The verdict is in, and the stereotype has been true all along; science and romance do not go hand in hand for women.
Women who are striving to be romantically desirable show less interest in academic disciplines related to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), according to a study conducted by Lora Park, Ph.D., an associate professor of psychology at UB.
"Much of our behavior is goal-directed, even if at times we don't think of it that way," Park said. "Our attitudes and behavior can be influenced not only by our own personal goals and values, but also by environmental cues and the people we come into contact with."
Park's study enlisted more than 350 participants in three separate experiments, detailing their attitudes toward STEM subjects after being exposed to a set of images and two different recorded conversations. A fourth experiment involves keeping a daily journal.
The first experiment involves letting participants view neutral and romantic images, then giving them a set of questionnaires measuring their interest in STEM.
In the second and third experiments, participants were asked to listen to two sets of recorded conversation. The first set contains a romantically conditioned conversation and an academically conditioned conversation. The second set includes a romantic conversation and a friendship conversation.
The results of these experiments were consistent. Women showed significantly less interest towards STEM after being exposed to images and conversations related to romance, but men are unaffected.
In the final experiment, women already in STEM majors were asked to record their daily activities in a journal.
The data collected showed that on days where romantic events took place, less time was spent on STEM related activities. The same is true vice versa.
This phenomenon demonstrates that a goal conflict exist in most girls.
"The idea for this line of research came from various observations I had while growing up," Park said. "In middle school I noticed that girls who had previously been doing well in school became less and less interested in doing well academically and more interested in being popular with the boys."
Research has shown that people associate hard sciences with masculinity, while femininity is more commonly associated with the arts, according to Park.
Tom Beall-Schwab, a first year graduate student in education, believes that the situation might be skin deep and rooted in a society's culture.
"The general stereotype of nerdiness does not always hold true," Beall-Schwab said. "But there is an ideal in my mind that prefers artistic women."
However, Beall-Schwab does concede that people are too unique and individualistic to think in these characteristics.
"There is a girl who is an engineering major that I am attracted to, so it certainly isn't the case that I can't be attracted to [girls in STEM fields]," Beall-Schwab said.
According to Yanhui Wang, a junior medicinal chemistry major, women who avoid STEM because of love might be missing the point.
"Physical appearance plays a bigger part instead of one's major," Wang said. "Guys I think pay less attention to academic backgrounds anyway."
A strong and successful female role model in the public consciousness could be the perfect antidote, Park suggested.
"We are currently conducting several studies to examine if women's performance, attitudes, and interest in math and science might shift if we have women look at counter stereotypic profiles of women doing well in math/science fields," Park said.
Nevertheless individuals differ, and that not everyone is affected equally by the same events or cues in their environment.
An individual's values and beliefs accounts for a lot in their own decision making process, according to Park.
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