Stigmatized individuals often feel threatened by negative stereotypes about their group. Previous research showed that concerns about being negatively stereotyped (i.e., social identity threat) have detrimental effects on performance in the stereotyped domain. Little research has focused on interpersonal consequences of negative stereotypes, despite their essential role for integration of stigmatized groups like immigrants. The current workThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

The Minority Stress Model proposes that stress experienced due to having a minority identity leads to higher rates of psychopathology. This model, along with gender dysphoria, has been used to explain the disproportionately high rates of psychopathology in transgender individuals when compared to a nontransgender population. The current study further explored the relationships between minority stress, gender dysphoria, and psychopathology and tested a mediation model with minority stress as a predictor variable and gender dysphoria as a mediator on different psychopathologies. One hundred twenty seven Norwegian transgender participants (M = 25.51 years; SD = 8.73) were recruited online. Participants completed standardized questionnaires on minority stress, gender dysphoria, anxiety, depression, and eating pathology. Mediation models were built from a theoretical standpoint using minority stress as a predictor, gender dysphoria as a mediator, and anxiety, depression, and eating pathology as separate outcome variables. The mediation models were significant for all three outcome variables, with gender dysphoria fully mediating only the relationship between minority stress and eating pathologies. Further analyses revealed that age was a significant covariant in the predictive relationships, prompting the sample to be split to young and older participant samples. While lacking power due to reduced participant numbers, these further split-age mediation models suggested that for the younger age group, minority stress appeared to be the highly relevant predictor of all psychopathologies, but in the older age group, gender dysphoria appeared to be the more relevant predictor. Possible explanations for age-group differences, like coping styles, transgender identity formation, and internalized gender roles are discussed.

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We investigated the relationships between healthy women’s estimates of their own body size, their body dissatisfaction, and how they subjectively judge the transition from normal to overweight in other women’s bodies (the “normal/overweight” boundary). We propose two complementary hypotheses. In the first, participants compare other women to an internalized Western “thin ideal,” whose size reflects the observer’s own body dissatisfaction. As dissatisfaction increases, so the size of their “thin ideal” reduces, predicting an inverse relationship between the “normal/overweight” boundary and participants’ body dissatisfaction. Alternatively, participants judge the size of other women relative to the body size they believe they have. For this implicit or explicit social comparison, the participant selects a “normal/overweight” boundary that minimizes the chance of her making an upward social comparison. So, the “normal/overweight” boundary matches or is larger than her own body size. In an online study of 129 healthy women, we found that both opposing factors explain where women place the “normal/overweight” boundary. Increasing body dissatisfaction leads to slimmer judgments for the position of the “normal/overweight” boundary in the body mass index (BMI) spectrum. Whereas, increasing overestimation by the observer of their own body size shifts the “normal/overweight” boundary toward higher BMIs.

External project funds are essential for conducting research and establishing an academic career, and the funding application process itself can have numerous benefits for researchers. However, applying for external funding is a pervasive and time-consuming process affecting researchers’ capacity and workload. Further, the success rates of funding applications are low, ranging from 8% to 11% at the largest funding organs. Despite this, or arguably because of this, half of the researchers in higher education report experiencing higher institutional expectations and pressure to acquire external funds, rather than to generate high-quality research. There are also notable gender differences in the rates of external funding applications accepted by RCN, as around 63% of all accepted funding applications are for projects led by men. This gender distribution almost perfectly mirrors the gender distribution in submitted funding applications, as around 65% of all submitted applications are for projects led by men. Due to both this gender difference and the overall increasing relevance of external funding, it is important to investigate factors that might impact researchers’ motivation to apply for external funding and their capacity to do so, both overall, and by gender. Thus, this report from the Prestige Project aimed to investigate UiT employees’ attitudes regarding applying for external project funds and any potential gender differences. To do this, we conducted a survey that explored UiT employees’ attitudes around applying for external funding, as well as factors that may impact this. Specifically, we investigated researchers’ motivation for and against applying for further research, their capacity to do so, their perceived institutional support, and how much of their work versus personal time was spent working on external funding applications. We aimed to answer three main research questions: What are the main factors motivating researchers to (not) apply for external funding? 2 Does the motivation to (not) apply for external funding differ by gender? Are there gender differences in employees’ prioritisation and capacity to apply for external funding? Are there gender differences in employees’ perceived institutional support for applying for external funding? The findings indicated that overall, employees reported moderate levels of motivation to apply; motivation to not apply; capacity to apply; and institutional support to apply for external funding. There were found no gender differences in mean rates of reported motivation or capacity, but women reported slightly lower institutional support than men. However, when examining all statements from the survey separately, a tentative pattern emerged. As a slight tendency, women reported a higher level of agreement with some statements relating to facing greater adversity, and lower capacity and institutional support for external funding applications than men did. Moreover, men indicated a significantly higher agreement with some statements relating to having a higher capacity to apply for external funding than women. To help illustrate potential gender differences in employee responses to different statements, all survey statements were presented together with response distribution (ranging from Strongly agree to Strongly disagree) by gender. Maybe most saliently, the current findings also found that both men and women reported that around 40% of their work related to external funding applications is done in their personal time. The findings are discussed, and the report concludes by summarizing and highlighting the most notable findings.