Sex Factors and Allocation of Attention in Observing Persons

Summary

Standard videotapes of two male and two female stimulus persons were viewed by 72 college students (33 male, 39 female), and allocation of attention was assessed by distribution of responses in an unstructured free-recall test after each tape. Female student observers were found to attend relatively more to gestures and verbal style, while male student observers attended more to appearance and verbal content. For male stimulus persons, observer attention centered on verbal stimuli, whereas for female stimulus persons observer attention focused more on visual stimuli. Details of these findings and others are interpreted in relation to results of previous studies on sex-role stereotyping, person perception, incidental learning, and observational accuracy.