NUMERICAL DISTINCTIVENESS, SOCIAL IDENTITY AND GENDER SALIENCE

According to McGuire & McGuire's (1981) distinctiveness postulate, being a member of a numerical minority on some descriptive dimension is said to render that dimension a more salient aspect of self. Self‐categorization and social identity theories (Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher & Wetherell, 1987) predict that the presence of two groups (irrespective of relative size) should be sufficient, under certain specifiable conditions, to make in‐group‐defining characteristics salient. In the present study female students with traditional sex‐role orientations observed a sexist advertisement. They were in eight‐person groups of varying sex composition. There was a significant overall difference beween all‐female groups and mixed‐sex groups on a measure of gender salience. Gender was less salient in the all‐female groups. In addition, there was a clear positive correlation between mention of gender (i.e. salience) and endorsement of traditional sex‐role attitudes. The results lend more support to a social identity analysis than to a distinctiveness analysis of identity salience. 1990 The British Psychological Society