Heroization and ironic funneling effects.

Abstract

In recent years, much of the American public has venerated military veterans as heroes. Despite overwhelmingly positive public attitudes toward veterans, veterans have experienced higher rates of unemployment and underemployment than their nonveteran peers. The current research leverages theory and research on positive stereotypes to shed light on this seeming inconsistency between the heroization of veterans and their heightened rates of unemployment and underemployment. We conceptualize the hero label as a pervasive positive stereotype, and we employ complementary methods and designs (correlational, quasi-experimental, experimental, and mediational) to investigate the consequences and implications of attaching this label to military veterans. We then extend our theorizing to other heroized groups (e.g., firefighters, paramedics, teachers, and social workers). The results across studies suggest that heroization leads the American public to funnel heroized individuals and groups into a limited set of lower paying jobs, organizations, and careers associated with selflessness. This research not only offers insights into an important real-world problem but also offers a first experimental investigation of the consequences and implications of labeling a group of people as heroes.

The consequences of heroization for exploitation.

“…Our findings also raise further questions about possible interventions to mitigate these specific negative effects of heroization. Inspired by Study 7 in Stanley et al (2023), one possible strategy could include informing the public that those who join heroized professions do so for many reasons. This could discourage the public’s tendency to make the logically problematic inference from the hero label to expectations that heroized group members would willingly volunteer for their own exploitation.…”

“…Because of this, those who push back against the use of positive stereotypes are often dismissed as hypersensitive and fragile (Diebels & Czopp, 2011). Due to the pervasiveness and public acceptance of positive stereotypes in interpersonal and intergroup communication, positive stereotypes can operate as a powerful means of conveying what is expected of group members (Czopp et al, 2015; Stanley et al, 2023). For example, encouraging group members to pursue a job or career that is low paying or otherwise low status is much easier (and much less likely to be met with backlash) when encouragement can be conveyed with language that is flattering and seemingly positive (Czopp, 2010; Czopp et al, 2015).…”

“…If the public tends to see veterans as more heroic than their matched nonveteran peers, then we would expect them to hold stronger expectations that veterans (relative to their matched nonveteran peers) would willingly volunteer for their own exploitation. Third, despite the fact that there are millions of veterans working in the U.S. today (according to 2023 data from the U.S. Department of Labor), there has been little theoretically driven, systematic empirical research on military veterans’ occupational experiences and outcomes (Shepherd et al, 2021; Stanley et al, 2023). We aim to advance psychological research on this surprisingly neglected group.…”

“…Because the intervention in Supplemental Study 1 targets beliefs about an entire group (U.S. military personnel) as opposed to a specific individual, the intervention is scalable in a way that the manipulation in Stanley et al (2023) is not. In addition, Study 7 in Stanley et al (2023) did not include any imagery whatsoever. In the current article, however, two conditions include hero imagery, and the other includes nonhero imagery.…”

“…This difference speaks to the difference in aims between the two respective studies. The aim of Study 7 in Stanley, et al (2023) was to manipulate heroization to examine the resultant effects of funneling processes. In Supplemental Study 1, the aim of our manipulation was to show that we can intervene to mitigate the effects of the imagery manipulation on exploitative judgments.…”