Threatening the heart and mind of gender stereotypes: Can imagined contact influence the physiology of stereotype threat?

Abstract

Research shows that when a gender stereotype is made salient and the target of the stereotype is asked to perform in the stereotyped domain, targets of the stereotype often perform at a lower level compared to situations when the stereotype was not made salient (Spencer, Steele, & Quinn, 1999). Current models of stereotype threat show that increased physiological arousal and reduced working memory capacity partially explain this decrement in performance (Ben-Zeev, Fein, & Inzlicht, 2005;Schmader, Johns, & Forbes, 2008). Furthermore, the noticeable absence of female faculty and students in math and science departments at coed universities throughout the United States may increase the belief in gender stereotypes and discourage women from pursuing careers in these fields (Dasgupta & Asgari, 2004). Contact with counter-stereotypical exemplars, such as female science experts, decreases belief in gender stereotypes and increases women's motivation to pursue careers in science (Stout, Dasgupta, Hunsinger, & McManus, 2011). Thus, the present study examined whether imagining an interpersonal interaction with a counter-stereotypic exemplar removes the physiological and performance effects of stereotype threat. However, the stereotype threat manipulation failed to elicit a strong stereotype threat effect on performance or physiology. Only reaction time and high frequency heart rate variability were sensitive to the stereotype threat induction. The imagination manipulation significantly attenuated the physiological effects of stereotype threat, whereas the reaction time effects were only marginally significant. Limitations and future directions for stereotype threat and imagined contact are discussed.iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A Little Goes a Long Way: Low Working Memory Load Is Associated with Optimal Distractor Inhibition and Increased Vagal Control under Anxiety

“…The decline of HRV after low load may reflect WM capacity being increasingly filled with task-related load, consistent with the parallel load-dependent decreases in performance seen in Figure 3 ( Croizet et al, 2004 ). If HRV is interpreted as an indicator of resource availability, the yielded load-HRV quadratic relation is consistent with studies in which task HRV was negatively related to ongoing task demands and positively related to cognitive performance that requires high levels of available WM capacity ( Hansen et al, 2003 ; Lehrer et al, 2010 ; Elliot et al, 2011 ; Allen and Friedman, 2016 ).…”

Toward a social psychophysiology of vagally mediated heart rate variability: Concepts and methods in self‐regulation, emotion, and interpersonal processes

“…The general prediction that threat and other psychological stressors evoke decreases in vmHRV has extensive support (Balzarotti et al, 2017;Kim, Cheon, Bai, Lee, & Koo, 2018). For example, various social-evaluative threats evoke acute decreases in vmHRV (Allen & Friedman, 2016;Bosch et al, 2009), as do social interactions that involve threats to social status (Cloutier, Norman, Li, & Berntson, 2013;Cundiff, Smith, Baron, & Uchino, 2016;Kraus & Mendes, 2014), interpersonal conflicts (D'Antono, Moskowitz, Miners, & Archambault, 2005), and effortful attempts to influence interaction partners (Nealey, Smith, & Uchino, 2002;Smith, Ruiz, & Uchino, 2000). Worry and rumination evoke decreases in vmHRV (Ottaviani et al, 2016).…”

Diversity and representation: Key issues for psychophysiological science

“…For instance, a cultural perception of inadequacy, documented in both racial and gender groups, contributes to stereotype threat (Steele & Aronson, 1995), which then directly feeds the existence of group differences. In this issue, Allen and Friedman (2016) examine the effects of stereotype threat on inducing differences in physiological reactivity to task conditions, as well as factors that mitigate these effects. Awareness of these phenomena not only addresses the effects of social inequity, but can also inform the processes by which we identify and eliminate them.…”