Sex‐role orientation and memory for gender‐related terms: Another uncertain link

Two studies are reported which investigate the relationship between sex‐role orientation and memory for gender‐related terms. Based on the concept of ‘cognitive schema’, theoretical models have recently been advanced suggesting that the schematic cognitive representation of gender facilitates the recall of words pertinent to gender. One of these models, Markus' self‐schema theory, proposes that masculine and feminine sex‐typed individuals have a better memory for terms that correspond to their respective self‐schemata. In contrast, Bem's gender schema theory implies that sex‐typed individuals have a better memory for the category of gender as a whole, i.e. for both masculine and feminine terms. Starting from previous findings by Markus and colleagues in support of the self‐schema theory, the present studies derived competing sets of hypotheses from the two models and examined the effect of sex‐role orientation on accuracy of recall for masculine, feminine and gender‐neutral terms. Neither of the models received support in the two studies. The implications of the findings for the relationship between sex‐role orientation and memory are discussed.