Examining the automaticity of a lay theory of generalized prejudice: vigilance facilitates social distancing for white women in STEM contexts
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Chaney, Kimberly Ellen ().
Examining the automaticity of a lay theory of generalized prejudice: vigilance facilitates social distancing for white women in STEM contexts. Retrieved from
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TitleExamining the automaticity of a lay theory of generalized prejudice: vigilance facilitates social distancing for white women in STEM contexts
PublisherOxford University Press
Date Created2020
Other Date2020-05 (degree)
Extent1 online resource (xi, 109 pages) : illustrations
DescriptionScience, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) contexts are often imbued with identity threat cues for women, cues that signal that women may be devalued or stigmatized by others, leading to women’s decreased performance and disengagement from STEM fields. Research on the vigilance-avoidance hypothesis suggests that individuals rapidly detect threat cues and subsequently avoid detected threats to mitigate experiencing the negative implications associated with the threat. Moreover, past research has demonstrated that individuals endorse a lay theory of generalized prejudice, such that White women perceive racism and sexism occurring, resulting in anticipated sexism from a racist evaluator, termed identity cue transfer. As such, the pool of potential threat cues for women in STEM may be broader than previously theorized. Integrating these three lines of research, this dissertation explored the effect of identity cue transfer on White women’s vigilance to sexism and rejection cues in STEM and evaluative settings, including the effect of vigilance on avoidance, measured via social distancing, and working memory. In Studies 1-2, White women demonstrated greater preconscious attentional bias to sexism and rejection cues when anticipating an evaluation by a racist or a sexist White man, and when imagining enrolling in a STEM course with a racist or sexist White male professor, compared to a White man or professor whose intergroup attitudes were unknown. In Studies 3-4, White women demonstrated less preconscious attentional bias to sexism and rejection cues when anticipating completing an intelligence measure developed by a Black man or White woman or enrolling in a course with a Black male or White female STEM professor, compared to a White male. Moreover, in Studies 2-4, greater preconscious attentional bias to sexism and rejection led to greater social distancing. Lastly, Study 5 demonstrated that White women had greater working memory when completing a task ostensibly developed by a Black man or White woman compared to a White man. Together, the present studies 1) identified vigilance as a novel, automatic process by which identity cues are associated with avoidance and cognitive performance for women in STEM contexts, and 2) demonstrate the automaticity of a lay theory of generalized prejudice by providing the first evidence of a cognitive overlap, or shared network, of beliefs about racism and sexism at the preconscious level.
NotePh.D.
NoteIncludes bibliographical references
Genretheses, ETD doctoral
LanguageEnglish
Data Life Cycle Event(s)
Type: Citation
Publisher: Oxford University Press
CollectionSchool of Graduate Studies Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Organization NameRutgers, The State University of New Jersey
RightsThe author owns the copyright to this work.
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