LanguageTerm (authority = ISO 639-3:2007); (type = text)
English
Abstract (type = abstract)
Science, 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.
Subject (authority = local)
Topic
Stigma
Subject (authority = RUETD)
Topic
Psychology
RelatedItem (type = host)
TitleInfo
Title
Rutgers University Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Identifier (type = RULIB)
ETD
Identifier
ETD_10599
PhysicalDescription
Form (authority = gmd)
InternetMediaType
application/pdf
InternetMediaType
text/xml
Extent
1 online resource (xi, 109 pages) : illustrations
Note (type = degree)
Ph.D.
Note (type = bibliography)
Includes bibliographical references
Extension
DescriptiveEvent
Type
Citation
Place
Oxfordshire
AssociatedEntity
Role
Publisher
Name
Oxford University Press
RelatedItem (type = host)
TitleInfo
Title
School of Graduate Studies Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Identifier (type = local)
rucore10001600001
Location
PhysicalLocation (authority = marcorg); (displayLabel = Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey)
I hereby grant to the Rutgers University Libraries and to my school the non-exclusive right to archive, reproduce and distribute my thesis or dissertation, in whole or in part, and/or my abstract, in whole or in part, in and from an electronic format, subject to the release date subsequently stipulated in this submittal form and approved by my school. I represent and stipulate that the thesis or dissertation and its abstract are my original work, that they do not infringe or violate any rights of others, and that I make these grants as the sole owner of the rights to my thesis or dissertation and its abstract. I represent that I have obtained written permissions, when necessary, from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis or dissertation and will supply copies of such upon request by my school. I acknowledge that RU ETD and my school will not distribute my thesis or dissertation or its abstract if, in their reasonable judgment, they believe all such rights have not been secured. I acknowledge that I retain ownership rights to the copyright of my work. I also retain the right to use all or part of this thesis or dissertation in future works, such as articles or books.