Lisa Sinclair

Motivated Stereotyping of Women: She’s Fine if She Praised Me but Incompetent if She Criticized Me

Motivation may provoke stereotype use. In a field study of students’ evaluations of university instructors and in a controlled experiment, participants viewed women as less competent than men after receiving negative evaluations from them but not after receiving positive evaluations. As a result, the evaluation of women depended more on the favorability of the feedback they provided than was the case for men. Most likely, this occurred because the motivation of criticized participants to salvage their self-views by disparaging their evaluator led them to use a stereotype that they would otherwise not have used. The stereotype was not used by participants praised by a woman or by participants who observed someone else receive praise or criticism from a woman; all these participants rated the woman just as highly as participants rated a man delivering comparable feedback.

Distrust and Simultaneous Activation of Multiple Categories

Two studies examined the effects of distrust on social categorization. In Study 1, undergraduate participants completed a distrust or neutral prime, watched a video of a Black or White doctor, and then completed a lexical decision task containing words related to the categories of Black people and doctors. Distrustful participants who viewed a Black doctor activated the Black and doctor categories. No other participants showed category activation. Study 2 added a trust prime condition and a no video control condition. Only distrustful participants who viewed a Black doctor activated the Black and doctor categories. Thus, when perceivers are distrustful they may reserve judgment about which individual categories apply to an out-group member and instead simultaneously activate multiple categories.

Moral Heroes Look Up and to the Right

Portraits of moral heroes often portray the hero gazing up and to the viewer’s right in part because ideologically minded followers select and propagate these images of their leaders. Study 1 found that the gaze direction of portraits of moral heroes (e.g., Martin Luther King, Jr.) tend to show the hero looking up-and-right more often than chance would predict, and more often than portraits of celebrities (e.g., Elvis Presley) do. In Studies 2 and 3, we asked participants to play the role of an ideologically motivated follower, and select an image of their leader to promote the cause. Participants preferentially selected the up-and-right version. In Study 4, we found that conceptual metaphors linking directionality to personal virtues of warmth, pride, and future-mindedness helped explain why the up-and-right posture looks most heroic. Followers play an active role in advancing social causes by portraying their leaders as moral heroes.

THE MS. STEREOTYPE REVISITED: IMPLICIT AND EXPLICIT FACETS

Implicit and explicit stereotypes toward the title Ms. were examined. Participants read a short description of a target person whose title of address varied (Ms., Mrs., Miss, Mr.). They then rated the person on agentic and communal traits and completed an Implicit Association Test. Replicating earlier research (Dion, 1987), at an explicit level, women using the title Ms. were seen as less communal than individuals using the title Mrs. or Mr. and more agentic than individuals using the titles Mrs., Mr., or Miss. This time, however, women using the title Miss were also seen as less communal and more agentic than women using the title Mrs. but not as agentic as women using the title Ms. On the implicit measure, Ms. was relatively more associated with agentic than communal traits compared to Mrs. but not to Miss.

The Relation Between Compassionate Love and Prejudice The Mediating Role of Inclusion of Out-Group Members in the Self

Recently, there has been an increase in prejudice toward some groups such as immigrants. In response, governments and citizens have called for compassion. In four studies, we tested the hypothesis that people who are high in compassionate love would express less prejudice than those who are low. We found that people high in compassionate love had more positive attitudes toward out-groups, including immigrants. The relation between compassionate love and prejudice toward immigrants was mediated by inclusion of out-group members in the self. An experiment provided evidence of a causal link between compassionate love and prejudice toward immigrants. Finally, people high in compassionate love were less likely to discriminate against immigrants in a budget cutting exercise and more likely to volunteer to help them. Empathy did not account for our results. We conclude that compassionate love holds promise as a positive pathway to prejudice reduction.

Self-esteem, Social Inclusionary Status, and Inhibition of Rejection

Two studies examined the activation of acceptance and rejection cognitions following inclusion and exclusion for high self-esteem (HSEs) and low self-esteem individuals (LSEs). In Study 1, participants were primed with inclusion and exclusion words via words on a computer screen, whereas, in Study 2, participants were included or excluded from a laboratory work group. In both studies, participants completed a lexical decision task (LDT) with acceptance and rejection words as the targets of interest. We found that HSEs inhibited thoughts of rejection following both exclusion and inclusion; they were slower at recognizing rejection words following inclusion and exclusion primes compared to control primes. For LSEs, we found that rejection and acceptance words were equally accessible across prime conditions suggesting that they are vigilant for signs related to how others view them across situations.