{"title":"Preconscious Attentional Bias to Rejection Facilitates Social Distancing for White Women in STEM Contexts","authors":"K. Chaney","doi":"10.1521/soco.2022.40.5.438","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Science, technology, engineering, and mathematic (STEM) contexts are imbued with identity-threat cues for women, leading to disengagement. 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. Integrating these lines of research, the present research examined White women’s preconscious attentional bias to rejection (PAB-R) and avoidance behavior (social distancing) in STEM contexts after exposure to identity-threat and identity-safety cues compared to neutral conditions. White women’s PAB-R was significantly greater in response to identity-threat cues and significantly decreased in response to identity-safety cues. Moreover, greater PAB-R led to greater social distancing (Studies 1b and 2). The present studies identified PAB-R as a novel, automatic process by which identity cues were associated with avoidance for women in STEM.","PeriodicalId":48050,"journal":{"name":"Social Cognition","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2000,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Social Cognition","FirstCategoryId":"102","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.2022.40.5.438","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q4","JCRName":"PSYCHOLOGY, SOCIAL","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
Science, technology, engineering, and mathematic (STEM) contexts are imbued with identity-threat cues for women, leading to disengagement. 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. Integrating these lines of research, the present research examined White women’s preconscious attentional bias to rejection (PAB-R) and avoidance behavior (social distancing) in STEM contexts after exposure to identity-threat and identity-safety cues compared to neutral conditions. White women’s PAB-R was significantly greater in response to identity-threat cues and significantly decreased in response to identity-safety cues. Moreover, greater PAB-R led to greater social distancing (Studies 1b and 2). The present studies identified PAB-R as a novel, automatic process by which identity cues were associated with avoidance for women in STEM.
期刊介绍:
An excellent resource for researchers as well as students, Social Cognition features reports on empirical research, self-perception, self-concept, social neuroscience, person-memory integration, social schemata, the development of social cognition, and the role of affect in memory and perception. Three broad concerns define the scope of the journal: - The processes underlying the perception, memory, and judgment of social stimuli - The effects of social, cultural, and affective factors on the processing of information The behavioral and interpersonal consequences of cognitive processes.