Richard D. Ashmore

An Organizing Framework for Collective Identity: Articulation and Significance of Multidimensionality.

The authors offer a framework for conceptualizing collective identity that aims to clarify and make distinctions among dimensions of identification that have not always been clearly articulated. Elements of collective identification included in this framework are self-categorization, evaluation, importance, attachment and sense of interdependence, social embeddedness, behavioral involvement, and content and meaning. For each element, the authors take note of different labels that have been used to identify what appear to be conceptually equivalent constructs, provide examples of studies that illustrate the concept, and suggest measurement approaches. Further, they discuss the potential links between elements and outcomes and how context moderates these relationships. The authors illustrate the utility of the multidimensional organizing framework by analyzing the different configuration of elements in 4 major theories of identification.

Sex stereotypes and implicit personality theory: Toward a cognitive—Social psychological conceptualization

Progress in understanding sex stereotypes has been impeded by the failure of researchers to address two critical conceptual questions: What is a sex stereotype? How do sex stereotypes function in social cognition and behavior? As a step toward answering the first question, the meaning of the term “sex stereotype” was considered. On the basis of points of agreement among extant conceptual definitions of the construct “stereotype” (in both the female-male and ethnic relations literatures), a generic definition of “sex stereotypes” is proposed: the structured sets of beliefs about the personal attributes of women and of men. In order to relate sex stereotypes more closely to research and theory on “normal” psychological processes, this basic definition is recast in terms of the person perception construct, “implicit personality theory”: the structured sets of inferential relations that link personal attributes to the social categories female and male. Two studies are presented to illustrate the utility of this translation. The remainder of the article addresses the second question. Here we offer preliminary ideas regarding a more general cognitive—social psychological framework for the study of sex stereotypes. Stereotype and stereotyping are distinguished, and each is discussed in light of relevant research in cognitive and social psychology.

The Beauty Match-Up Hypothesis: Congruence between Types of Beauty and Product Images in Advertising

Abstract This paper proposes the Beauty Match-Up Hypothesis, which has two main components: 1) That perceivers distinguish multiple types of physical attractiveness; and 2) That these specific types are seen as more or less suitable (i.e., better match-ups) for certain products when paired in advertising. A set of editors at major womens magazines sorted photos of professional fashion models. A multidimensional scaling analysis of these choices revealed six distinct types of good looks, and also identified prototypical fashion models who embodied these types. The beauty types were differentially associated with a set of perfumes and womens magazines representing diverse images. Implications of beauty types for product imagery in advertising are discussed.

Beauty Before the Eyes of Beholders: The Cultural Encoding of Beauty Types in Magazine Advertising and Music Television

Abstract Although researchers have conceptualized beauty as unidimensional, modern-day cultural definitions of beauty are multidimensional. This paper focuses on two forms of mass media that play an important role in transmitting information about multiple and diverse cultural ideals of beauty—fashion magazine advertising and music videos shown on music television. We examine the overall prevalence of different beauty ideals and how these are distributed across specific vehicles within each medium. We also compare the emphasis placed on different ideals of beauty across these two communications media (print vs. television) and formats (advertising vs. entertainment). The implications of the findings for understanding the cultural construction of beauty ideals and for understanding how advertising and other mass media communications contribute to them are discussed. Several extensions of the present research are proposed.

Sex/Gender and the Individual

Freud once asked, What do women want? Long before Freud, and continuing to the present day, many men have wondered, Why do they (women) behave as they do? Similarly, many women ask, Why do they (men) behave as they do? In a widely read nonacademic volume, Gray (1992) suggested a simple answer with the title of his book, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus: Women and men are from “different planets” and are “supposed to be different” (p. 10). From the very beginnings of their discipline in the late 1800s, psychologists have addressed the issue of why women and men think, feel, and behave as they do. At times, the prevailing answers were almost as simple as Grays suggestion that the sexes come from different planets. At other times, and increasingly so today, the answers concerning the why of mens and womens experiences and actions have involved complex multifaceted frameworks.

Ethnicity-Related Sources of Stress and Their Effects on Well-Being

Early research on ethnicity focused on the stereotyped thinking, prejudiced attitudes, and discriminatory actions of Euro-Americans. Minority-group members were viewed largely as passive targets of these negative reactions, with low self-esteem studied as the main psychological outcome. By contrast, recent research has increasingly made explicit use of stress theory in emphasizing the perspectives and experiences of minority-group members. Several ethnicity-related stressors have been identified, and it has been found that individuals cope with these threats in an active, purposeful manner. In this article, we focus on ethnicity-related stress stemming from discrimination, from stereotypes, and from conformity pressure arising from ones own ethnic group. We discuss theory and review research in which examination of ethnicity-related outcomes has extended beyond self-esteem to include psychological and physical well-being.

Discrimination and the Implicit Association Test

Prejudice researchers have been criticized for failing to assess behaviors that reflect overtly hostile actions (i.e. racial animus; Arkes & Tetlock, 2004; Mackie & Smith, 1998). Two studies sought to begin to fill this gap in the implicit literature by showing that scores on the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998) are linked to harmful intergroup behaviors. In Study 1, the IAT predicted self-reported racial discrimination, including verbal slurs, exclusion, and physical harm. In Study 2, the IAT predicted recommended budget cuts for Jewish, Asian, and Black student organizations (i.e. economic discrimination). In each study, evaluative stereotype (but not attitude) IATs predicted behaviors even after controlling for explicit attitudes. In concert, the findings suggest that implicit stereotypes are more predictive of overtly harmful actions than implicit attitudes in the intergroup relations domain.

Thinking about Fashion Models' Looks: A Multidimensional Approach to the Structure of Perceived Physical Attractiveness

A functional framework for the perception of female physical attractiveness suggests that, at the least, perceivers should differentiate sexual (sexy), youthful, nonsexual (cute), and up-to-date clothed and groomed (trendy) dimensions. Further, it was hypothesized that these content-specific varieties of good looks would covary with physical features (the stimulus cues used by perceivers to decode particular attractiveness continua) and also with psychological inferences (the stereotypic expectations linked to each appearance dimension). Using 96 photographs of female professional fashion models as stimuli, a free-sorting method coupled with a multidimensional scaling analysis provided support for both of these expectations. Also, the results suggest areas of both convergence and divergence in how college student males and females view physical attractiveness in women.

Sex stereotypes and implicit personality theory. I. A personality description approach to the assessment of sex stereotypes

It was proposed that sex stereotypes be phrased in terms of the person perception construct, “implicit personality theory,” as the structured sets of inferential relations that link personal attributes to the social categories female and male. The utility of this formulation was assessed by having 31 college students use a set of 66 personality traits to describe other people. A measure of trait co-occurrence was derived from these data and was used as input to Kruskals multidimensional scaling program. A two-dimensional configuration was interpreted in terms of two orthogonal properties, Social Desirability and Potency. An Indirect Female-Male property (based on the proportion of times each trait was used to describe a male) was strongly related to the configuration and was closely aligned with the Potency vector. Thus, stereotypes of females and males were associated with the Potency dimension of person perception, with females seen as “soft” and males as “hard.” The directly rated sex property Male-Female was also located near the Potency vector, but was not strongly related to the configuration. This lack of fit may have been due to social desirability responding. The results support the utility of formulating sex stereotypes in terms of implicit personality theory and suggest the need to distinguish direct and indirect assessments of stereotypes.

The Multifaceted Self: Androgyny Reassessed by Open-Ended Self-Descriptions

The existing literature on androgyny does not provide information about the fundamental question of how masculine and feminine qualities are organized within the self, and houandrogynous persons «view of the self differs from others». We examined several features in open-ended self-descriptions of subjects classified by a direct self-report measure as androgynous, undifferentiated, masculine, or feminine. Androgynous subjects used more situational qualifiers in describing their masculine, feminine, and gender-neutral attributes; this finding suggests: 1) that they enact masculine and feminine qualities on different occasions, and 2) that androgyny is an instance of a more general situational flexibility