Cross-dimension-ambivalent in-group stereotypes: the moderating roles of social context of stereotype endorsement and in-group identification

In this study, the authors examined in-group stereotypes that are cross-dimensionally ambivalent-simultaneously (a) positive in cognition-related content dimensions and negative in affect-related content dimensions or (b) negative in cognition-related content dimensions and positive in affect-related content dimensions-to establish whether endorsement of such in-group stereotypes depends on whether this process occurs in an intragroup versus intergroup context. Drawing on social identity theory, the authors predicted that (a) endorsement of cross-dimension-ambivalent in-group stereotypes would be greater in an intragroup, relative to an intergroup, context and (b) this would hold for high but not low in-group identifiers. Confirming these hypotheses, results showed that endorsement of cross-dimension-ambivalent in-group stereotypes may vary as a function of their contribution to securing a positive social identity.     

Perspective-taking: decreasing stereotype expression, stereotype accessibility, and in-group favoritism

Using 3 experiments, the authors explored the role of perspective-taking in debiasing social thought. In the 1st 2 experiments, perspective-taking was contrasted with stereotype suppression as a possible strategy for achieving stereotype control. In Experiment 1, perspective-taking decreased stereotypic biases on both a conscious and a nonconscious task. In Experiment 2, perspective-taking led to both decreased stereotyping and increased overlap between representations of the self and representations of the elderly, suggesting activation and application of the self-concept in judgments of the elderly. In Experiment 3, perspective-taking reduced evidence of in-group bias in the minimal group paradigm by increasing evaluations of the out-group. The role of self-other overlap in producing prosocial outcomes and the separation of the conscious, explicit effects from the nonconscious, implicit effects of perspective-taking are discussed.     

Putting stereotype content in context: image theory and interethnic stereotypes

Two studies apply intergroup image theory to better understand divergent interethnic images and to highlight the important role of intergroup context and perceived intergroup relations in shaping the content of social stereotypes. Image theory hypothesizes that specific interethnic stereotypes arise from specific patterns of perceived intergroup competition, relative power, and relative cultural status. Results from surveying Black, White, and Native Americans' appraisals of intergroup relations and reported outgroup stereotypes in various intergroup contexts suggest that the content of outgroup stereotypes varies systematically as a function of the perceived state of intergroup relations and the intergroup context in which these groups are situated. The data reported from both studies establish the importance of examining social stereotypes from a functional perspective in the context of intergroup relations.     

Whatever is willed will be: a temporal asymmetry in attributions to will

Why do people neglect or underweight their past failures when thinking about their prospects of future success? One reason may be that people think of the past and future as guided by different causal forces. In seven studies, the authors demonstrate that people hold asymmetric beliefs about the impact of an individual's will on past versus future events. People consider the will to be a more potent determinant of future events than events that happened in the past. This asymmetry holds between- and within-subjects, and generalizes beyond undergraduate populations. The authors contend that this asymmetry contributes to the tendency for people to remain confident about their future performance in domains in which they have largely failed in the past. This research thus contributes to a growing body of literature exploring how thoughts about events in the past differ from thoughts about the same events set in the future.     

The effect of comparative context upon stereotype content: children's judgments of ingroup behavior

This study addresses self-categorization theory's contention that stereotype content varies as a function of the comparative context within which a given group is considered. A sample of 5-, 7- and 10-year-old children (n = 192) made judgments about gender ingroup behavior in one of two comparative contexts: either adults of the same sex as self or children of the opposite sex. Specifically, judgments were either of the perceived stereotypicality or central tendency of 12 types of behavior. Both types of judgment were found to differ as a function of comparative context in ways predicted by self-categorization theory. However, contrary to prediction, there was no effect of age on the extent of stereotype variability.     

If we have the will,there will be a way: regulatory focus as a group identity

Based on social identity theory and regulatory focus theory, we predicted that promotion and prevention strategies can be part of the identity of a group (i.e., collective regulatory focus) which in turn influences the behavior and experienced emotions of individual group members. We conducted two experiments to test this prediction. After assessing participants' personal regulatory focus preference, collective regulatory focus was induced by showing participants group mottos, allegedly chosen by other members of their group, that either voiced a promotion or a prevention strategy preference. Both experiments yielded evidence for our prediction in that the collective regulatory focus shifted the behavior of individual group members on a signal detection task towards promotion‐ (liberal bias) or prevention‐ (conservative bias) consistent behavior and influenced the emotions they experienced. Experiment 2 further substantiated our group identity rationale by showing that these effects were especially strong for high identifiers. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Perceptions of people who stutter: re-assessing the negative stereotype

A common finding of past research is that people who stutter are stereotyped as being more guarded, nervous, self-conscious, tense, sensitive, hesitant, introverted, and insecure than nonstutterers. Using an innovative survey method, two questions studied were (1) whether individuals who have on-going contact with the same stutterer share the negative stereotype identified by past research, and (2) whether there are differences in perceptions of speech fluency between stutterers and their listeners. Responses of 114 friends and colleagues of stutterers found those who had on-going contact with at least one stutterer have less stereotypical attitudes than the general population, and significant differences in perceptions about normalcy of speech were noted for people who stutter and those with whom they interact.     

Endorsing a negative in-group stereotype as a self-protective strategy: Sacrificing the group to save the self

This work examined if stigmatized targets will embrace negative in-group stereotypes in order to protect their self-esteem from the threat of stereotypic failures. All studies focused on the stereotype that women have lower math ability than men. In Study 1, women who failed a math test showed buffered self-esteem if they were first given the opportunity to endorse this stereotype. Study 2 replicated this effect and showed that women, but not men, increased their endorsement of this stereotype following math failure. Study 3 showed that the tendency to embrace this stereotype in response to failure was most pronounced among women with high trait self-esteem. Together, these findings suggest that there are contexts in which stigmatized individuals can protect their self-esteem in the face of stereotypic failures by embracing the very stereotypes that would have predicted their failure.     

Human memory reconsolidation can be explained using the temporal context model

Recent work by Hupbach, Gomez, Hardt, and Nadel (Learning & Memory, 14, 47–53, 2007) and Hupbach, Gomez, and Nadel (Memory, 17, 502–510, 2009) suggests that episodic memory for a previously studied list can be updated to include new items, if participants are reminded of the earlier list just prior to learning a new list. The key finding from the Hupbach studies was an asymmetric pattern of intrusions, whereby participants intruded numerous items from the second list when trying to recall the first list, but not viceversa. Hupbach et al. (2007; 2009) explained this pattern in terms of a cellular reconsolidation process, whereby first-list memory is rendered labile by the reminder and the labile memory is then updated to include items from the second list. Here, we show that the temporal context model of memory, which lacks a cellular reconsolidation process, can account for the asymmetric intrusion effect, using well-established principles of contextual reinstatement and item–context binding.     

Contrast effects in stereotype formation and change: the role of comparative context

Two experiments investigated the way in which the presence of a comparative or inter-group context during stereotype formation affects stereotype change, induced by subsequent disconfirming information. Participants learned about a focal group, after learning about one of the two context groups. After reporting their stereotypes about both groups, participants learned additional information about the focal group. This information described new group members who either confirmed or disconfirmed the group stereotype. Consistent with previous research, participants formed more extreme stereotypes about the focal group on dimensions that distinguished it from the context group (i.e., a contrast effect). In response to the subsequently presented disconfirming group members, a greater stereotype change was observed on dimensions that distinguished the focal group from the context group than on dimensions it did not. We argue that these effects are due to differences in perceived typicality of disconfirming group members.     

Me against we: in-group transgression, collective shame, and in-group-directed hostility

People can experience great distress when a group to which they belong (in-group) is perceived to have committed an immoral act. We hypothesised that people would direct hostility toward a transgressing in-group whose actions threaten their self-image and evoke collective shame. Consistent with this theorising, three studies found that reminders of in-group transgression provoked several expressions of in-group-directed hostility, including in-group-directed hostile emotion (Studies 1 and 2), in-group-directed derogation (Study 2), and in-group-directed punishment (Study 3). Across studies, collective shame-but not the related group-based emotion collective guilt-mediated the relationship between in-group transgression and in-group-directed hostility. Implications for group-based emotion, social identity, and group behaviour are discussed.     

Where are we coming from versus who we will become: The effect of priming different contents of European identity on cooperation

In two experiments, we investigated how priming European identity as common project versus common heritage affects participants' cooperation in a social dilemma; an additional aim was to explore the mediators involved in the process. In the first experiment, 82 students played a public good dilemma with a European bogus partner and then completed self‐report measures of identification with the European Union (EU), group‐based trust and collective interest. Results showed that priming a common project‐based but not a common heritage‐based European social identity fostered cooperative behaviour; this effect was mediated by two sequential mediators: the common project prime increased participants' strength of identification with EU (mediator 1) which, in turn, positively affected group‐based trust (mediator 2), fostering greater cooperation. Experiment 2 was conducted with a similar procedure on a sample of 124 students, using a different measure of trust and changing the order of mediators. Results supported those of previous experiment: Priming a project‐based EU identity content (compared to heritage‐based one) had significant direct and indirect effects on cooperation.     

Why Boys will be boys and girls will be girls: Understanding colloquial tautologies

What do tautological phrases such asBoys will be boys, A promise is a promise, or War is war mean and how are they understood? These phrases literally appear to be uninformative, yet speakers frequently use such expressions in conversation and listeners have little difficulty comprehending them. Understanding nominal tautologies requires that listeners/readers infer the speaker's attitude toward the noun phrase (e.g.,boys) mentioned in the sentence. The purpose of the present studies was to investigate the role of context, syntactic form, and lexical content in the interpretation of nominal tuatologies. Two studies are reported in which subjects rated the acceptability of different tautological constructions either alone (Experiment 1) or with supporting contextual information (Experiment 2). The results of these studies provide evidence that colloquial tautologies can be interpreted differently in different contexts, but that there are important regularities in the syntactic form and lexical content of these phrases which influence how they are understood. Our findings highlight the importance of speakers/listeners' stereotypical understanding of people, activities, and concrete objects in the use and understanding of different tautological expressions. The implications of this research for psycholinguistic theories of conversational inference and indirect language use are discussed.     

Selective stereotype activation: The joint impact of interpersonal goals and task context

In complex social interactions, such as co‐operation or competition with another person on an ability test, people tend to activate stereotypes strategically in order to achieve their self‐enhancement goals. If multiple ways of categorizing the target person are available, the selected stereotypical traits that serve their motives might also depend on the specific task context in which the interaction is situated. We assumed that people selectively process trait information in order to increase their perceived chances to win in a currently performed task. We tested this hypothesis in a study in which participants were told to perform an analytical or emotional skills task having as a co‐operator or rival, a multiple categorizable target person (female computer science student). In the analytical task context, we found stronger inhibition of stereotypically female traits in the co‐operation than in the competition condition. In the emotional skills task context, we found stronger inhibition of computer scientist traits in the co‐operation than competition condition. The interactive nature of goals and context influences on stereotype activation is discussed and some theoretical implications about the dynamics of stereotype activation processes are drawn. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Clearing the air: identity safety moderates the effects of stereotype threat on women's leadership aspirations

Exposing participants to gender-stereotypic TV commercials designed to elicit the female stereotype, the present research explored whether vulnerability to stereotype threat could persuade women to avoid leadership roles in favor of nonthreatening subordinate roles. Study 1 confirmed that exposure to the stereotypic commercials undermined women's aspirations on a subsequent leadership task. Study 2 established that varying the identity safety of the leadership task moderated whether activation of the female stereotype mediated the effect of the commercials on women's aspirations. Creating an identity-safe environment eliminated vulnerability to stereotype threat despite exposure to threatening situational cues that primed stigmatized social identities and their corresponding stereotypes.     

Black identity in biracial black/white people: a comparison of Jacqueline who refuses to be exclusively black and Adolphus who wishes he were

Two biracial college freshmen, both of whom identify as Black, were chosen from a larger sample of participants in a qualitative study of biracial identity development to exemplify the differences in the paths that 2 biracial individuals could take to achieve racial identity resolution. Through the case study method, the authors describe the course and progression of racial identity development (RID) in these 2 individuals and discuss some key themes in their lives that have contributed to the development of their RID. The purposes are fourfold: to describe nonclinical subjective experiences of being biracial in the United States, to explore the differences in the paths that 2 biracial individuals can take to achieve what looks superficially like similar Black racial identity resolution, to demonstrate how identifying as Black can have different meanings and consequences for 2 biracial people, and to contribute to the differentiation of Black RID from biracial Black/White RID. The authors raise questions about the generalizability of monoracial Black and ethnic identity theories to biracial individuals.     

Knowing is half the battle: teaching stereotype threat as a means of improving women's math performance

We tested whether informing women about stereotype threat is a useful intervention to improve their performance in a threatening testing situation. Men and women completed difficult math problems described either as a problem-solving task or as a math test. In a third (teaching-intervention) condition, the test was also described as a math test, but participants were additionally informed that stereotype threat could interfere with women's math performance. Results showed that women performed worse than men when the problems were described as a math test (and stereotype threat was not discussed), but did not differ from men in the problem-solving condition or in the condition in which they learned about stereotype threat. For women, attributing anxiety to gender stereotypes was associated with lower performance in the math-test condition but improved performance in the teaching-intervention condition. The results suggest that teaching about stereotype threat might offer a practical means of reducing its detrimental effects.