The Interactive Effects of Sex of a Sender and Gender Role on Liking and Perceived Competence in Online eMail Communication

摘要

The purpose of the present study was to examine how evaluations of an email sender would be influenced by gender role and sex of the sender. It was hypothesized that male senders would be liked more and perceived as more competent than females and that agentic male and communal female senders would be liked more and perceived as more competent than communal male and agentic female senders, respectively. Senders would also be ranked in the following order from most positive scores to least: agentic males, communal females, agentic females, communal males. Using a 2 (sex of participants: male vs female) x 2 (sex of the sender: male vs female) x 2 (gender role: agentic vs communal) between-subjects analysis of variance (ANOVA) and data from 150 college students, it was found that there was no effect of sex of the sender and gender role to support the first three hypotheses. However, communal senders were found to be liked more and perceived as more competent than agentic senders. The results of this study suggest that requests and other interactions online be written using communal language.