White women's automatic attentional adhesion to sexism in the face of racism

Abstract

Past research has demonstrated members of marginalized groups employ increased attentional bias to ingroup threats following situational exposure to ingroup prejudice (e.g., women's attention bias to sexism when anticipating sexism). Yet, prejudices towards similarly stigmatized groups are perceived to co-occur, such that racism imbues anticipated sexism for White women. The present research examined if White women demonstrate increased automatic attentional adhesion to ingroup threats following situational exposure to outgroup prejudice. Across five studies, White women demonstrated greater automatic attentional adhesion to sexism (Studies 1–2), but not racism (Studies 3a-3b), when anticipating interacting with a racist or sexist evaluator compared to a neutral evaluator. Yet, exposure to a similarly stigmatized expert decreased automatic attentional adhesion to sexism in a threatening context for White women (Study 4). These findings suggest a broad set of contexts that may elicit attentional bias to threat and demonstrate that identity safety cues inhibit an automatic stigma response.