The influence of gender on the evaluation of anorexia nervosa.

A stereotype exists that anorexia nervosa (AN) is a "female" disorder. As a result, men with AN may face harsher stigmatization from their peers or go undiagnosed. The shifting standards model provides a framework to explore how gender stereotypes impact perceptions of AN. Participants (N = 438) were given a vignette of a person with symptoms of AN labeled as either male or female. Assessments were experimentally manipulated according to the shifting standards perspective: participants were asked if they were concerned (or convinced) that the target had AN and then indicated the severity of behavioral symptoms (calorie reduction, pounds lost per week, and hours of exercise) needed to make them concerned (or convinced) of AN. Participants were more likely to state that the male target had AN compared to the female target (p = .036) whereas women were more likely to believe an individual had AN than men, regardless of the target gender (p < .001). In addition, men required that the male target have more severe symptoms to assign an AN diagnosis than women (p = .005). In general, severity ratings for symptoms were quite high, indicating a normalization of unhealthy weight loss practices. These results confirm that gender affects the perception of AN, though they do not conform to expectations within the shifting standards model. Instead, they suggest that a male target is more readily identified as having AN than a female target with AN when exhibiting identical symptoms.

Positive Stereotypes Are Pervasive and Powerful.

Stereotypes and their associated category-based processes have traditionally been considered largely within the context of the negativity of their content and consequences, both among the general public and the scientific community. This review summarizes and integrates extant research on positive stereotypes, which are subjectively favorable beliefs about social groups, and examines their implications for individuals and groups directly targeted by such stereotypes. Furthermore, we examine the beneficial and adverse implications of positive stereotypes for interpersonal and intergroup relations, as well as the ways in which positive stereotypes, more so than negative stereotypes, may contribute to and perpetuate systemic differences in power and privilege.

"I guess what he said wasn't that bad": dissonance in nonconfronting targets of prejudice.

Although confrontations can be an effective means of reducing prejudicial responding, individuals often do not confront others due to the interpersonal costs. In the present research, we examined the intrapersonal implications of not confronting prejudice. In three studies, female participants were exposed to a confederate who made a sexist remark. Consistent with self-justification theories, in Study 1, participants who valued confronting and were given the opportunity to confront-but did not-subsequently made more positive evaluations of the confederate. Study 2 found that when participants were given a chance to affirm an important aspect of the self prior to evaluating the confederate, these inflated evaluations of the confederate did not occur. Finally, in Study 3, participants who initially valued confronting but did not confront a sexist partner reduced the amount of importance they placed on confronting. These data reveal that there are important intrapersonal consequences of not confronting prejudice.

Able but unintelligent: including positively stereotyped black subgroups in the stereotype content model.

The stereotype content model (SCM) posits that warmth and competence are the key components underlying judgments about social groups. Because competence can encompass different components (e.g., intelligence, talent) different group members may be perceived to be competent for different reasons. Therefore, we believe it may be important to specify the type of competence being assessed when examining perceptions of groups that are positively stereotyped (i.e., Black athletes and musical Blacks). Consistent with the SCM, these subgroups were perceived as high in competence-talent but not in competence-intelligence and low in warmth. Both the intelligence and talent frame of competence fit in the SCM's social structural hypothesis.

The Egalitarian Optimist and the Confrontation of Prejudice.

Standing up against prejudice often requires one to surmount powerful inter- and intra-individual forces. Egalitarian standards alone are often insufficient to surmount these forces. As individuals high in dispositional optimism vigorously pursue valued goals, even when threatened with obstacles, we propose that the combination of high optimism and salient egalitarian goals predicts the confrontation of prejudice. In the present study, individuals high and low in both optimism and prejudice were randomly assigned to hear a racist joke followed by an argument, or to hear the same joke but without the argument. We found that low-prejudice optimists who had their chronic egalitarian values made salient by hearing the argument were highly likely to confront a later act of prejudice. Self-report data closely mirrored this behavioral finding. These findings support a self-regulatory approach to confrontation and suggest new avenues for combating prejudice.

Standing up for a change: reducing bias through interpersonal confrontation.

Three experiments examined the effectiveness of interpersonal confrontations as a means for decreasing stereotypic responding. After making stereotypic inferences about Black individuals, participants were confronted and reactions were measured across various intrapersonal and interpersonal response domains. Confrontations varied in level of hostility (Experiment 1) and whether they were expressed by a Black or White person (Experiment 2). Results indicate that although confrontations (and particularly hostile ones) elicited negative emotions and evaluations toward the confronter, participants also experienced negative self-directed affect. Furthermore, regardless of who did the confronting or how much hostility was expressed, confronted participants subsequently were less likely to provide stereotypic responses (Experiments 1-2), and the effect of the confrontation generalized to reporting less prejudiced attitudes (Experiment 3).

Confronting prejudice (literally): reactions to confrontations of racial and gender bias.

Participants in two studies reported how they would feel, think, and behave after being confronted about either gender-biased or equivalent racial-biased responses. In Study 2, whether the confrontation was from a target group member (Black or female) or nontarget (White or male) group member was manipulated. Regardless of confronter status, allegations of racial bias elicited more guilt and apologetic-corrective responses and greater concern over having offended the confronter than similar confrontations of gender bias, which elicited more amusement. Target confrontations elicited less guilt but greater discomfort than nontarget confrontations and were associated with feelings of irritation and antagonism among more prejudiced participants. In addition, participants perceived a target's confrontation as more of an overreaction than the same confrontation from a nontarget. The implications of these findings for prejudice-reduction efforts are discussed.

Putting the brakes on prejudice: on the development and operation of cues for control.

A model concerning the establishment and operation of cues for control was developed and tested to understand how control can be exerted over (automatic) prejudiced responses. Cues for control are stimuli that are associated with prejudiced responses and the aversive consequences of those responses (e.g., guilt). In Experiments 1 and 2, 3 events critical to the establishment of cues occurred: behavioral inhibition, the experience of guilt, and retrospective reflection. In Experiment 3, the presentation of already-established cues for control did, as expected, produce behavioral inhibition. In Experiment 4, participants were provided with an experience in which cues could be established. Later presentation of those cues in a different task resulted in behavioral inhibition and less racially biased responses.