Need for Cognition and Women’s Implicit Associations: Breaking Stereotypes?

People often associate women more with emotions, or affect in general, compared to men (e.g., Barrett & Bliss-Moreau, 2009); however, it is unknown whether some women will have a stronger association between self and affect or others and cognition than other women. We predicted that higher need for cognition (NFC; Cacioppo et al., 1984), or the enjoyment of cognitive processes, would be associated with stronger self-cognition/others-affect implicit associations. We also predicted that women with stronger self-cognition/others-affect associations would be less likely to endorse STEM stereotypes. We also expected a positive relationship between NFC and explicit self-cognition/others-affect associations. To test these predictions, we conducted a study on Project Implicit investigating the relationship between NFC, affect-cognition associations with the self and others, and endorsement of women in STEM stereotypes (Jackson et al., 2014). We found that higher NFC scores were associated with decreased endorsement of stereotypical affect-cognition implicit associations in women, r(280) = −.14, p = .022, 95% CI [−0.25, −0.02]. There was no significant association between self-affect/others-cognition implicit associations and STEM stereotype endorsement, r(278) = −.05, p = .421, 95% CI [−0.17, 0.07]. Importantly, we found that the relationship between NFC and self-affect/others-cognition associations exists when using both an implicit and explicit measure. NFC may increase the likelihood of women making the counter-stereotypical association of themselves with cognition as opposed to affect. It is important to know who endorses these stereotypes, and future studies should continue to examine the trait NFC, affect-cognition associations, and related interest in STEM.