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.
Do young women’s expectations about potential romantic partners’ likelihood of adopting caregiving roles in the future contribute to whether they imagine themselves in nontraditional future roles? ...Meta-analyzed effect sizes of five experiments (total N = 645) supported this complementarity hypothesis. Women who were primed with family-focused (vs. career-focused) male exemplars (Preliminary Study) or information that men are rapidly (vs. slowly) assuming greater caregiving responsibilities (Studies 1-4) were more likely to envision becoming the primary economic provider and less likely to envision becoming the primary caregiver of their future families. A meta-analysis across studies revealed that gender role complementarity has a small-to-medium effect on both women’s abstract expectations of becoming the primary economic provider (d = .27) and the primary caregiver (d = −.26). These patterns suggest that women’s stereotypes about men’s stagnant or changing gender roles might subtly constrain women’s own expected work and family roles.
In male-dominated STEM fields, workplace culture is often cited as a factor for women’s attrition. In the present research, we used longitudinal field data to examine how changes in the perceived ...normative support for gender-inclusive policies and practices over 6 months relate to changes in women’s and men’s experiences of fit and commitment to their organization. Longitudinal analyses of survey data from a sample of 181 engineers revealed that increased perceptions of support for gender-inclusive policies and practices predicted increased organizational commitment only among women, an effect that was mediated by an increase in organizational value fit. Additional analyses suggest that perceptions of change in normative attitudes toward inclusive policies were more predictive of women’s organizational commitment than the awareness that the policies were in place or that one has personally benefitted from them. The implications of an inclusive workplace culture for supporting women’s retention in STEM are discussed.
Why Antibias Interventions (Need Not) Fail Schmader, Toni; Dennehy, Tara C.; Baron, Andrew S.
Perspectives on psychological science,
09/2022, Volume:
17, Issue:
5
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
There is a critical disconnect between scientific knowledge about the nature of bias and how this knowledge gets translated into organizational debiasing efforts. Conceptual confusion around what ...implicit bias is contributes to misunderstanding. Bridging these gaps is the key to understanding when and why antibias interventions will succeed or fail. Notably, there are multiple distinct pathways to biased behavior, each of which requires different types of interventions. To bridge the gap between public understanding and psychological research, we introduce a visual typology of bias that summarizes the process by which group-relevant cognitions are expressed as biased behavior. Our typology spotlights cognitive, motivational, and situational variables that affect the expression and inhibition of biases while aiming to reduce the ambiguity of what constitutes implicit bias. We also address how norms modulate how biases unfold and are perceived by targets. Using this typology as a framework, we identify theoretically distinct entry points for antibias interventions. A key insight is that changing associations, increasing motivation, raising awareness, and changing norms are distinct goals that require different types of interventions targeting individual, interpersonal, and institutional structures. We close with recommendations for antibias training grounded in the science of prejudice and stereotyping.
Communion and agency are often described as core human values. In adults, these values predict gendered role preferences. Yet little work has examined the extent to which young boys and girls ...explicitly endorse communal and agentic values and whether early gender differences in values predict boys’ and girls’ different role expectations. In a sample of 411 children between the ages of 6 and 14 years, we found consistent gender differences in endorsement of communal and agentic values. Across this age range, boys endorsed communal values less and agentic values more than did girls. Moreover, gender differences in values partially accounted for boys’ relatively lower family versus career orientation, predicting their orientation over and above gender identification and parent reports of children’s gender expression. These findings suggest that gender differences in core values emerge surprisingly early in development and predict children’s expectations well before they make decisions about adopting adult roles in their own families.
Despite progress made toward increasing women's interest and involvement in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), women continue to be underrepresented and experience less equity and ...inclusion in some STEM fields. In this article, I review the psychological literature relevant to understanding and mitigating women's lower fit and inclusion in STEM. Person-level explanations concerning women's abilities, interests, and self-efficacy are insufficient for explaining these persistent gaps. Rather, women's relatively lower interest in male-dominated STEM careers such as computer science and engineering is likely to be constrained by gender stereotypes. These gender stereotypes erode women's ability to experience self-concept fit, goal fit, and or social fit. Such effects occur independently of intentional interpersonal biases and discrimination, and yet they create systemic barriers to women's attraction to, integration in, and advancement in STEM. Dismantling these systemic barriers requires a multifaceted approach to changing organizational and educational cultures at the institutional, interpersonal, and individual level.
Research shows that stereotype threat reduces performance by diminishing executive resources, but less is known about the psychological processes responsible for these impairments. The authors tested ...the idea that targets of stereotype threat try to regulate their emotions and that this regulation depletes executive resources, resulting in underperformance. Across 4 experiments, they provide converging evidence that targets of stereotype threat spontaneously attempt to control their expression of anxiety and that such emotion regulation depletes executive resources needed to perform well on tests of cognitive ability. They also demonstrate that providing threatened individuals with a means to effectively cope with negative emotions-by reappraising the situation or the meaning of their anxiety-can restore executive resources and improve test performance. They discuss these results within the framework of an integrated process model of stereotype threat, in which affective and cognitive processes interact to undermine performance.
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CEKLJ, FFLJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PEFLJ
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.
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CEKLJ, FFLJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PEFLJ
Contemporary women in Western cultures are often trying to juggle careers alongside personal and societal expectations for childrearing in an effort to “have it all.” We examine the effects of this ...balancing act on heterosexual women’s mate selection motivations. Across three Canadian samples (
n
= 360), we tested concurrent hypotheses about the desirability of both similar and complementary characteristics in a potential mate. Specifically, women’s aspirations (to prioritize career over family) and their expectations for the roles they will most likely adopt within their future partnerships (primary breadwinner and/or caregiver) were tested as key predictors of mate preferences. Although specific effects varied across samples, a mega-analysis of the combined sample and an internal meta-analysis of effect sizes from the three studies provided support for both complementary and similarity motives (controlling for gender role attitudes). Women’s aspirations to prioritize career (over family) predicted greater similarity in mate preferences, such that they placed less importance on men’s parenting qualities, more importance on their access to financial resources, and preferred a career-oriented over family-oriented exemplar. However, women’s expectations of actually taking on the breadwinner role predicted greater complementarity in mate preferences (greater desirability of parenting qualities and a family-oriented partner; with financial resources rated as less important). Our work expands current understanding of women’s decision-making processes when selecting a mate and has implications for men’s changing traits and roles.
In the present research, we applied a goal-congruity perspective - the proposition that men and women seek out roles that afford their internalized values (Diekman et al., 2017) - to better ...understand the degree to which careers in healthcare, early education, and domestic roles (HEED; Croft et al., 2015) are devalued in society. Our first goal was to test the hypothesis that men, relative to women, are less interested in pursuing HEED careers in part because they are less likely than women to endorse communal values. A second, more novel goal was to extend goal congruity theory to examine whether gender differences in communal values also predict the belief that HEED careers add worth to society and are deserving of higher salaries. In three studies of undergraduate students (total
= 979), we tested the predictive role of communal values (i.e., a focus on caring for others), as distinct from agentic values (i.e., a focus on status, competition, and wealth; Bakan, 1966). Consistent with goal congruity theory, Studies 1 and 2 revealed that men's lower interest in adopting HEED careers, such as nursing and elementary education, was partially mediated by men's (compared to women's) lower communal values. Extending the theory, all three studies also documented a general tendency to see HEED as having relatively lower worth to society compared to STEM careers. As expected, communal values predicted perceiving higher societal worth in HEED careers, as well as supporting increases in HEED salaries. Thus, gender differences in communal values accounted for men's (compared to women's) tendency to perceive HEED careers as having less societal worth and less deserving of salary increases. In turn, gender differences in perceived societal worth of HEED itself predicted men's relatively lower interest in pursuing HEED careers. In no instance, did agentic values better explain the gender difference in HEED interest or perceived worth. These findings have important implications for how we understand the value that society places on occupations typically occupied by women versus men.
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