Identity safety cues refer to aspects of the environment or social setting that communicate one is valued and the threat of discrimination is limited. In this article, we review the content of identity safety cues, their strengths and limitations, and implications for future theory, research, and practice. A close analysis of the identity safety cue literature can inform the efforts of individuals and organizations who aim to enhance social inclusion and promote diversity. Searching databases for safety cue research (e.g., Google Scholar, PsycINFO), we found more than 35 peer-reviewed articles that explicitly addressed identity safety cues. We synthesized the literature to produce a novel taxonomy of identity safety cues that target stigmatized groups, namely those minoritized by gender and race. A taxonomy of identity safety cues can facilitate clear and universal communication about the science, delineate types of operational definitions, and direct future research and theorizing. Our review revealed that knowledge of cues is often limited by unidimensional identity characteristics (i.e., targeting gender or race, not both), and we discovered four cue categories that induced identity safety: minority representation, diversity philosophies and programming, environmental features, and identity-safe information. The significance of this review is that, beyond establishing the only known taxonomy of identity safety cues, we critically examine the strengths and weaknesses of cue efficacy and provide a forward-thinking discussion of theoretical implications and broader impacts, focusing on the expansion of intersectionality theorizing and the translation of identity safety cue research.What is the significance of this article for the general public?This article accelerates knowledge for creating environments that make minoritized groups feel welcomed, valued, and protected from stigmatization. We found that the scientific literature provides four categories of effective identity safety cues (i.e., aspects of settings that communicate support and safety from stigma): having other minoritized people present, stating commitments to diversity, displaying physical features that signal inclusive norms and values, and providing information that conveys fair and positive expectations.
Consultations for children in nine lower-income countries are brief and limited. A greater number of clinical actions was associated with caregiver knowledge and satisfaction.
Facebook’s rainbow profile filter represents a popular display of activism (“pictivism”) commonly used by women, yet little is known of pictivism’s potential for creating social change. We tested whether women’s group status (belonging to a dominant vs. marginalized group) and filter use influenced viewers’ perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors. We conducted a series of 2 (target sexual orientation: queer or heterosexual) × 2 (filter use: filter or no filter) experiments with heterosexual ( N 1 = 198, N 2 = 186) and LGBTQ ( N 3 = 290) participants. Participants rated women who used rainbow filters as more activist than women who did not engage in pictivism. Although neither target sexual orientation nor filter use influenced participants’ ally behavior (donations), heterosexual people who viewed a woman using a filter reported greater closeness to LGBTQ people and greater intentions of supporting LGBTQ people when the woman was queer than heterosexual. Exposure to rainbow filters caused LGBTQ participants to express greater online and societal belonging than when filters were absent. Taken together, women’s pictivism and the online visibility of queer women yielded some psychological benefits for heterosexual and LGBTQ viewers. If the goal of pictivism is to enhance marginalized groups’ feelings of support, it works as intended. We thus recommend that both heterosexual and LGBTQ people who care about LGBTQ rights and seek to affirm LGBTQ individuals’ sense of belonging embrace opportunities on social media, specifically through profile picture filters, to communicate their support. Additional online materials for this article are available on PWQ ’s website at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/0361684320930566
Feminist researchers have long embraced the challenging, dismantling, and reimagining of psychology, though their contributions to transforming psychological science remain largely overlooked in the mainstream open science movement. In this article, we reconcile feminist psychology and open science. We propose that feminist theory can be leveraged to address central questions of the open science movement, and the potential for methodological synergy is promising. We signal the availability of feminist scholarship that can augment aspects of open science discourse. We also review the most compelling strategies for open science that can be harnessed by academic feminist psychologists. Drawing upon best practices in feminist psychology and open science, we address the following: generalizability (what are the contextual boundaries of results?), representation (who is included in research?), reflexivity (how can researchers reflect on who they are?), collaboration (are collaborative goals met within feminist psychology?), and dissemination (how should we give science away?). Throughout each section, we recommend using feminist tools when engaging with open science, and we recommend some open science practices for conducting research with feminist goals.
Pervasive stigma against fat people and evidence for its harmful health consequences highlight the need for a better understanding of people's first‐hand experiences of navigating the world with a stigmatized body size. Drawing on social identity threat theory, we conducted a mixed‐method study with a qualitative examination of threat and safety cues as experienced by people who self‐identify as overweight. In an online survey, 48 people who self‐identified as overweight responded to open‐ended prompts to describe how situational features of a setting signal weight‐based threat and safety to them. Using thematic analysis, we identified several themes that characterized threat and safety cues. Particularly notable were inverse themes, such as structural exclusion versus structural accommodation and homogeneity of others versus general diversity, that highlighted how physical features of, and the people in, an environment positively or negatively impact fat people's psychological experience. Moreover, we conducted exploratory deductive coding using a recent taxonomy of safety cues developed by Kruk and Matsick (in press). Results highlighted how weight‐based stigma both parallels and diverges from other cues of identity safety (e.g., by gender or race/ethnicity). We suggest knowledge about situational cues can inform interventions to mitigate threat and promote safety among both fat people and other stigmatized groups.
Drawing on interdisciplinary, feminist insights, we encourage social psychologists to embrace the active participation of marginalized groups in social disparities research. We explain (1) how the absence of marginalized groups' perspectives in research presents a serious challenge to understanding intergroup dynamics and concomitant disparities, and (2) how their inclusion could assuage some of social psychology's “fatal flaws.”
The social category label effect describes how labels influence people’s perceptions of social groups. Though the label “homosexual” versus “lesbian/gay” decreases some heterosexual people’s support for sexual minorities, it is unknown how lesbian and gay (LG) people respond to “homosexual” as a label used to describe them. Across three experiments in a largely U.S. context (N=831), we examined how use of “homosexual” influenced people’s responses on psychological instruments, preferences for demographic questions, and evaluations of individuals who use “homosexual.” The use of different labels in psychological measures did not influence LG people’s responses (Study 1). However, LG people reacted less positively to “homosexual” compared to “lesbian/gay” in demographic questions and in interpersonal exchanges (Studies 2-3), whereas heterosexual people’s reactions were largely unaffected. LG people’s more negative reactions to “homosexual” than “lesbian/gay” were partially explained by them perceiving the “homosexual” label user as less culturally competent (i.e., less inclusive, less engaged in LGBTQ activism). In this article, we make progress in new empirical territory (sexual orientation-based cues research), propose the notion of linguistic heterosexism, and discuss the sociopolitical implications of people’s language choices.
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