No abstract

Gender stereotypes are understood as the ascription of different personality traits to men and women. Data from American and Italian samples showed that consistent with the attribution hypothesis, the estimated prevalence of a trait in a target group predicted perceptions of trait typicality well. In contrast, there was no support for the categorization hypothesis, according to which perceived differences in trait prevalence between groups should independently predict trait typicality. Nevertheless, participants overestimated gender differences in personality as predicted by the principle of intercategory accentuation. The implications of these findings for the rationality and accuracy of gender stereotyping are discussed.

Work environments characterized by inadequate work conditions have been widely recognized as being particularly prone to the occurrence and exacerbation of bullying behavior. Accordingly, this longitudinal study aimed to explore whether the impact of effort-reward imbalance (ERI) on workplace bullying was mediated by a lower perception of organizational justice, and whether the association between ERI and perceptions of justice was moderated by organizational identification. In the current study, a sample of N = 195 Spanish employees from different occupational sectors filled in an online questionnaire at two different times with a time lag of 8 months. In line with the hypothesized moderated mediation model, results showed that organizational justice mediated the impact of ERI on workplace bullying. Moreover, the effect of perceived ERI on organizational justice was stronger for employees with low organizational identification. Overall, this study can contribute to better understanding how and when ERI boosts the risk of workplace bullying. Accordingly, early intervention designed to buffer the negative effects of ERI should focus on increasing individual levels of organizational identification.

In the context of social psychological research on relations between cultural defined groups, the main topics of interest include ethnic prejudice, attitudes and stereotypes. In the present study, in order to measure and compare attitudes towards Roma people and migrants and to investigate how these attitudes vary according to individual characteristics, we develop an integrated model which embeds a multidimensional Item Response Theory model for polytomous data into a structural equation formulation. Item and person parameters and structural coefficients are estimated on data collected through a web survey. Full probabilistic inference is performed by applying Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques.

Social stereotypes involve judgments of how typical certain personality traits are of a group. According to the attribution hypothesis, judgments of trait typicality depend on the perceived prevalence of the trait in the target group. According to the categorization hypothesis, such judgments depend on the degree to which a trait is thought to be more or less prevalent in the target group than in a relevant comparison group. A study conducted with women and men as target groups showed that the attribution hypothesis fit the data best when typicality ratings were made in an absolute format. When, however, typicality ratings were made in a comparative format (how typical is the trait of women as compared with men?), both hypotheses received support. Analytical derivation, supported by empirical evidence, showed an inverse relationship between the size of perceived group differences and their weight given in stereotyping. Implications for stereotype measurement and the rationality of social perception are discussed