Stereotypes why are they bad

This mirrors much of the belongingness literature regarding stereotype threat, in that performance and engagement tend to suffer for individuals who are not viewed as belonging to the group Holleran et al. Two additional areas related to stereotype threat are closely tied to sense of belonging in university or the workplace and personal values.

Research on communal goal affordances finds that women may be underrepresented in many male-dominated fields e. A distinct but related concept is valuing interdependence, that underrepresented students, and by extension employees, may not see Western organizational values of independence as congruent with their values of cultural interdependence Stephens et al. This section reviews research and interventions on communal goal affordances, and then interdependence and cultural mismatch.

Current research suggests that women and racial minorities may experience stereotype threat in male- and majority race-dominated domains and avoid STEM disciplines because they do not see their personal life goals and cultural values as congruent with the expected quality of life of a STEM student, scientist, or engineer Diekman et al. Many women and racial minorities have communal goals, or an orientation to nurture others, and are more likely to endorse communal goals then men and Caucasians Diekman et al.

Societal stereotypes of STEM disciplines suggest that scientists, mathematicians, and engineers are typically male, work in isolation in a laboratory, value competitiveness, and have little time for family Barbercheck, Stereotypes of scientists make STEM unappealing fields of study or work for many women Cheryan et al. One line of research examined stereotype threat through the lens of communal goals and utility-values discussed in the previous section.

Smith et al. Particularly among women in male-dominated majors e. An intervention with science students combined a utility-value intervention with a communal goal intervention Brown et al. The culture of science emphasizes agentic values, which can deter women and minorities from pursuing STEM education and careers. Brown et al. The communal goals literature has implications for organizations in STEM fields that want to recruit a diverse workforce and support them in the workplace.

It is important for organizations to communicate valuing communal goals and providing employees with opportunities to conduct work that will help the community. As with diversity policies, this can be accomplish through websites, brochures, and job descriptions. Many companies already have such opportunities in place, and contribute to local communities as part of public relations efforts.

Employers should know that women, particularity in male-dominated occupations, may perceive greater fit with the organization, and therefore greater job satisfaction and performance Spanjol et al. A related value that can be undermined in academic and workplace settings, and decrease sense of belonging in organizations is interdependence.

Research finds that low-income, first generation college students, and racial minorities are more likely to take an interdependent worldview, compared to an independent worldview, than middle class majorities Stephens et al.

Underrepresented students may perceive a cultural mismatch and lack of fit with US universities, which predicts lower sense of belonging and academic performance Stephens et al. To address this cultural mismatch in higher education, Stephens et al. First generation college students who received the interdependent letter had higher performance on an academic task. For first generation college students, those who received an interdependent letter and perceived the academic task as less difficult had better performance compared to first generation students receiving an independence letter Stephens et al.

The possible cultural mismatch for low-income and racial minority employees should be a concern for organizations. The Stephens et al. As previously stated, an all-inclusive multicultural approach is most effective for employees from all backgrounds Plaut et al. When adopting diversity missions, philosophies, and policies, organizations can express their value of contributions from all groups, majority and minority, by including statements on how working in the organization can meet communal goals and the value placed on interdependent work.

A final intervention to reduce stereotype threat in the workplace is to simply talk about it. Johns et al. As a result of these instructions, women did not underperform on a math test in the stereotype threat condition. Another study found that instructing participants under stereotype threat that their anxiety may actually enhance their test performance eliminated the effect of threat Johns et al. These studies suggest that providing people with external attributions for experiencing anxiety during evaluative performance situations may help them regulate the anxiety and reduce or eliminate stereotype threat.

Directly confronting stereotype threat can create stereotype reactance in which individuals are motivated to disprove the stereotype Kray et al. Kray et al. Kray and Shirako suggest that organizational leaders can help reduce stereotype threat by actively managing the messages employees hear regarding what traits are necessary to perform well on tasks and ensuring that stereotypes are not activated or endorsed in the workplace.

Researchers note that for interventions to be effective, an indirect approach should be taken Robinson, ; Cohen et al. The interventions should not be advertised as a means to improve performance or well-being, as this may dampen their effects or backfire Sherman et al. In the workplace, minorities who are perceived to have been hired or promoted because of affirmative action are stigmatized Leslie et al.

Instead, interventions should be subtle, include all employees, not just minorities, and be embedded in existing workplace activities e. Interventions should be focused on addressing the psychological needs and motivational processes on which they are based Cohen et al. Interventions developed based on anecdotal evidence or intuition may backfire and create more threat e. Timing of the interventions is also a factor to consider. Research is still underway to address how timing affects intervention effectiveness Cohen et al.

Interventions that focus on early stages e. Interventions may be implemented after a problem has already been identified and can disrupt the downward spiral, for example after a merger or during a mid-quarter progress meeting Cohen et al. It is important to note that stereotype threat interventions alone may not boost employee performance, but instead may prevent decrements in performance. Effective interventions must be coupled with opportunities for growth and resources to provide proper training for employees.

That is, the interventions will not provide employees with the necessary abilities to perform well, they merely help employees reconstrue the workplace environment in ways that allow their highest potential to surface. Finally, not all well-developed diversity policies will have the intended positive effects on diversifying the workforce and helping minority employees feel welcome.

Lab based research finds that organizations with diversity policies may be seen as fair when there is objective evidence of bias Brady et al. Further, organizations that have received diversity award may be perceived as fair despite evidence of unfair practices Kaiser et al. Organizations that are serious about implementing effective diversity policies and practices should appoint a diversity and inclusion officer with expertise in diversity science Plaut, We, and others, argue that knowledge of employment and discrimination law is not sufficient.

An expert in diversity science, and the psychology behind diversity policies and practices, is needed to fully utilize effective policies and practices to achieve diversity and inclusion in organizations Plaut, In this review we have argued the recent question of scholarly debate Kalokerinos et al. We and others Kray and Shirako, ; Kalokerinos et al. Throughout the review we described several field studies both within education and workplace environments.

However, we recognize a dearth of studies in workplaces and this gap needs to be addressed in future research Kray and Shirako, ; Kalokerinos et al. This review provided evidence that stereotype threat affects women and racial minorities in important ways besides performance including affecting domain identification, job engagement, career aspiration, and openness to feedback.

Stereotype threat is also relevant in domains beyond personnel selection including leadership, entrepreneurship, negotiations, and competitiveness. It is important to note that our review focused primarily on cognitive stereotypes and workplace behaviors beyond performance Spencer et al. Recent research suggests that non-cognitive stereotypes have been largely ignored in the organizational stereotype threat literature Dhanani and Wolcott, This reflects a cognitive bias in the stereotype threat literature and future research should explore the role of non-cognitive stereotypes in stereotype threat in the workplace.

In this review we focused primarily on workplace behaviors other than performance, which resulted in excluding research on age-based stereotype threat and job performance von Hippel et al.

Negative job attitudes predicted greater intentions to resign or retire. The most common stereotypes associated with older adults are primarily cognitive or physical such as having poor memory, slower processing, reduced executive functions, and less physical speed and strength Cuddy et al.

To our knowledge, research has not examined the effects of age-based stereotype threat on non-performance outcomes such as leadership, entrepreneurship, negotiations, and competitiveness, thus literature on age-based stereotype threat was omitted. As Cox and Kulik argue, age-based stereotype threat is an understudied area and is critical for the future of organizational psychology as the workforce ages and generations intermix in the workplace.

Finally, there are other types of stigmas relevant to workplace stereotype threat that were not discussed include obese employees Carlson and Seacat, and employees with non-traditional work histories Melloy and Liu, We concluded the review with examples from field-tested interventions that implementing brief, low-cost workplace interventions to reduce stereotype threat is feasible.

Many of the psychological processes underlying threat can be addressed in onboarding and training programs. For example, onboarding programs can implement reattribution training and belongingness interventions and a few examples were provided. Good practices in new hire training and onboarding often already reflect some of these principles Klein and Polin, Although the evidence suggests that stereotype threat is highly likely to occur in workplace settings, more evidence is needed to document its occurrence see Hall et al.

In addition, some research questions remain unanswered regarding whether boundary conditions found in the lab apply in the field. As previously stated, stereotype threat does not affect all minority groups equally Schmader et al. Some of the features of the situation, such as task difficulty and task diagnosticity, or the person such as high domain identification, may not be present in non-lab settings such as the workplace Sackett and Ryan, Thus it is not clear that group identity must be high in evaluative situations with important consequences.

Research needs to determine what impact the presence of absence of these variables has on stereotype threat effects in the workplace. In addition, the overemphasis on performance needs to be remedied by focusing on other outcomes important in the workplace Kray and Shirako, ; Kang and Inzlicht, ; Spencer et al.

Two additional areas for future research that seem to be understudied concern clarifying the construct of stereotype threat Shapiro and Neuberg, ; Voyles et al. First, Voyles et al. Therefore, metastereotypes must precede stereotype threat because stereotyped groups must believe that the perceiver holds a negative stereotype about their social group. Conceptualized this way, metastereotypes are relevant at the stereotype activation phase and stereotype threat is the reaction to the metastereotype.

Future research should continue to clarify these concepts and examine the specific processes through which they operate.

Related to metastereotypes is a concern regarding how we measure self-reported experiences of stereotype threat Xavier et al. Further, Shapiro and Neuberg , Shapiro , Shapiro et al. The form of stereotype threat affects how it is measured Shapiro, and what interventions are most appropriate Shapiro et al.

What we have learned from lab and field studies is valuable for improving diversity and inclusion in organizations. Future research should continue examining the basic mechanisms and boundary conditions of stereotype threat and testing the effectiveness of interventions for the workplace. BC conceptualized the argument and organization of the review. Each author equally contributed to the content of the review. The work contributing to this manuscript was supported by grants to the first author from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health R01GM Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding agencies.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

The authors would like to thank Abdiel J. Flores, Breanna R. Wexler, Zachary W. Petzel, and Mindy Siebert for their feedback on an earlier draft, and the reviewers for their valuable insights.

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Negative stereotypes are harmful to people of color because assumptions, rather than personalized information, can justify the denial of educational, employment, housing and other opportunities. Even so-called positive stereotypes can be harmful. Williams shares that stereotypes about athletic skill and musical abilities push African American youth away from college in favor of efforts to become athletes or entertainers, professions in which statistically speaking, the vast majority are destined to fail.

If not addressed, it can leave one to infer that this stereotype is true. It takes many experiences with diverse populations to challenge stereotypes. There has been a lot of work in attempting to challenge gender stereotypes. Old-fashioned ideas that some toys are just for boys, or that women should stay home while men work have been challenged and progress has been made. There is still a long way to go, but the proportion of women with college degrees in the labor force has almost quadrupled since In the communication within any social network there will be regular and consistent associations between social groups and attributes, which will be picked up by it members, through the working of the predictive brain.

The extent to which individuals share implicit associations will depend on the hegemonic social representations within the society across cultural groups Gillespie, , such as a positive belief in democracy and a negative view of communism, which are prevalent in the wider social institutions within a nation, and examined in the sociological study of stereotypes for example, Pickering, The role of stereotypes in communication within a social network was demonstrated by Kashima and colleagues Kashima and Yeung, ; Kashima et al.

The results showed that stereotype-consistent information was emphasized. Even though stereotype-inconsistent information attracted attention it was not necessarily passed on. Thus, the story became more stereotypical and consistent in the serial retelling. Within a social network common understandings are developed via the use of stereotypes. Members of the culture assume a knowledge of the stereotype in other group members, which facilitates social interaction, but potentially also helps to maintain the stereotype, even in the face of inconsistent information.

The complex dynamics of the individual within a social network for example, Christakis and Fowler, needs to be considered in investigating the formation, transmission and maintenance of implicit stereotypes.

In the modern world of the twenty-first century, the options available for people to construct their social environments have radically increased Giddens, The media has rapidly expanded through multiple television channels, a proliferation of media outlets, and the development of social media via the internet. While this offers the potential for people to engage with a diversity of representation and counter-stereotypical information, it also allows people to remain in an ideological subculture, communicating with like-minded people where specific representations of cultural others are constantly being circulated unchallenged within the social network.

In terms of the predictive brain, implicit associations will develop from the consistent messages people receive in their everyday lives. If certain implicit stereotypes are deemed unacceptable then it will only be when people experience consistent counter-stereotypical information over a long period of time that these associations will be probabilistically undermined.

Over the last 30 years stereotype research has focused on implicit stereotypes, particularly using the IAT, which have been interpreted as revealing an implicit or unconscious cognitive bias, even for the consciously fair-minded person. Despite research questioning the predictive validity of the IAT as a method of revealing unconscious prejudice for example, Oswald et al.

According to the predictive brain model, when the culture changes then the implicit stereotypes of its members will change albeit slowly for some associations. Therefore, to properly understand the nature of implicit stereotypes, the cognitive research needs to be combined with the study of the dynamics of culture, to understand the specific associations prevalent in the communication within a culture and their implicit influence on the members of that culture.

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Stanford Law Review ; 47 6 : — California Law Review ; 94 4 : — Intervention effectiveness across time. Some year-olds could reasonably drive a car. Nor is individual testing always a workable solution to such problems. Testing is expensive and not without its own errors and abuses. Imagine the controversies that would attend any individualized test for voter competence. Who would be trusted to design such a test? Even for something like driving skill, if we are con dent that the vast majority of year-olds would be poor drivers, is it worth the costs of giving all year-olds the opportunity to take some test that most will fail?

First, it's naive to say you can't use a generalization about a class of people unless it's universally valid—we use such stereotypes all the time and would be paralyzed without them. Second, working out the ways in which the use of a stereotype can go wrong.