Men over women: The social transmission of gender stereotypes through spatial elevation

People draw from physical properties like spatial location to better understand complex concepts like power (Landau, Meier, & Keefer, 2010; T. W. Schubert, 2005). We examined the cultural implications of such associations for gender stereotypes. Specifically, we hypothesized that people would make location-based attributions of power and dominance when targets are situated in noisy, real-world environments (i.e., magazine pages; Study 1); that men generally appear higher than women across print media (Study 2: Content Analysis); and that this gender-location association would ultimately cause perceivers to think that men (in general) are more powerful and dominant people than are women (Study 3; meta-analysis). Results supported hypotheses and indicate that exposure to this cultural pattern in which men are higher than women (i.e., male spatial elevation) causes perceivers to endorse gender stereotypes of dominance. Accordingly, gender-location associations may account in part for the social transmission of gender stereotypes.