Girls are good at STEM: Opening minds and providing evidence reduces boys' stereotyping of girls' STEM ability.

Girls and women face persistent negative stereotyping within STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics). This field intervention was designed to improve boys' perceptions of girls' STEM ability. Boys (N = 667; mostly White and East Asian) aged 9-15 years in Canadian STEM summer camps (2017-2019) had an intervention or control conversation with trained camp staff. The intervention was a multi-stage persuasive appeal: a values affirmation, an illustration of girls' ability in STEM, a personalized anecdote, and reflection. Control participants discussed general camp experiences. Boys who received the intervention (vs. control) had more positive perceptions of girls' STEM ability, d = 0.23, an effect stronger among younger boys. These findings highlight the importance of engaging elementary-school-aged boys to make STEM climates more inclusive.

Mapping social exclusion in STEM to men's implicit bias and women's career costs.

Why are women socially excluded in fields dominated by men? Beyond the barriers associated with any minority group's mere numerical underrepresentation, we theorized that gender stereotypes exacerbate the social exclusion of women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) workplaces, with career consequences. Although widely discussed, clear evidence of these relationships remains elusive. In a sample of 1,247 STEM professionals who work in teams, we tested preregistered hypotheses that acts of gendered social exclusion are systematically associated with both men's gender stereotypes (Part 1) and negative workplace outcomes for women (Part 2). Combining social network metrics of inclusion and reaction time measures of implicit stereotypes (the tendency to "think STEM, think men"), this study provides unique empirical evidence of the chilly climate women often report experiencing in STEM. Men with stronger implicit gender stereotypes had fewer social ties to female teammates. In turn, women (but not men) with fewer incoming cross-gender social ties reported worse career fit and engagement. Moderated mediation revealed that for women (but not men), cross-gender social exclusion was linked to more negative workplace outcomes via lower social fit. Effects of social exclusion were distinct from respect. We discuss the possible benefits of fostering positive cross-gender social relationships to promote women's professional success in STEM.

A threat in the network: STEM women in less powerful network positions avoid integrating stereotypically feminine peers.

Integrating social identity threat and structural hole theories, this work examines how social network positions affect group-based identity threats. For individuals less well positioned to bridge (or "broker") relations between unconnected friends, stigma-by-association concerns may constrain affiliation with stereotypic targets. Three experiments (Ns = 280, 232, 553) test whether women (vs. men) in male-dominated STEM (vs. female-dominated) majors avoid befriending a female target with feminine-stereotypic (vs. STEM-stereotypic) interests. Only STEM women with less brokerage (i.e., less ability to manage introductions to unconnected friends) in their existing friendship networks avoided befriending (pilot experiment) and socially integrating (Experiments 1 and 2) feminine- (vs. STEM-) stereotypic targets, despite standardized target similarity and competence. STEM women in particular anticipated steeper reputational penalties for befriending stereotypically feminine peers (Experiment 2). Social identity threat may lead women in STEM-especially those lacking brokerage-to exclude stereotypically feminine women from social networks, reinforcing stereotypes of women and STEM fields.

Attention spreads between students in a learning environment.

We propose a novel phenomenon, attention contagion, defined as the spread of attentive (or inattentive) states among members of a group. We examined attention contagion in a learning environment in which pairs of undergraduate students watched a lecture video. Each pair consisted of a participant and a confederate trained to exhibit attentive behaviors (e.g., leaning forward) or inattentive behaviors (e.g., slouching). In Experiment 1, confederates sat in front of participants and could be seen. Relative to participants who watched the lecture with an inattentive confederate, participants with an attentive confederate: (a) self-reported higher levels of attentiveness, (b) behaved more attentively (e.g., took more notes), and (c) had better memory for lecture content. In Experiment 2, confederates sat behind participants. Despite confederates not being visible, participants were still aware of whether confederates were acting attentively or inattentively, and participants were still susceptible to attention contagion. Our findings suggest that distraction is one factor that contributes to the spread of inattentiveness (Experiment 1), but this phenomenon apparently can still occur in the absence of distraction (Experiment 2). We propose an account of how (in)attentiveness spreads across students and discuss practical implications regarding how learning is affected in the classroom. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).