endorsement and STEM stereotype endorsement, and three individual difference measures (gender-based rejection sensitivity, sexism sensitivity and negative emotionality) used as covariates in analyses. We found that participants who saw the bias video reported greater explicit stereotyping when they failed to recognize gender bias in the video. When they did recognize bias, they reported explicit stereotyping at levels similar to those in the control condition. This pattern suggests that exposure to subtle gender bias events may have activated gender stereotypes, but when participants recognized the events as gender bias, they tempered their explicit stereotyping. 

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3. Novel GxE effects and resilience: A case:control longitudinal study of psychosocial stress with war-affected youth

   https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266509  

   Mulligan, Connie J.; Clukay, Christopher J.; Matarazzo, Anthony; Hadfield, Kristin; Nevell, Lisa; Dajani, Rana; Panter-Brick, Catherine (April 2022, PLOS ONE)

   Boon-Peng, Hoh (Ed.)

   Responses to early life adversity differ greatly across individuals. Elucidating which factors underlie this variation can help us better understand how to improve health trajectories. Here we used a case:control study of refugee and non-refugee youth, differentially exposed to war-related trauma, to investigate the effects of genetics and psychosocial environment on response to trauma. We investigated genetic variants in two genes (serotonin transporter, 5-HTT , and catechol-O-methyltransferase, COMT ) that have been implicated in response to trauma. We collected buccal samples and survey data from 417 Syrian refugee and 306 Jordanian non-refugee youth who were enrolled in a randomized controlled trial to evaluate a mental health-focused intervention. Measures of lifetime trauma exposure, resilience, and six mental health and psychosocial stress outcomes were collected at three time points: baseline, ~13 weeks, and ~48 weeks. We used multilevel models to identify gene x environment (GxE) interactions and direct effects of the genetic variants in association with the six outcome measures over time. We did not identify any interactions with trauma exposure, but we did identify GxE interactions with both genes and resilience; 1) individuals with high expression (HE) variants of 5-HTTLPR and high levels of resilience had the lowest levels of perceived stress and 2) individuals homozygous for the Val variant of COMT with high levels of resilience showed stable levels of post-traumatic stress symptoms. We also identified a direct protective effect of 5-HTTLPR HE homozygotes on perceived insecurity. Our results point to novel interactions between the protective effects of genetic variants and resilience, lending support to ideas of differential susceptibility and altered stress reactivity in a cohort of war-affected adolescents. 

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4. “Who’s Better at Math, Boys or Girls?”: Changes in Adolescents’ Math Gender Stereotypes and Their Motivational Beliefs from Early to Late Adolescence

   https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13090866  

   Starr, Christine R; Gao, Yannan; Rubach, Charlott; Lee, Glona; Safavian, Nayssan; Dicke, Anna-Lena; Eccles, Jacquelynne S; Simpkins, Sandra D (September 2023, Education Sciences)

   Though adults tend to endorse the stereotype that boys are better than girls in math, children tend to favor their own gender or be gender egalitarian. When do individuals start endorsing the traditional stereotype that boys are better? Using two longitudinal U.S. datasets that span 1993 to 2011, we examined three questions: (1) What are the developmental changes in adolescents’ gender stereotypes about math abilities from early to late adolescence? (2) Do the developmental changes vary based on gender and race/ethnicity? (3) Are adolescents’ stereotypes related to their math motivational beliefs? Finally, (4) do these patterns replicate across two datasets that vary in historical time? Adolescents in grades 8/9 and 11 were asked whether girls or boys are better at math (n’s = 1186 and 23,340, 49–53% girls, 30–54% White, 13–60% Black, 1–22% Latinx, and 2% to 4% Asian). Early adolescents were more likely to be gender egalitarian or favor their own gender. By late adolescence, adolescents’ stereotypes typically shifted towards the traditional stereotype that boys are better. In terms of race/ethnicity, White and Asian adolescents significantly favored boys, whereas Black and Latinx adolescents were more likely to endorse gender egalitarian beliefs. Adolescents’ stereotypes were significantly related to their expectancy beliefs, negatively for girls and positively for boys. 

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5. Stereocode: A Tool for Automatic Identification of Method and Class Stereotypes for Software Systems

   Al-Ramadan, A; Behler, JAC; Decker, M; Dragan, N; Collard, ML; Maletic, JM (October 2024, IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance & Evolution (ICSME))

   We present Stereocode, a static analysis tool engineered to automatically identify, and re-document software systems written in C++, C#, and/or Java with method and class stereotypes. A stereotype is a simple abstraction that encapsulates the high-level behavior of a method or a class. The tool is built around the srcML infrastructure, an XML representation of source code. Stereocode annotates the srcML input with the computed stereotypes as XML attributes to the function and class tags. We showcase Stereocode’s efficiency in conducting large-scale analysis of software systems, which involves using 1050 repositories from GitHub across C++, C#, and Java. The results provide valuable insights into the distribution of stereotypes. 

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