Adding Fuel to the Collective Fire: Stereotype Threat, Solidarity, and Support for Change.

We hypothesize a yet-unstudied effect of experiencing systemic stereotype threat on women's collective action efforts: igniting women's support for other women and motivation to improve organizational gender balance. Hypotheses are supported in two surveys (Study 1: N = 1,365 business school alumnae; Study 2: N = 386 women Master of Business Administration [MBA]), and four experiments (Studies 3-6; total N = 1,897 working women). Studies 1 and 2 demonstrate that experiencing stereotype threat is negatively associated with women's domain-relevant engagement (supporting extant work on the negative effects of stereotype threat), but positively associated with women's support and advocacy of gender balance. Studies 3 to 6 provide causal evidence that stereotype threat activation leads to greater attitudes and intentions to support gender balance, ruling out negative affect as an alternative explanation and identifying ingroup solidarity as a mechanism. We discuss implications for working women, women leaders, and organizations striving to empower their entire workforce through developing equitable and inclusive practices.

The ironic effects of stigmatizing smoking: combining stereotype threat theory with behavioral pharmacology.

AIMS: Public service announcements often create media messages intended to stigmatize negative behaviors to reduce and prevent these behaviors. Drawing on social and cognitive psychology, we hypothesize that stigmatizing messages can create stereotype threat would be associated with shorter latency to first cigarette in the laboratory compared to the control condition. DESIGN: A double-blind, randomized, controlled trial in which participants completed two smoking lapse tasks, one at baseline and one post-intervention/control. SETTING: An experimental psychopharmacology laboratory in the western United States. PARTICIPANTS: A community sample of non-treatment-seeking daily smokers (n = 77) received either a stereotype threat (n = 39) or neutral/control (n = 38) message. INTERVENTION: Participants received either a stereotype threat message that stigmatized smoking or a control message. MEASUREMENTS: The primary outcome measure was participants' ability to delay smoking during the smoking lapse task in the experimental session FINDINGS: The difference in delay time during the experimental session at the point where 50% of each group had smoked was 3 minutes. Cox proportional hazard models revealed that participants in the stereotype threat group were significantly less able to delay initiating smoking compared to the control group (hazard ratio = 0.504, P = 0.010, 95% confidence interval = 0.30, 0.85), after controlling for baseline latency to smoke. CONCLUSIONS: Messages that elicit negative stereotypes of smokers operated as 'smoking-promoting messages' in the context of our controlled laboratory investigation.

A Novel Lumbar Motion Segment Classification to Predict Changes in Segmental Sagittal Alignment After Lateral Interbody Fixation.

STUDY DESIGN: Retrospective cohort study. OBJECTIVES: Lateral interbody fixation is being increasingly used for the correction of segmental sagittal parameters. One factor that affects postoperative correction is the resistance afforded by posterior hypertrophic facet joints in the degenerative lumbar spine. In this article, we describe a novel preoperative motion segment classification system to predict postoperative correction of segmental sagittal alignment after lateral lumbar interbody fusion. METHODS: Preoperative computed tomography scans were analyzed for segmental facet osseous anatomy for all patients undergoing lateral lumbar interbody fusion at 3 institutions. Each facet was assigned a facet grade (min = 0, max = 2), and the sum of the bilateral facet grades was the final motion segment grade (MSG; min = 0, max = 4). Preoperative and postoperative segmental lordosis was measured on standing lateral radiographs. Postoperative segmental lordosis was also conveyed as a percentage of the implanted graft lordosis (%GL). Simple linear regression was conducted to predict the postoperative segmental %GL according to MSG. RESULTS: A total of 36 patients with 59 operated levels were identified. There were 19 levels with MSG 0, 14 levels with MSG 1, 13 levels with MSG 2, 8 levels with MSG 3, and 5 levels with MSG 4. Mean %GL was 115%, 90%, 77%, 43%, and 5% for MSG 0 to 4, respectively. MSG significantly predicted postoperative %GL (P < .01). Each increase in MSG was associated with a 28% decrease in %GL. CONCLUSIONS: We propose a novel facet-based motion segment classification system that significantly predicted postoperative segmental lordosis after lateral lumbar interbody fusion.

Solidarity through shared disadvantage: Highlighting shared experiences of discrimination improves relations between stigmatized groups.

Intergroup relations research has largely focused on relations between members of dominant groups and members of disadvantaged groups. The small body of work examining intraminority intergroup relations, or relations between members of different disadvantaged groups, reveals that salient experiences of ingroup discrimination promote positive relations between groups that share a dimension of identity (e.g., 2 different racial minority groups) and negative relations between groups that do not share a dimension of identity (e.g., a racial minority group and a sexual minority group). In the present work, we propose that shared experiences of discrimination between groups that do not share an identity dimension can be used as a lever to facilitate positive intraminority intergroup relations. Five experiments examining relations among 4 different disadvantaged groups supported this hypothesis. Both blatant (Experiments 1 and 3) and subtle (Experiments 2, 3, and 4) connections to shared experiences of discrimination, or inducing a similarity-seeking mindset in the context of discrimination faced by one's ingroup (Experiment 5), increased support for policies benefiting the outgroup (Experiments 1, 2, and 4) and reduced intergroup bias (Experiments 3, 4, and 5). Taken together, these experiments provide converging evidence that highlighting shared experiences of discrimination can improve intergroup outcomes between stigmatized groups across dimensions of social identity. Implications of these findings for intraminority intergroup relations are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

Reducing medical students' stigmatization of people with chronic mental illness: a field intervention at the "living museum" state hospital art studio.

OBJECTIVE: The authors designed an intervention to reduce beginning medical students' stigmatization of people with chronic mental illness (CMI). METHODS: Pre-clinical medical students visited a state psychiatric facility's "Living Museum," a combination patient art studio/display space, as the intervention. During the visit, students interacted with artist-guides who showed their work and discussed their experiences creating art. Students completed a self-assessment survey developed to measure attitudes and feelings toward people with CMI after half of the class visited the Living Museum, constituting a Visit/No-Visit cross-sectional comparison. RESULTS: Students who visited the Living Museum (N=64), as compared with those who did not visit (N=110), endorsed more positive attitudes toward people with CMI. Among the students who visited, however, those who reported having spoken individually with a patient-artist (N=44), paradoxically, indicated less-positive feelings toward people with CMI. CONCLUSIONS: An intervention in which pre-clinical medical students visited patient-artist guides in an art-studio setting generally improved students' attitudes toward people with CMI. Thus, nontraditional psychiatric settings offer a valuable adjunct to more traditional clinical settings to reduce stigma when introducing medical students to the field of psychiatry.

Role-modelling in the operating room: medical student observations of exemplary behaviour.

CONTEXT: Training future doctors to develop an appropriate professional persona is an important goal of medical student education and residency training. Most medical education research paradigms on professionalism have focused largely on lapses (e.g. yelling as an example of communication failure) and tend to emphasise behaviour that should be avoided. The assumption is that, if left unchecked, students will see these negative behaviours exhibited by their role models and possibly emulate them, allowing the potential reinforcement of the inappropriate behaviours. OBJECTIVES: Identifying and characterising exemplary, or positive, behaviours can be similarly valuable to both medical students and residents as tangible examples of behaviours to strive towards. The goal of the present research was to determine and thematically define the exemplary professional actions that medical students observe in the intense and patient-focused environment of the operating room (OR). METHODS: Using qualitative methodology of content analysis and theme identification, we systematically documented the type of exemplary professional behaviours reported by medical students (n=263) when observing health care teams on an anaesthesia rotation in the OR. RESULTS: The analysis generated a taxonomy of exemplary OR behaviour that included six overarching themes (e.g. teamwork), 15 sub-themes (e.g. collegial) and numerous exemplars (e.g. showed mutual respect). These themes and sub-themes were then conceptually 'matched'--through the use of antonyms --to complement an existing framework focused on medical student reports of professional lapses witnessed during medical school. CONCLUSIONS: Year 3 medical students in the USA reported observing very positive, exemplary health care provider interactions that were diverse in focus. Themes were identified regarding the OR team members' interactions with patients (calm, communication, comforting), with one another (teamwork, respect) and with the medical students (teaching). This classification of exemplary OR behaviour contributes to our understanding of how professional behaviour is viewed and potentially emulated by medical students on surgical rotations.

Addressing OB/GYN family planning educational objectives at a faith-based institution using the TEACH program.

BACKGROUND: Traditionally family planning education is limited for obstetrics and gynecology residents training at faith-based institutions. We describe the first formalized educational program to teach contraception, sterilization, and abortion at a Catholic institution. STUDY DESIGN: We used a six-step curricular development process to design this formal educational intervention. We created a multiple-choice test that participants completed before and after the workshop. We compared average test scores using one-way analyses of variance and assessed psychometric properties of the test. RESULTS: All 16 obstetrics and gynecology residents at this institution participated in the one-day educational program entitled Teaching Everything About Contraceptive Health (TEACH). Residents improved their pre-test scores, on average, from 57% prior to the workshop to 89% immediately after completion of TEACH (p < .001). Improvement persisted 10 months after completion of the program (p < .001). Psychometric assessment supported the use of the instrument with adequate question difficulty and high discrimination. CONCLUSIONS: A one day curriculum designed to introduce family planning learning objectives at a Catholic obstetrics and gynecology residency program is feasible and results in improved resident knowledge.