Since 1993, the Taiwanese society has reached the WHO standard of an aging society in which over 7% of the whole population are older than 65. This research aims to find out the images of older people, those cultural and societal factors involved in the representations of older people, and what roles the media plays to connect the related signs? This research takes perspectives from the critical theories and applies the methodology of semiotics to analysis of Changchun and Kangjiang magazines in Taiwan. The researcher collects 85 different ads containing images of older people and uses the viewpoints of mythology to analyze in semiotic terms in order to make known the cultural myths and ideologies hidden in those images and signs. The result shows, images of older people in the ads are deeply influenced by culture, regarding older people as inevitable declining because of aging. However, owing to modernization of Taiwan and more contact with the western culture, the images of older people in magazine ads start to incorporate new concepts. Fore example, active and energetic ¡§successful¡¨ older people have gradually become the new paradigm. This course of development is similar to that in the American society discussed in the reviewed literature. This change in images is related to the trend that the baby boomers that hold most political and economic resources are starting to retire. In the context of Chinese culture, older people represented in those ads are rarely without their families and values of an idealized family are highly embellished. Although the realities have greatly changed, the traditional image of ¡§three generations in a family¡¨ is constructed as the ideal form of the happy family. Older people are suggested by ads to have the utmost happiness and gratification. In these ads, commodities are presented as the resolution of problems. Conventionally, advertisement ¡§creates¡¨ an anxiety out of short comparison with the ¡§ideal¡¨ and then introduces products as the panacea to cure all the problems. Health-related ads make good use of the existing Chinese medicine belief in pureness and harmlessness of nature and the concept of effectiveness and efficiency of new technology to grant the bio-tech products a combination of benevolence and familiarity of nature and preciseness and effectiveness of technology. By doing so, the ads smooth over the possible conflicts between nature and technology and make up a collage of associated myths. The dominant ideology in ads about older people is the binary extremes of being young or old. By means of emphasizing older people as ugly, unable and powerless, the ideology promotes the values of being young. Advertisements set some high standards for older people to catch up with and assimilate those who are deemed as ¡§insufficient.¡¨ Mythology arbitrarily selects conventional concepts and popular myths to make up seemingly reasonable explanations, successfully transforms the public issues about older people to insufficient anxieties to be coped with by individual efforts, and implies that products are the only resort to ease the anxieties, cleverly de-politicizing the societal awareness of well-being about older people. In a paternal social system, the dominant mainstream ideology tends to separate the dominant and subordinate sides into two contradictory extremes and then establish a few roles models in accord with social expectations to stabilize the structure of the social system. Discriminating levels such as race, sex, class and age are practiced in similar ways. Besides, these discriminating categories will add up and interplay due to the overlapping of a person¡¦s multiple positions and intensity inequality. For instance, in this research the standards and roles for older people, apart form being taken care of in the family, a new kind of images for older people is burgeoning. The new images of Caucasian older people, energetic expressions and lifestyles are modeled as the new paradigm for the elderly. In addition, collaborating with sex discrimination, this study shows, the standards for older males are different form those for older females. The new research domain is worth our further trying to exam the different standards for the male and female elderly from a perspective of sex.

This study aimed to investigate the differences of different teacher-student matches in science gender stereotype threat and classroom observations on teacher-student interactions of different gender match and interviews on science teachers. The study developed two standardized scales for junior high school students, Science Gender Stereotype Scale and Science Identification Scale. A total of 1,224 students from 44 classes out of 11 junior high schools in Kaohsiung City were selected through judgmental sampling to complete questionnaires in the study. The results indicated: (1) students of female-male group (female teacher and male student) had stronger science identification than students of female-female group (female teacher and female student); students of male-male group (male teacher and male student) had stronger science identification than students of male-female group (male teacher and female student); and female students taught by male teacher had the lowest science identification (2) there was no significant difference of students¡¦ gender stereotype belief in sciences in different teacher-student matches (3) students of female-male group (female teacher and male student) had stronger perception of gender stereotype than students of female-female group (female teacher and female student); students of male-male group (male teacher and male student) had stronger perception of gender stereotype than students of male-female group (male teacher and female student). The results of observations and interviews indicated: (1) male students were more initiative and therefore had more opportunities to interact with teachers (2) female students of upper-intermediate level were more susceptible to perceive gender stereotype threat in science learning (3) the difference in male and female teachers may be attributed to the influence of female role model (4) degree of difficulty was a crucial component stimulating students¡¦ gender stereotype threat.

This study was designed to explore the gender roles of youth comics and the perception of youth comic's readers. The methods of this study are content analysis and interview method. The findings, conclusions, and recommendations of this study are summarized as follows. 1.The number of male character is more than female character. The role of male character is still far more important than female character. 2.There are more gender stereotypes in male character than female character. However, female characters place much attention in love. 3.More recently, female character play less role in waiting for rescue. But male character is still more action oriented. Alternatively, female character appears to be quieter. 4.Most female character appears to be sexy and slim, and female characters at times show off their female sexuality. 5.In terms of outstanding performance, male character is more obvious and prominent. On the other hand, female characters may have outstanding performance but not quite obvious. We hope that the content of youth comics can be kept away from traditional gender stereotypes, and the review of comics can be more open and transparent. Additionally, parents should spend more time to read and discuss the contents of youth comics with their children.

Media is taken as one of ¡§ideological state apparatuses¡¨ which reproduces and delivers dominant ideologies, and audience always internalize these dominant ideologies and take them for granted. Talk-show program is one kind of television genre, its gender ideology is constructed by daily conversion. In addition, inviting normal people to attend talk-show programs is becoming a trend; it makes ideologies closer to reality, and not easy to be found. Aim to understand how gender ideologies work in talk-show program, this study uses Taiwanese talk-show program ¡§University¡¨ as an example, analyzing 22 texts of ¡§University¡¨ by textual analysis. Besides, the other main purpose of this research is to understand the progress of production, so the researcher interviewed a producer and four guests of ¡§University¡¨ to have clearer concept about production. This study found that there are many topics about gender issue in ¡§University¡¨, and most of them focus on woman. Analyzing these texts, the results show that gender stereotype and patriarchal concepts are usually delivered when talking about gender traits, and in this program, they always narrow down diverse viewpoints about gender with binary opposition. In addition, discussing about love, they not only maintain traditional gender order -¡§men are strong, and women are weak¡¨ and ¡§men are superior, and women are inferior¡¨, but also use hegemony of heterosexuality to oppress women with romantic love, and exclude homosexual. In this way, women will become inferior and subordinate to men. Finally, when talking about appearance and dressing, it¡¦s full of mainstreaming values in ¡§University¡¨, and these values make women to be an object which is gazed and desired by men. Thus, under kinds of pressures of beauty myth, women keep disciplining themselves, and they are used as a product for selling advertisement. These situations make women become victims of beauty in the end.

<p>The way man divides his thoughts and sorts them into different boxes, is a cognitive activity which works alike for every person. We split peoplesexterior attributes and characteristic qualities into stereotypes or prejudicemind patterns and treat them along those.</p><p>This study examines through a qualitative method what twelve respondents (six women and six men) between the ages 16-21, think about “intense” conceptions, which may show stereotype or prejudice ways of thinking. There spondents have been chosen regardless ethnic or economic background andare all enrolled in an upper secondary school located centrally in a Swedish big city.</p><p>The purpose is to find out if there are any differences between how some young men and some young women spontaneously think in stereotypical orprejudice patterns. The result is interpreted on the basis of the social cognitive perspective and from out of theories about how people create schemes andprototypes to separate individuals and groups from each other.</p><p>This study suggests that men more easily express their stereotypes and prejudice, while women more often seem to be careful with their stereotypes and prejudice, and end up redefining them. Further in the discussion, aspects involving how the society, if not becoming aware of stereotypes and prejudice, can affect the people representing those stereotypes.</p>

Thesis (Ph. D.)--York University, 1999. Graduate Programme in Psychology. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 79-86). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNQ56233.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

Throughout history, men have played a significant role in the field of nursing. However, they currently represent only 12% of nursing students and 9.6% of Registered Nurses. As a minority in their occupation, male nurses experience gender-based barriers and negative stereotypes that female nurses do not. Research has addressed these barriers and stereotypes, but has lagged in identifying the consequences of exposure to them other than men's reluctance to enter or stay in the field. With the nurse-patient relationship at the core of quality healthcare, it is important to further clarify the consequences of stereotype exposure for male nurses in the clinical setting. The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate the communicative consequences of exposure to gender-based stereotypes among male nurses through the theoretical lens of stereotype threat (Steele & Aronson, 1995). Stereotype threat describes the apprehension individuals experience from the prospect of confirming a negative self-relevant stereotype. In the reported experiment, the salience of gender-based stereotypes (women are more empathic than men; men are better managers than women) was controlled for while male and female nursing students completed a simulated nurse-patient interaction task. Findings from this study highlight the influence of subtle stereotyping in simulated nurse-patient interactions. Specifically, men were less grammatically accurate when participating under conditions of threat than when not under conditions of threat. This finding provides a need for caution as healthcare is experiencing a shift towards e-health, which will rely heavily on both the spoken and written word. Additionally, findings suggest that the disruptive potential of making salient stereotyped attributes (e.g., empathy) may be offset by patient gender. For example, male participants were less tentative under conditions of threat with a female patient than a male patient. The influence of patient gender provides optimism that a shift in gender-based stereotyping is occurring. Therefore, it is an optimal time to increase recruitment and retention efforts of men in the field of nursing. Recommendations for such efforts are offered as well as future directions for stereotype threat research in interpersonal communication and healthcare. / text

African Americans are at a greater risk of developing cardiovascular disease and associated risk factors than are Whites, and recent research has suggested that the effects of racial discrimination are a significant contributor to this disparity. Thus, a preattentive bias and vigilance for threat might serve as a mechanism through which experienced racial discrimination would negatively impact cardiovascular health. A study was conducted to investigate the physiological and attentional underpinnings of vigilance for discriminatory threat via examination of phasic heart period (HP) responses to cued threat and nonthreat stimuli. Thirty African American and forty-two European American undergraduate students from a large urban university participated in the study. Phasic HP reactions of participants were recorded during an S1-S2 procedure where cued stereotype-related threatening, nonstereotype-related threatening, and nonthreatening stimuli were presented. It was hypothesized that Blacks, more than Whites, would show: smaller magnitude and impaired habituation of cardiac orienting to neutral words; acceleration of heart rate in response to threat words; and a conditioned anticipatory heart rate deceleration to threat words over repeated trials. However, results did not support hypotheses; neither Whites nor Blacks exhibited significant changes in phasic heart period in response to cued stimuli.

Cette étude s’intéresse à la présence des stéréotypes dans les dessins animés Disney, en particulier, des représentations de la culture française et à l’utilité d’inclure ces films dans les cours de langues étrangères afin de combattre ces visions culturelles restreintes, de générer une réflexion critique chez les élèves et finalement, de les former à la compétence interculturelle. Ainsi, vous trouverez ici une étude du pouvoir du cinéma, et de Disney, sur le public, par extension les élèves, puis une réflexion sur le stéréotype et sur l’importance pédagogique de son étude et pour finir, une discussion sur l’analyse des représentations culturelles françaises et de leur évolution à travers le temps dans trois dessins animés Disney, The Aristocats (1970) Beauty and the Beast (1991) et Ratatouille (2007).