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Stereotypes represent a broad and general topic in psychology and other social sciences. The bulk of the theorizing and empirical data on stereotypes, however, comes from social psychology. As this annotated bibliography will show, there is widespread disagreement in emphasis, tone, and even data regarding the extent to which stereotypes are inaccurate, irrational, and a source or result of prejudice and discrimination. Stereotypes (the contents of people’s beliefs about groups) and stereotyping (the processes by which people—consciously or not—use their stereotypes to make sense of the world) have been studied by social psychologists for almost a century, and they remain hot topics. Although laypeople often seem to use the terms “stereotype,” “prejudice,” and “discrimination” nearly synonymously, social psychologists draw significant distinctions between each concept. Stereotypes are usually defined as beliefs about groups, prejudice as evaluation of or attitude toward a group, and discrimination as behavior that systematically advantages or disadvantages a group. This article focuses on stereotypes.

In a seminal study investigating gender bias in academic science, Moss-Racusin et al. (2012) found bias against female lab manager applicants with respect to competence, hireability, mentoring, and salary conferral. This topic will be revisited through four studies--two direct replications, one extension, and a meta-analysis. The present set of studies, all using the same methods and materials as the original, will sample from a larger and broader pool of faculty, collectively representing the breadth of STEM disciplines at R1 universities across the United States. The proposed studies will have high power to detect smaller effect sizes than in the original. Furthermore, a priori criteria have been explicitly articulated for what will be accepted as hypothesis confirmation and replication, and for evidence of gender bias. The pre-registered data analysis plans will provide a strong test assessing the replicability of Moss-Racusin et al. (2012)’s finding that STEM faculty were biased against women who applied for a lab manager position.

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