Scientific and engineering innovation is vital for American competitiveness, quality of life, and national security. However, too few American students, especially women, pursue these fields. Although this problem has attracted enormous attention, rigorously tested interventions outside artificial laboratory settings are quite rare. To address this gap, we conducted a longitudinal field experiment investigating the effect of peer mentoring on women's experiences and retention in engineering during college transition, assessing its impact for 1 y while mentoring was active, and an additional 1 y after mentoring had ended. Incoming women engineering students (n = 150) were randomly assigned to female or male peer mentors or no mentors for 1 y. Their experiences were assessed multiple times during the intervention year and 1-y postintervention. Female (but not male) mentors protected women's belonging in engineering, self-efficacy, motivation, retention in engineering majors, and postcollege engineering aspirations. Counter to common assumptions, better engineering grades were not associated with more retention or career aspirations in engineering in the first year of college. Notably, increased belonging and self-efficacy were significantly associated with more retention and career aspirations. The benefits of peer mentoring endured long after the intervention had ended, inoculating women for the first 2 y of college-the window of greatest attrition from science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors. Thus, same-gender peer mentoring for a short period during developmental transition points promotes women's success and retention in engineering, yielding dividends over time.T he odds do not favor women in most physical sciences, engineering, and computing. Despite educational advances, women, who constitute 56% of university students in the United States (1), hold only 13-33% of bachelor's and master's degrees and 11-21% of doctoral degrees in these fields (2). Even among degree holders in engineering, computing, and physical sciences, women are less likely than men to hold jobs related to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) degrees (2). Overall, the proportion of women in physical sciences, engineering, and computer science is very small relative to men and gets smaller still with every level of advancement (3). Engineering is notable for having one of the lowest proportions of women among all sciences (2) and is the focus of our research.Attempts to explain the relative scarcity of women engineers as due to women's "free choice" to pursue alternate career paths (4), or lower aptitude and intrinsic motivation (5), neglect widespread structural and psychological contributors to this phenomenon (6, 7). Many engineering environments are subtly unfriendly or sometimes overtly hostile for women (8, 9). The numeric scarcity of women (10, 11), nonverbal behavior from male colleagues that excludes women from professional conversations (12), use of masculine pronouns to refer to all sc...
We offer novel evidence that a Black man appears lighter in the mind’s eye following a counter-stereotypic prime, a phenomenon we refer to as skin tone memory bias. In Experiment 1, participants were primed subliminally with the counter-stereotypic word educated or with the stereotypic word ignorant, followed by the target stimulus of a Black man’s face. A recognition memory task for the target’s face and six lures (skin tone variations of ±25%, ±37%, and ±50%) revealed that participants primed with “educated” exhibited more memory errors with respect to lighter lures—misidentifying even the lightest lure as the target more often than counterparts primed with “ignorant.” This skin tone memory bias was replicated in Experiment 2. We situate these findings in theorizing on the mind’s striving for cognitive consistency. Black individuals who defy social stereotypes might not challenge social norms sufficiently but rather may be remembered as lighter, perpetuating status quo beliefs.
There is a critical disconnect between scientific knowledge about the nature of bias and how this knowledge gets translated into organizational debiasing efforts. Conceptual confusion around what implicit bias is contributes to misunderstanding. Bridging these gaps is the key to understanding when and why antibias interventions will succeed or fail. Notably, there are multiple distinct pathways to biased behavior, each of which requires different types of interventions. To bridge the gap between public understanding and psychological research, we introduce a visual typology of bias that summarizes the process by which group-relevant cognitions are expressed as biased behavior. Our typology spotlights cognitive, motivational, and situational variables that affect the expression and inhibition of biases while aiming to reduce the ambiguity of what constitutes implicit bias. We also address how norms modulate how biases unfold and are perceived by targets. Using this typology as a framework, we identify theoretically distinct entry points for antibias interventions. A key insight is that changing associations, increasing motivation, raising awareness, and changing norms are distinct goals that require different types of interventions targeting individual, interpersonal, and institutional structures. We close with recommendations for antibias training grounded in the science of prejudice and stereotyping.
A primary way to signal gender differences starting in infancy is via a clothing color cue (pink is for girls, not boys). We examined whether a violation of this seemingly innocuous gendered prescription would lead to differential decision making regarding infants' health and well being. In Experiment 1, partici pants were given an adaptation of the Asian Disease Problem (Tversky & Kahneman, 1981) describing a flu outbreak expected to affect male infants, who were dressed in pink or blue. Participants tended to choose the risk-averse treatment for boys in blue, consistent with Tversky and Kahneman's theorizing and findings. In contrast, participants tended to opt for the risk-taking treatment for boys in pink, consistent with research highlighting people's tendency to place lower subjective value on the lives of individuals who belong to socially devalued groups. Experiment 2 ruled out a possible expectancy effect with a different natural category. We discuss the reification of clothing color for demarcating masculinity as a societal attempt at policing gender and situate the findings in a cognitive consistency framework.
Why are women socially excluded in fields dominated by men? Beyond the barriers associated with any minority group’s mere numerical underrepresentation, we theorized that gender stereotypes exacerbate the social exclusion of women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) workplaces, with career consequences. Although widely discussed, clear evidence of these relationships remains elusive. In a sample of 1,247 STEM professionals who work in teams, we tested preregistered hypotheses that acts of gendered social exclusion are systematically associated with both men’s gender stereotypes (Part 1) and negative workplace outcomes for women (Part 2). Combining social network metrics of inclusion and reaction time measures of implicit stereotypes (the tendency to “think STEM, think men”), this study provides unique empirical evidence of the chilly climate women often report experiencing in STEM. Men with stronger implicit gender stereotypes had fewer social ties to female teammates. In turn, women (but not men) with fewer incoming cross-gender social ties reported worse career fit and engagement. Moderated mediation revealed that for women (but not men), cross-gender social exclusion was linked to more negative workplace outcomes via lower social fit. Effects of social exclusion were distinct from respect. We discuss the possible benefits of fostering positive cross-gender social relationships to promote women’s professional success in STEM.
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