Reactions to prejudicial statements: The influence of statement content and characteristics of the commenter.

Cunningham, George B.; Ferreira, Mauricio; Fink, Janet

doi:10.1037/a0012967

Cited by 19 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…Results showed that women perceived a male but not a female leader displaying QB(-type) (vs. neutral) behavior as having less positive intent toward women, which in turn related to stronger attributions of sexism. This finding is consistent with research demonstrating that possible displays of sexism directed toward women are less likely to be noticed when the source of this behavior is a woman ( Baron et al, 1991 ; Barreto and Ellemers, 2005 ; Cunningham et al, 2009 ). This is the first research, however, to empirically demonstrate a similarity between QB(-type) behavior and sexism (which, as outlined before, are similar in behaviors but conceptually very different given their different underlying concerns or antecedents).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

“…This lower skepticism follows from people tending to ascribe positive intent to someone expressing themselves negatively about their ingroup: They believe that the speaker intends to be constructive and means well ( Hornsey and Imani, 2004 ). Furthermore, an ingroup member would be a non-prototypical source of bias, and bias from a non-prototypical source (e.g., sexism from a female, racism from an ethnic minority) is less likely to be recognized as such ( Baron et al, 1991 ; Inman and Baron, 1996 ; Inman et al, 1998 ; Cunningham et al, 2009 ). Because of this non-prototypicality, behavior that would otherwise be perceived as negative might not necessarily be seen as such when the source of this behavior is an ingroup member.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Perpetuating Inequality: Junior Women Do Not See Queen Bee Behavior as Negative but Are Nonetheless Negatively Affected by It

2018

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Previous research has revealed that women may attempt to avoid negative gender stereotypes in organizations through self-group distancing, or “queen bee”, behaviors: emphasizing masculine qualities, distancing themselves from other women, and legitimizing organizational inequality. Factors that increase self-group distancing have been identified (e.g., existing discrimination and low group identification), but it is unknown how self-group distancing by an ingroup leader is perceived by and affects subordinates of the negatively stereotyped group. In the current study, female participants received ambiguous negative feedback from a male versus female leader displaying queen bee-type versus neutral behavior. As expected, a male leader displaying queen bee-type behavior was seen as having less positive intent than a male leader displaying neutral behavior, which in turn increased how sexist he was perceived to be. A female leader displaying queen bee (vs. neutral) behavior was not seen as having less positive intent, which thus did not indirectly influence perceived sexism. Behavior of both male and female leaders did affect junior women: participants exposed to a leader displaying queen bee-type behavior reported more anger, sadness, and anxiety than participants exposed to a leader displaying neutral behavior. These data provide further evidence that simply adding more women or minorities in key senior positions is insufficient to change inequality if bias in the organization is not tackled. Specifically, exposure to gender inequality can steer female leaders to endorse–rather than change–stereotypes about women, and this behavior is particularly consequential because it (a) might not be recognized as bias and (b) exerts negative effects.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perpetuating Inequality: Junior Women Do Not See Queen Bee Behavior as Negative but Are Nonetheless Negatively Affected by It

2018

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“…Whether the relationship is congruent with prototypical expectations is especially crucial. “Most often, this entails a person with more power acting against a person or group with less power” (Cunningham, Ferreira, & Fink, , p. 60). Scholars recognize, however, that nonprototypical relationships may change the interpretation of nominally disparaging comments.…”

Section: The Role Of Words In Intergroup Relationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Motives matter. Because some observers may assume that a member of the disparaged group would not make disparaging comments about her or his own group (Cunningham et al, , p. 61), they conclude that seeming slurs must not have been intended to be disparaging. Just as in so many areas of law (e.g., criminal assault, hate crimes), perceived intentions provide a context for interpreting actions.…”

Section: The Role Of Words In Intergroup Relationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Taming Uncivil Discourse

Gibson

Epstein

Magarian

2019

Political Psychology

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In an era of seemingly intense populist politics, a variety of issues of intergroup prejudice, discrimination, and conflict have moved center stage in much of the industrialized world. Among these is “political correctness” and, in particular, what constitutes a legitimate discourse of political and social conflict and opposition. Yet the meaning of legitimate discourse is being turned on its head as some disparaged groups seek to reclaim, or reappropriate, slurs directed against them. Using as a context a U.S. Supreme Court case about whether “The Slants”—a band named after a traditional slur against Asians—can trademark its name, we test several hypotheses about reappropriation processes based on a nationally representative sample with an oversample of East Asian Americans and several survey experiments. We find that motives attributions influence how people understand and evaluate potentially disparaging words. In particular, when reappropriation motives are perceived, insulting words are judged to be less insulting. In this sense, uncivil discourse can to some degree be tamed.

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“…Previous research has also shown that the same statement is deemed to be more offensive when it is made by an individual who might be expected to be in a more dominant position (Baron et al, 1991;Cunningham et al, 2009). However, to the best of our knowledge, it has never been shown that, under some specific conditions, people who make offensive statements are deemed more dominant.…”

mentioning

confidence: 82%

Dominant Jerks: People infer dominance from the utterance of challenging and offensive statements

E¹,

Altay²,

A³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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People sometimes knowingly utter offensive statements. This apparently dysfunctional behavior might be used to display one’s dominance: if no one challenges the speaker even though they make offensive statements, this suggests the speaker is in a dominant position. In three online experiments (N = 895, UK, US, Ireland), participants read vignettes in which a speaker shared either an offensive stereotype (Experiment 1), an offensive rumor (Experiment 2) or a non-offensive statement (Experiment 3). The audience was described as initially agreeing or disagreeing with the statement and, once the speaker had uttered the statement, the audience either assented or dissented. Participants were asked to rate the speaker on various traits. As predicted, speakers who made offensive statements with which the audience initially disagreed, but then assented to were deemed to be more dominant, and more likely to be the boss of the audience members. This was not the case for non-offensive statements, when the audience had other reasons, besides dominance, to assent to a speaker’s statement they initially disagreed with. These results suggest that offensive statements can be used as a dominance display, which might help explain the cultural success of, for instance, offensive rumors.

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Reactions to prejudicial statements: The influence of statement content and characteristics of the commenter.

Cited by 19 publications

References 35 publications

Perpetuating Inequality: Junior Women Do Not See Queen Bee Behavior as Negative but Are Nonetheless Negatively Affected by It

Perpetuating Inequality: Junior Women Do Not See Queen Bee Behavior as Negative but Are Nonetheless Negatively Affected by It

Taming Uncivil Discourse

Dominant Jerks: People infer dominance from the utterance of challenging and offensive statements

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