Effects of attachment security priming on women's math performance.

Introduction: Activating people's sense of attachment security can buffer against psychological threats. Here we tested whether security priming can also buffer the adverse effects of stereotype threat among women. Method: Three studies (a pilot study (N = 79 women, 72 men), a laboratory study; N = 474 women, and an online study; N = 827 women) compared security priming to neutral and positive affect priming. Results: The pilot study revealed that women exposed to attachment security primes (e.g., the word "love") had better math performance than women exposed to neutral primes (e.g., "boat"). Men's math performance did not differ across priming conditions. Study 1 revealed that women showed better math performance in the attachment security priming condition than in the neutral or positive (e.g., "luck") priming conditions. The effect was observed among women high on math identification. In Study 2, despite an effect of security priming on the manipulation check [higher State Adult Attachment Measure (SAAM) security score], security did not buffer stereotype threat effects. Discussion: Our findings provide partial support to the idea that security priming (an interpersonal process) can buffer stereotype threat (an intergroup process). Theoretical and practical implications related to attachment security priming and stereotype threat are discussed.

Support for Social Change Among Members of Advantaged Groups: The Role of a Dual Identity Representation and Accepting Intergroup Contact.

This preregistered research analyzed survey data from ethnic and religious advantaged groups in 12 countries (N = 2,304) to examine the interplay between two determinants of support for social change toward intergroup equality. Drawing on the needs-based model and the common-ingroup identity model, we hypothesized that the experience of accepting intergroup contact and the endorsement of a dual identity representation of intergroup relations would be associated with greater support for equality. Furthermore, integrating the logic of both models, we tested the novel hypothesis that the positive effect of accepting contact on support for equality would be stronger under a high (vs. low) dual identity representation. While the predicted main effects received empirical support, we found no evidence for the expected interaction. These findings suggest that interventions to foster support for social change among advantaged group members can promote accepting contact and a dual identity representation independently of each other.

High-Quality Contact With Fellow Majority Group Students Is Associated With Better Academic Performance of Minority Group Students.

We examined the association between intergroup contact and academic performance at university among minority students in a context with a segregated pre-university school system. Study 1 tested whether participation in a group dynamics course, which involves intimate interpersonal contact between Israeli Arab (n = 125) and Jewish students, was associated with better grade point average (GPA). As expected, Arab students who participated in the course had a higher GPA than those who did not, even when controlling for pre-university achievements. The corresponding difference among Jews was substantially smaller. Study 2 (N = 90), a longitudinal study, revealed that the quality of contact with Jewish students at university was associated with Arab students' subsequent higher GPA, even when controlling for pre-university contact, proxies of academic achievements, and perceptions of intergroup relations. The quality of contact with Jewish students was also associated with Arab students' sense of academic belonging. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Need satisfaction in intergroup contact: A multinational study of pathways toward social change.

What role does intergroup contact play in promoting support for social change toward greater social equality? Drawing on the needs-based model of reconciliation, we theorized that when inequality between groups is perceived as illegitimate, disadvantaged group members will experience a need for empowerment and advantaged group members a need for acceptance. When intergroup contact satisfies each group's needs, it should result in more mutual support for social change. Using four sets of survey data collected through the Zurich Intergroup Project in 23 countries, we tested several preregistered predictions, derived from the above reasoning, across a large variety of operationalizations. Two studies of disadvantaged groups (Ns = 689 ethnic minority members in Study 1 and 3,382 sexual/gender minorities in Study 2) support the hypothesis that, after accounting for the effects of intergroup contact and perceived illegitimacy, satisfying the need for empowerment (but not acceptance) during contact is positively related to support for social change. Two studies with advantaged groups (Ns = 2,937 ethnic majority members in Study 3 and 4,203 cis-heterosexual individuals in Study 4) showed that, after accounting for illegitimacy and intergroup contact, satisfying the need for acceptance (but also empowerment) is positively related to support for social change. Overall, findings suggest that intergroup contact is compatible with efforts to promote social change when group-specific needs are met. Thus, to encourage support for social change among both disadvantaged and advantaged group members, it is essential that, besides promoting mutual acceptance, intergroup contact interventions also give voice to and empower members of disadvantaged groups. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Need some help, honey? Dependency-oriented helping relations between women and men in the domestic sphere.

Five studies (N = 2,339) found that men and women, especially if high on benevolent sexism, engage in dependency-oriented cross-gender helping relations in domestic tasks. Study 1 revealed that, in response to hypothetical scenarios of cross-gender helping interactions in traditionally feminine domains (e.g., cooking a dish), men's benevolent sexism correlated with their intentions to seek dependency-oriented help (direct assistance, rather than tools for autonomous coping) from women, and women's benevolent sexism correlated with their intentions to provide dependency-oriented help to men. Study 2 revealed that the association between benevolent sexism and (a) men's intentions to seek, and (b) women's intentions to provide dependency-oriented help occurs in cross-gender, but not in same-gender, interactions. Studies 3 and 4 replicated these patterns while examining help-seeking (among men) and help-providing (among women) behavior in a test about common domestic tasks (e.g., how to clean a burned pot). Study 5 focused on heterosexual couples, revealing that when encountering difficulties in traditionally feminine domestic tasks (e.g., getting the kids ready for kindergarten): (a) men, especially if high on benevolent sexism, reported seeking more dependency-oriented help from their partners than women; (b) women, especially if high on benevolent sexism, reported providing more dependency-oriented help to their partners than men; and (c) engagement in dependency-oriented helping predicted an unequal division of household labor. We discuss these findings in light of previous theorizing and research on the social psychological barriers that reinforce men's relatively low involvement in the domestic sphere. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Author Correction: A large-scale test of the link between intergroup contact and support for social change.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

A Needs-Based Support for #MeToo: Power and Morality Needs Shape Women's and Men's Support of the Campaign.

The #MeToo campaign mobilized millions of women around the world to draw attention to the pervasiveness of sexual harassment. We conducted an online survey in Hungary (N = 10,293) immediately at the campaign's onset, and two subsequent studies in Israel and Germany (Ns = 356, 413) after it peaked, to reveal the motivations underlying people's support for, or criticism of the campaign. Integrating the assumptions of the needs-based model of reconciliation and system justification theory, we predicted and found that, in all three samples, lower gender system justification was associated with (a) women's perception of the campaign as empowering, and men's (b) higher perception of the campaign as an opportunity for moral improvement, and (c) lower perception of the campaign as wrongfully staining men's reputation. As expected, in all three samples, (a) perceptions of the campaign as empowering among women, and an opportunity for moral improvement among men, were associated with greater campaign support, whereas (b) men's perceptions of the campaign as wrongfully staining their moral reputation were associated with lower campaign support. Thus, the link between system justification and campaign support was mediated by women's empowerment needs, and men's morality-related needs. In addition, perceptions of the campaign as disempowering their ingroup (i.e., presenting a status threat) predicted reduced campaign support among men in the Hungarian and Israeli samples, but not the German sample. We discuss the practical implications of these results for gender equality movements in general, and sexual harassment in particular, by identifying the psychological obstacles and catalysts of women's and men's support for social change.

A large-scale test of the link between intergroup contact and support for social change.

Guided by the early findings of social scientists, practitioners have long advocated for greater contact between groups to reduce prejudice and increase social cohesion. Recent work, however, suggests that intergroup contact can undermine support for social change towards greater equality, especially among disadvantaged group members. Using a large and heterogeneous dataset (12,997 individuals from 69 countries), we demonstrate that intergroup contact and support for social change towards greater equality are positively associated among members of advantaged groups (ethnic majorities and cis-heterosexuals) but negatively associated among disadvantaged groups (ethnic minorities and sexual and gender minorities). Specification-curve analysis revealed important variation in the size-and at times, direction-of correlations, depending on how contact and support for social change were measured. This allowed us to identify one type of support for change-willingness to work in solidarity- that is positively associated with intergroup contact among both advantaged and disadvantaged group members.

The beauty myth: Prescriptive beauty norms for women reflect hierarchy-enhancing motivations leading to discriminatory employment practices.

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported online in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology on Sep 5 2019 (see record 2019-53417-001). In the article, the first sentence was not set as an epigraph on the first page of the article due to a printer error. All versions of this article have been corrected.] We proposed that the Prescriptive Beauty Norm (PBN), the injunctive demand for women to intensively pursue beauty, reflects motives to maintain gender hierarchy and translates into employment discrimination. In Studies 1a and 1b, the PBN (distinct from other "beauty myth" [Wolf, 1990] components; namely, bodily and grooming standards, and attainability beliefs) uniquely correlated with hierarchy-supporting values and ideologies. In Study 2, experimentally threatening (vs. affirming) gender hierarchy increased PBN endorsement among sexist (but not nonsexist) participants, an effect mediated by power values. In Studies 3 and 4, participants who scored high (vs. low) in sexism (Study 3) and social dominance orientation (Study 4) enforced higher appearance requirements for women in powerful (vs. entry-level), masculine professions. This "beauty tax" targeted women more than men (Study 3) and was mediated by PBN endorsement (Study 4). Illustrating real-life implications, in an organizational setting (Study 5), sexism predicted penalizing "insufficiently groomed" female candidates more for high-power (vs. low-power) jobs. Finally, supporting the hypothesis that the PBN represents a contemporary, subtle replacement for traditional hierarchy-maintaining ideologies that have lost their influence in modern secular society, Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) correlated with PBN endorsement among secular more than among religious respondents (Study 6), whose "ideological arsenal" contains more straightforward means to police women. We discuss practical implications for gender equality, as well as theoretical implications for reconciling evolutionary and feminist perspectives on beauty norms. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Advantaged- and disadvantaged-group members have motivations similar to those of defenders and attackers, but their psychological characteristics are fundamentally different.

Modern societies are characterized by group-based hierarchies. Similar to attackers, disadvantaged-group members wish to change the status quo; like defenders, advantaged-group members wish to protect it. However, the psychological arrays that are typical of disadvantaged- and advantaged-group members are opposite to those of attackers and defenders - suggesting that the Attacker-Defender Game does not capture the dynamics between advantaged and disadvantaged groups.

Power matters: The role of power and morality needs in competitive victimhood among advantaged and disadvantaged groups.

Competitive victimhood denotes group members' efforts to establish that their ingroup has suffered greater injustice than an adversarial outgroup. Previous research in contexts of structural inequality has stressed the role of the need to defend the ingroup's moral identity, rather than the need for power, in leading advantaged and disadvantaged group members to engage in competitive victimhood. Focusing on the structural inequality between Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel (Study 1) and Israeli women and men (Study 2), we found that across all groups and contexts, power needs predicted competitive victimhood. Also, the need to protect the ingroup's moral reputation (i.e., defensive moral needs) positively predicted competitive victimhood, whereas among advantaged group members, the need to protect the ingroup's moral essence negatively predicted competitive victimhood. Finally, exploratory analyses revealed that competitive victimhood correlated, positively for advantaged and negatively for disadvantaged group members, with support for policies securing realistic and symbolic resources for the disadvantaged group. Theoretical and practical implications of these results, which are consistent with the logic of the needs-based model of reconciliation, are discussed.

Experimental Studies on State Self-Objectification: A Review and an Integrative Process Model.

This paper provides an organizing framework for the experimental research on the effects of state self-objectification on women. We explain why this body of work, which had grown rapidly in the last 20 years, departs from the original formulation of objectification theory (Fredrickson and Roberts, 1997). We compare the different operationalizations of state self-objectification and examine how they map onto its theoretical definition, concluding that the operationalizations have focused mostly on one component of this construct (concerns about one's physical appearance) while neglecting others (adopting a third-person perspective and treating oneself as a dehumanized object). We review the main findings of studies that experimentally induced state self-objectification and examined its affective, motivational, behavioral, cognitive, and physiological outcomes. We note that three core outcomes of this state as specified by objectification theory (safety anxiety, reduced flow experiences, and awareness of internal body states) have hardly been examined so far. Most importantly, we introduce an integrative process model, suggesting that the reported effects are triggered by four different mechanisms: appearance monitoring, experience of discrepancy from appearance standards, stereotype threat, and activation of the "sex object" schema. We propose strategies for distinguishing between these mechanisms and explain the theoretical and practical importance of doing so.

Positive stereotypes, negative outcomes: Reminders of the positive components of complementary gender stereotypes impair performance in counter-stereotypical tasks.

Gender stereotypes are complementary: Women are perceived to be communal but not agentic, whereas men are perceived to be agentic but not communal. The present research tested whether exposure to reminders of the positive components of these gender stereotypes can lead to stereotype threat and subsequent performance deficits on the complementary dimension. Study 1 (N = 116 female participants) revealed that compared to a control/no-stereotype condition, exposure to reminders of the stereotype about women's communality (but not to reminders of the stereotype about women's beauty) impaired women's math performance. In Study 2 (N = 86 male participants), reminders of the stereotype about men's agency (vs. a control/no-stereotype condition) impaired men's performance in a test of socio-emotional abilities. Consistent with previous research on stereotype threat, in both studies the effect was evident among participants with high domain identification. These findings extend our understanding of the potentially adverse implications of seemingly positive gender stereotypes.

Agents of Reconciliation: Agency-Affirmation Promotes Constructive Tendencies Following Transgressions in Low-Commitment Relationships.

Conflicting parties experience threats to both their agency and morality, but the experience of agency-threat exerts more influence on their behavior, leading to relationship-destructive tendencies. Whereas high-commitment relationships facilitate constructive tendencies despite the conflict, we theorized that in low-commitment relationships, affirming the adversary's agency is a prerequisite for facilitating more constructive tendencies. Focusing on sibling conflicts, Study 1 found that when commitment was low (rather than high), agency-affirmation increased participants' constructive tendencies toward their brother/sister compared with a control/no-affirmation condition. A corresponding morality-affirmation did not affect participants' tendencies. Study 2 replicated these results in workplace conflicts and further found that the positive effect of agency-affirmation in low-commitment relationships was mediated by participants' wish to restore their morality. Study 3 induced a conflict between lab participants and manipulated their commitment. Again, in the low- (rather than high-) commitment condition, agency-affirmation increased participants' wish to restore their morality, leading to constructive behavior.

A Whole Other Story: Inclusive Victimhood Narratives Reduce Competitive Victimhood and Intergroup Hostility.

Conflict narratives, having at their core the belief that the ingroup suffered more than the outgroup (competitive victimhood), are key in maintaining conflicts. Three experiments conducted with Jewish Israelis (Study 1), Turkish Kurds (Study 2), and Americans (Study 3) tested whether conflict narratives can reduce conflict. Studies 1 and 3 showed that people respond to inclusive victimhood narratives that emphasize both ingroup and outgroup suffering with a reduction in competitive victimhood and, in turn, reduced support for aggressive policies-but only when people were relatively less concerned that acknowledgment of outgroup suffering might risk loss of third-party support. Study 2 further found that inclusive narratives reduce conflict for low-power groups, yet without being moderated by concern. Together, these studies show that inclusive victimhood narratives can reduce conflict when people are not concerned about losing third-party support. The important role of third parties in conflict resolution is discussed.

Help to perpetuate traditional gender roles: Benevolent sexism increases engagement in dependency-oriented cross-gender helping.

Based on theorizing that helping relations may serve as a subtle mechanism to reinforce intergroup inequality, the present research (N = 1,315) examined the relation between benevolent sexism (i.e., a chivalrous yet subtly oppressive view of women) and helping. In cross-gender interactions, the endorsement of (Studies 1, 3, and 4) or exposure to (Study 2) benevolent sexism predicted (a) men's preference to provide women with dependency-oriented help (i.e., direct assistance) rather than tools for autonomous coping, and (b) women's preference to seek dependency-oriented help rather than tools for autonomous coping. Benevolent sexism did not predict men's and women's engagement in dependency-oriented helping relations in same-gender interactions. Studies 1 and 2 examined behavioral intentions in response to a series of hypothetical scenarios; Studies 3 and 4 examined actual behavior in tests of mathematical and logical ability, and pointed to assumed partner's expectations as a potential mediator. The converging evidence supports the hypothesis that benevolent sexism encourages engagement in cross-gender helping relations that perpetuate traditional gender roles.

Feeling both victim and perpetrator: investigating duality within the needs-based model.

Victimized versus perpetrating individuals or groups are known to experience enhanced needs for empowerment or acceptance, respectively. The present research examined the emotional needs and consequent anti- and prosocial behaviors (e.g., vengefulness vs. helpfulness) of individuals or groups serving both as victims and perpetrators simultaneously ("duals"). Focusing on interpersonal transgressions, Study 1 used variations of the dictator game to induce participants with victimization, perpetration, duality, or none (control). Duals showed heightened needs for both empowerment and acceptance and equal willingness to reconcile following either empowering or accepting messages from their adversaries. However, duals' need for empowerment overrode their need for acceptance in determining behavior. Similar to victims, and unlike perpetrators, duals showed greater antisocial (rather than prosocial) behavior. Study 2 replicated this pattern on the intergroup level, inducing Israeli Jews with victimization, perpetration, or duality using a recall task referring to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Demystifying values-affirmation interventions: writing about social belonging is a key to buffering against identity threat.

Two experiments examined for the first time whether the specific content of participant-generated affirmation essays-in particular, writing about social belonging-facilitated an affirmation intervention's ability to reduce identity threat among negatively stereotyped students. Study 1, a field experiment, revealed that seventh graders assigned to a values-affirmation condition wrote about social belonging more than those assigned to a control condition. Writing about belonging, in turn, improved the grade point average (GPA) of Black, but not White students. In Study 2, using a modified "belonging-affirmation" intervention, we directly manipulated writing about social belonging before a math test described as diagnostic of math ability. The more female participants wrote about belonging, the better they performed, while there was no effect of writing about belonging for males. Writing about social belonging improved performance only for members of negatively stereotyped groups. Implications for self-affirmation theory and practice are discussed.

When suffering begets suffering: the psychology of competitive victimhood between adversarial groups in violent conflicts.

Inter-group competitive victimhood (CV) describes the efforts of members of groups involved in violent conflicts to establish that their group has suffered more than their adversarial group. Such efforts contribute to conflicts' escalation and impede their peaceful resolution. CV stems from groups' general tendency to compete with each other, along with the deep sense of victimization resulting from conflicts. The authors point to biases that contribute to groups' engagement in CV, describe five dimensions of victimhood over which groups may compete, and contend that such competition serves various functions that contribute to the maintenance of conflicts. Drawing on the Needs-Based Model, they suggest that CV may reflect groups' motivations to restore power or moral acceptance. They then review evidence of the negative consequences of CV for inter-group forgiveness and suggest potential strategies to reduce CV. Finally, the authors discuss potential moderators and directions for future research.

Promoting reconciliation through the satisfaction of the emotional needs of victimized and perpetrating group members: the needs-based model of reconciliation.

Guided by the Needs-Based Model of Reconciliation, we hypothesized that being a member of a victimized group would be associated with a threat to the status and power of one's ingroup, whereas being a member of a perpetrating group would threaten the image of the ingroup as moral and socially acceptable. A social exchange interaction through which victims feel empowered by their perpetrators and perpetrators feel accepted by their victims was thus predicted to enhance the parties' willingness to reconcile. Supporting the predictions across two experiments, members of the perpetrator group (Jews in Study 1 and Germans in Study 2) showed greater willingness to reconcile when they received a message of acceptance, rather than empowerment, from a member of the victimized group. Members of the victimized group (Arabs in Study 1 and Jews in Study 2) demonstrated the opposite effect. Applied and theoretical implications of these results are discussed.