Gender Differences in the Use of Message Cues and Judgments

Data from two experiments suggest that the genders differ in how they make judgments. In comparison with men, women appeared to have a lower threshold for elaborating on message cues and thus made greater use of such cues in judging products. These differences were eliminated both when the message cues prompted so little attention that they were below men's and women's thresholds for message elaboration and when they prompted so much attention that both genders' thresholds were exceeded. The origins and implications of these differences are discussed.