This thesis considers the perceived athleticism of synchronized swimming by looking at the implications of representations of Esther Williams and "pretty swimming" in popular culture, the allocation of space for women's sport in a local public swimming pool, and an inaugural championship event. Focusing on the first British Columbia (BC) synchronized swimming championships, which were held on February 5, 1949 at Crystal Pool in Vancouver, it shows that images of synchronized swimming as "entertainment" facilitated the development of a new arena of competition for BC women, but that this was accompanied, in effect, by a trivialization of the accomplishments of organizers and athletes. Chapter One examines the construction of a "global" mermaid by analysing Esther Williams' first film, Bathing Beauty (1944), as a typical example of the Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer (MGM) aquamusical, a genre that produced images of synchronized swimming as frivolous entertainment. Chapter Two considers how these sorts of images affected the allocation of physical space at Crystal Pool, Vancouver's only indoor public swimming pool at the time, for women's sport. Chapter Three introduces two women who were involved in the 1949 BC synchronized swimming championships: May Brown, who at the time was a University of British Columbia (UBC) Physical Education instructor and synchronized swimming judge, and Maureen Bray (Hibberson), a UBC student who won the individual championship event. Their recollections provide an important corrective to the "pretty swimming" stereotype by demonstrating that these women used the cultural and physical space allotted to them to create a new sport for local women. The final chapter also includes episodes from my personal experiences as a synchronized swimmer in BC during the 1980s to underscore the complicated and conflicted heritage for synchronized swimmers in BC represented by the legacy of the 1949 championships and the MGM aquamusical.

Stereotype threat or boost (STB) is a situational modifier of task performance that occurs when a group stereotype becomes relevant to the performance of a stereotype-relevant task. This dissertation aimed to re-imagine STB in light of social identity theory. Ten studies were undertaken that each manipulated status and either identifiability, conflict or permeability and explored the effects on the performance of the Ravens Advanced Progressive Matrices. Additional identity and socio-structural constructs were also measured and explored, including stability, legitimacy and ingroup identification. The results showed that STB is not simply “activated” or “deactivated” when stereotypes become relevant to task performance. On the contrary, the specific features of identity, the contextual features of the social environment in which the identity performance takes place, and the performer’s strategic engagement with their identity resources and liabilities are important features of how STB impacts on performance, and how it is sometimes resisted and overturned by experimental subjects. Indeed, performance was generally not predictable on the basis of stereotype activation until resistance to the negative or positive status manipulations were also accounted for. Although the STB literature is tightly focused on the case of negative stereotypes undermining performance, incongruent effects in which negative stereotypes enhance performance and positive stereotypes undermine it have also been reported. In the present studies incongruent STB effects were frequently observed. Underperformance in boost conditions was most consistently predicted by perceived intergroup conflict, while enhanced performance under threat was consistently predicted by perceived group boundary permeability. Additionally, underperformance in boost conditions was often a result of ‘slipstreaming’ rather than ‘choking under pressure,’ since participants were evidently counting on their generally secure identity in the experimental context to buffer poor performance on the experimental task. Improved performance in threat conditions was most likely when participants perceived themselves to be representatives of their group and when they believed that their improved performance would make a difference for their own reputation or the reputation of their group. These findings challenge the common image of the passive subject in the STB literature and, instead, suggest that STB effects are an outcome of situated identity performance. This model of STB effects understands task-performance in a specific performance context as an active and strategic expression of situated identity oriented not only to the social features of the performance context (as argued by most SIT theorists), but also to the their own reading of that context, their total identity liabilities and resources (including individual ability and alternative identities) and their strategic motivations in the context. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2011.

This study seeks to answer the following research questions: which stereotypical linguistic profile characteristics and/or typical linguistic profile characteristics, if any, can be found in the old film and the new film respectively? Does the time difference between the films seem to have affected the female characters’ language use, if so in what way? Works by Lakoff (2004), Coates (2004) and Holmes (2013) are used to create a profile for stereotypical female speech and a profile for typical female speech. These profiles are applied to the transcripts of two Disney Princess films; one old film representing the classical Disney Princess films, and one new film representing the modern Disney Princess films. In order to suit this study all non-conversational utterances such as singing, and non-human utterances, are removed from the transcripts. The features are counted and then converted to frequencies of 1 feature per 100 words, in order to account for the differences in amount of words uttered. The results show that stereotypical features as well as typical features are present in both films. However, the old film contains more stereotypical features than typical features, and the new film contains more typical features than stereotypical features. Therefore, it would appear that the old film presents a more stereotypical image of women than the new film. Furthermore, the results indicate that power relations, and not just gender differences, play an important role in both films. The importance of these power relations would benefit from further investigation in future studies.

Little is known about factors that influence dialect perception and the cues listeners rely on in telling apart two accents. This thesis will shed light on how accurate New Zealanders and Australians are at identifying each other's accents and what vowels they tune in to when doing the task. The differences between New Zealand and Australian English mainly hail from the differing production of the short front vowels, some of which have reached the status of being stereotyped in the two countries. With the help of speech synthesis, an experiment was designed to test the perception of vowels produced in a typically New Zealand and a typically Australian fashion. Forty New Zealanders and sixty Australians took part in the study. Participants were asked to rate words on a scale from 1 (definitely NZ) to 6 (definitely Australian). The words contained one of eight different vowels. Frequency and stereotypicality effects as well as nasality were also investigated. The results demonstrate that dialect identification is a complex process that requires taking into account many different interacting factors of speech perception, social and regional variation of vowels and issues of clear speech versus conversational speech. Although overall performing quite accurately on the task, New Zealanders and Australians seem to perceive each other's speech inherently differently. I argue that this is due to different default configurations of their vowel spaces. Furthermore, a perceptual asymmetry between New Zealanders and Australians concerning the type of vowel has been observed. Reinforcing exemplar models of speech perception, it has also been shown that frequency of a word influences a listener's accuracy in identifying an accent. Moreover, nasality seems to function as an intensifier of stereotypes.

The current study examined children’s stereotypes about sexualized girls. Elementary school children (n = 208) from the mid-South between the ages of 6 and 11 completed a survey assessing their stereotypes about sexualized girls and non-sexualized girls. Participants were asked to justify, in their own words, their responses to several stereotypic evaluations. Children’s cognitive development was analyzed through classification skill as a moderator of belief in stereotypes about girls. Results revealed that children perceived the sexualized girl to be more popular and better liked by boys than the non-sexualized girl. However, the sexualized girl was also rated as less athletic, nice, smart, and typical than the non-sexualized girl. The non-sexualized girl was reported to have nicer clothes and was someone the participants would rather be friends with than the sexualized girl. Girls believed that they dressed more like and looked more like the non-sexualized girl than the sexualized girl, however, they had no preference for which girl they would rather look like. Classification skill moderated the endorsement of these stereotypes, such that high classifiers were more differentiated in their answers than low classifiers. Thus, the current study suggests that children have unique stereotypes about sexualized girls.

The current study examined the degree of role violation necessary to produce social rejection and whether penalties for gender role violations are applied equally to male and female violators. Specifically, it was hypothesized that targets described by equal numbers of male- and female-associated characteristics would be most liked and viewed as better adjusted compared to either stereotype congruent gender role targets and stereotype incongruent gender role targets. Presumed status and presumed sexual orientation were considered as explanations for the penalties gender-role violators incur. This effect was expected to be stronger for male targets than for female targets. Although the current results were unable to clarify why role deviance leads to social rejection, results confirmed prior findings indicating that not all role violations are met with equal derogation and that mixed gender roles can be perceived as psychologically healthy. Ratings of likeability and adjustment were not affected by either mediational variable. Finally, results suggested that male role violation is not regarded more harshly than female role violation when the role violation is based on traits. / Department of Psychological Science

The purpose of this paper has been to examine various ethnic stereotypes in two Swedish film adaptations of Astrid Lindgren’s character Pippi Longstocking. I have used a semiotic content analysis and postcolonial theory to investigate: 1) how the ethnic groups are represented in the different materials, 2) if there is a hegemonic relationship between the foreign group and one’s own group, 3) whether there has been a "decolonization" during the twenty years that separate the two films. This study has shown that, in the 1949 adaptation, primarily Africans were produced in a negative light and as biologically inferior in relation to the whites. Furthermore, other ethnic groups, such as Indians, Egyptians, Brazilians, and Danes, were portrayed as scared, alien or different. However, the TV series of 1969 permeates with a greater sense of racial tolerance than its predecessor and, despite remnants of racial stereotyping, the overall tone of the later adaptation feels more progressive.

This paper presents the results of a focus group study exploring older individuals' perceptions of older drivers. The study extends the stereotype research of Joanisse, Gagnon, and Voloaca (2012b), further investigating the terms used to describe older drivers. Also explored were the ways older adults perceive age versus health in their considerations of driving. Three focus groups (N=24) were conducted with former and current drivers, 64 years and older, living in Asheville, North Carolina. Participants showed positivity in their descriptions of older drivers as "slow" and "cautious" and believed they adapted their driving behavior as aging demanded. Participants showed heterogeneity in their acceptance of the health issues that threatened their continued driving ability. The importance of context in understanding stereotypes of older adults is illustrated. Results are discussed in terms of ingroup/outgroup theory in line with the proposed model.

Sociologists have only recently paid attention to how men experience physical disability. However, current research continues to ignore how different racial groups experience it. The goal of this study was to examine how black and white men experience life with a physical disability. Using qualitative research techniques involving in-depth, face-to-face interviews with 10 black and 10 white men, I focus on how meanings of disability and masculinity shift after a traumatic injury. Using symbolic interactionism and social construction as theoretical frameworks, I examine how these men formed and modified meanings for disability and masculinity through social interactions. I also analyze the strategies they use to manage a stigmatized identity. Finally, I explore how they negotiate a masculine identity within larger social contexts. My findings suggest that black and white men’s constructions of masculinity and disability are more similar than different on all levels. Furthermore, these men used three strategies to negotiate their new social identities: reinforcing idealized masculinity, modified masculinity, and lost masculinity.

This study examines gender typing of industrial products in the activity of industrial design. Thus firstly, the meaning of gender, related theories and gender stereotypes have been reviewed through the literature survey in order to pinpoint the stereotypical attributes assigned to men and women through society and culture. Secondly, the effect of the stereotypical gender attributes on the act of possessing products have been examined. In return, a literature survey on the cognitive aspects of design has been conducted in order to question whether these gender attributes might have a similar impact on the design activity. The findings of the literature survey pointed towards categorical information processing theories as an appropriate tool to gender type products and also as a tool to measure the gender qualities of a product. To test the applicability of the methodology of categorization a study has been conducted with industrial designers and industrial design students in which the students were asked to design gender typed products and industrial designers were asked to rate their perceptions of genderedness of the designs. The test revealed the existence of a mental library consisting of categorized images corresponding to stereotypical gender attributes in the individuals, thus preparing the grounds for the use of this process in the industrial design activity.