Browsing by Subject "Stereotypes"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Do Explanations Matter? The Hiring of Ex-offenders
    (2024-06-19) Manning, Josieann J
    Many employers are disinclined to hire applicants who have committed a crime due to the belief that they will commit another offense in the future. In order to screen out those with prior offenses, employers may use criminal background checks. After such background checks are conducted, applicants may be given the opportunity to explain the circumstances behind their criminal offenses to their employer, should they have one. However, little is known about how such explanations affect how the applicant is evaluated by the employer. This study aimed to assess whether the type of explanation offered by an ex-offender with a felony conviction will increase their likelihood of being hired by the organization. A total of 413 participants were recruited to participate in this study. Results revealed that the type of felon a person had (nonviolent versus violent) had no impact on their favorability rating by the participant. Furthermore, the type of explanation provided by the job applicant (none, self-explanation, court documentation, or both) also had no impact on the way that the participant perceived the ex-offender. Results of this study did reveal that the hiring decision-maker’s belief set did have an impact on how they perceived the job applicant. Participants who had an incremental theorist belief set (growth mindset) perceived the job applicant more favorably than participants with an entity theorist belief set (fixed mindset). These findings indicate that providing an explanation has no impact on whether the ex-offender may be hired by an organization.
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    Replication Data for Issues, Groups, Or Idiots? Measuring Which Attributes are Central to Partisan Stereotypes
    (2022-12-19) Myers, C. Daniel; cdmyers@umn.edu; Myers, C. Daniel
    When individuals picture the two parties, what do they think of? Given the dominant understanding of partisanship as a social identity, understanding the content of these mental images – individuals’ stereotypes of the two parties – is essential, as stereotypes play an important role in how identity affects attitudes and behaviors, perceptions of others, and inter-group relations. The existing literature offers three answers to this question: one that claims that people picture the two parties in terms of their constituent social groups, a second that claims that people picture the two parties in terms of policy positions, and a third that claims that people view the two parties in terms of individual traits they associate with partisans. While not mutually exclusive, these theories have different implications for the effects of partisanship and the roots of partisan animosity. This paper adjudicates between these theories by employing a new method that measures stereotype content at the collective and individual level using a conjoint experiment. An important advantage of the conjoint measure is that it allows for the direct comparison of the importance of different attributes, and different kinds of attributes, to the stereotype. Using a pre-registered 2,909-person survey, I evaluate the relative importance of issues, groups, and traits to stereotypes of partisans. I find strong evidence that issue positions and ideological labels are the central elements of partisan stereotypes. I also find that individuals who hold issue-based stereotypes are more affectively polarized than those whose stereotypes are rooted in groups or traits.
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    Stereotypes and Prototypes: The Causes and Consequences of Intersectional Invisibility
    (2018-06) Williams, Allison
    Although sociologists and legal scholars have posited that the marginalization of Black women stems from disadvantage that emerges at the intersection of race and gender (Crenshaw, 1989), psychologists have only recently begun to generate individual-level theories to help explain this phenomenon. One such theory is the intersectional invisibility model (Purdie-Vaughns & Eibach, 2008), which suggests that the non-prototypicality of Black women, in terms of both race and gender, leads to invisibility and subsequent marginalization. Newer research, however, suggests that non-prototypicality should be considered not only with respect to race or gender, but in terms of the relationship between these two social categories, as Black individuals are considered more masculine than—and Asian individuals more feminine than—White individuals (Galinsky, Hall, & Cuddy, 2013). Indeed, studies have found support for the invisibility of Black women, who are non-prototypical in terms of their gendered-race prototype (Sesko & Biernat, 2010) and for the invisibility of Asian men, who are similarly non-prototypical (Schug, Alt, & Klauer, 2015). The proposed studies are an attempt to reconcile the intersectional invisibility model with gendered race theory by examining whether it is the perceptions of non-prototypicality that lead to invisibility (Study 1), identifying possible mechanisms for this relation (Study 2), and finally, examining whether non-prototypicality and subsequent invisibility indeed lead to marginalization as predicted by the model (Study 3).
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    Student-Athlete Perception on a College Campus
    (2011) McHugh, Michael; Hyman, Randy; Ryan, Cindy; Rauschenfels, Diane
    Negative attitudes regarding a student-athlete’s academic ability exist in the collegiate environment in the form of the “dumb jock” stereotype (Baucom & Lantz, 2001; Bosworth, Fujita, Jensen, & Simons, 2007; Sailes, 1993; McHugh Engstrom & Sedlacek, 1991). These attitudes and stereotypical images hinder a student-athlete’s academic achievement (Chomitz, Dawson, Slining, McGowan, & Mitchelll, 2009; Aries, Benaji, McCarthy, & Salovey, 2004; Morphew, Toma, & Wolf-Wendel, 2001). The author conducted a study at a public, NCAA Division II university whose student-athletes had a proven and publicized history of academic success. The study examined if perceptions of collegiate student-athletes were congruent with those negative feelings towards the group identified in the research. The setting was selected because of the university’s unique history of proven levels of academic success within the student-athlete population. Results found that a positive perception felt by the student-athletes from the campus community was congruent with the high level of student athletes’ academic achievement.