Should I Stay or Should I go?: Women’s Implicit Stereotypic Associations Predict their Commitment and Fit in STEM

Block, Katharina; Hall, William J.; Schmader, Toni; Inness, Michelle; Croft, Elizabeth A.

doi:10.31234/osf.io/pr7fk

Cited by 7 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Alternatively, women with a more masculinized view of engineering could anticipate that the organization and the people in it will not accept or support them fully (lack of social fit). Results reveal more evidence for the former than the latter (Block, Hall, Schmader, Inness, & Croft, 2017). Women with these implicit gender associations do not anticipate greater social identity threat, but they do report lower fit of their own abilities and values to the organization, which in turn mediates their decreased organizational commitment.…”

Section: Promising Research Directionsmentioning

confidence: 78%

State Authenticity as Fit to Environment: The Implications of Social Identity for Fit, Authenticity, and Self-Segregation

Schmader

Sedikides

2017

Pers Soc Psychol Rev

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243

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People seek out situations that "fit," but the concept of fit is not well understood. We introduce State Authenticity as Fit to the Environment (SAFE), a conceptual framework for understanding how social identities motivate the situations that people approach or avoid. Drawing from but expanding the authenticity literature, we first outline three types of person-environment fit: self-concept fit, goal fit, and social fit. Each type of fit, we argue, facilitates cognitive fluency, motivational fluency, and social fluency that promote state authenticity and drive approach or avoidance behaviors. Using this model, we assert that contexts subtly signal social identities in ways that implicate each type of fit, eliciting state authenticity for advantaged groups but state inauthenticity for disadvantaged groups. Given that people strive to be authentic, these processes cascade down to self-segregation among social groups, reinforcing social inequalities. We conclude by mapping out directions for research on relevant mechanisms and boundary conditions.

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Section: Promising Research Directionsmentioning

confidence: 78%

State Authenticity as Fit to Environment: The Implications of Social Identity for Fit, Authenticity, and Self-Segregation

Schmader

Sedikides

2017

Pers Soc Psychol Rev

Self Cite

243

289

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“…6Analyses of other variables not related to key hypotheses of this paper are reported in two working papers (see Block, Hall, Schmader, Croft, & Innes, in press; Hall, Schmader, Aday, & Croft, in press).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate control: The relationship between social identity threat and cues to an identity-safe culture.

Hall¹,

Schmader²,

Aday³

et al. 2018

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

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Social identity threat has been proposed as a key contributor to the underrepresentation of women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM), but little research has sought to pinpoint naturally occurring contextual predictors of identity threat for women already training or working in STEM. The focus of the present research was to examine how cues to an identity-safe culture predict more or less positive interactions between men and women in STEM in ways that may trigger or minimize women's daily experience of social identity threat. Specifically, we examined the role of inclusive organizational policies and/or greater female representation as 2 identity safety cues. In 2 daily diary studies of working engineers' experiences, and in an experiment with undergraduate engineering students, we tested a model whereby cues to identity safety predict lower social identity threat for women in STEM, as mediated by having (or expecting to have) more positive interactions with male (but not female) colleagues. Results across each study and an internal meta-analysis of overall effects revealed that female engineers' actual and anticipated daily experience of social identity threat was lower in organizations perceived to have more gender-inclusive policies (but was not consistently predicted by gender representation). The link between gender-inclusive policies and lower social identity threat was mediated by women having (or expecting to have) more positive conversations with male (and not female) colleagues, and was only found for women and not men. The implications for reducing social identity threat in naturalistic settings are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

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“…Implicit gender biases play a key role in gender inequalities in highly valued STEM fields [ 3 , 4 , 6 , 8 , 9 , 11 ]. In a large community sample, we provide evidence that young children’s implicit math-gender stereotypes are changed by a brief exposure to stereotype-relevant content.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Implicit gender stereotypes have negative effects on women through several avenues. For women, holding strong implicit STEM = male stereotypes is a significant predictor of lower engagement with and commitment to STEM jobs [ 8 , 9 ]. Women’s STEM engagement can also be indirectly affected by stereotypes when gender stereotypes held by others lead to biased evaluations [ 10 ].…”

Section: Malleability Of Children’s Implicit Gender Stereotypesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exposure to stereotype-relevant stories shapes children’s implicit gender stereotypes

et al. 2022

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Implicit math = male stereotypes have been found in early childhood and are linked to girls’ disproportionate disengagement from math-related activities and later careers. Yet, little is known about how malleable children’s automatic stereotypes are, especially in response to brief interventions. In a sample of 336 six- to eleven-year-olds, we experimentally tested whether exposure to a brief story vignette intervention with either stereotypical, neutral, or counter-stereotypical content (three conditions: math = boy vs. neutral vs. math = girl) could change implicit math-gender stereotypes. Results suggested that children’s implicit math = male stereotypes were indeed responsive to brief stories that either reinforced or countered the widespread math = male stereotype. Children exposed to the counter-stereotypical stories showed significantly lower (and non-significant) stereotypes compared to children exposed to the stereotypical stories. Critically, exposure to stories that perpetuated math = male stereotypes significantly increased math-gender stereotypes over and above baseline, underscoring that implicit gender biases that are readily formed during this period in childhood and even brief exposure to stereotypical content can strengthen them. As a secondary question, we also examined whether changes in stereotypes might also lead to changes in implicit math self-concept. Evidence for effects on implicit self-concept were not statistically significant.

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Should I Stay or Should I go?: Women’s Implicit Stereotypic Associations Predict their Commitment and Fit in STEM

Cited by 7 publications

References 29 publications

State Authenticity as Fit to Environment: The Implications of Social Identity for Fit, Authenticity, and Self-Segregation

State Authenticity as Fit to Environment: The Implications of Social Identity for Fit, Authenticity, and Self-Segregation

Climate control: The relationship between social identity threat and cues to an identity-safe culture.

Exposure to stereotype-relevant stories shapes children’s implicit gender stereotypes

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