Male Doctors, Female Nurses: Subconscious Stereotypes Hard to Budge

The conscious mind is quick to adapt to information that flies in the face of stereotype, but the subconscious may ignore even the most glaring of facts, new research finds. When people are given two names, Jonathan and Elizabeth, and asked who is a doctor and who is a nurse, the respondents typically say that each is equally likely to be in either profession. This kind of implicit association, or subconscious pairing based on stereotype, is well-known in psychology.