Societal Stereotypes Research Articles

The Impact of Aging Policy on Societal Age Stereotypes and Ageism

Background and ObjectivesWhile studies have researched ageism in public policy, few investigated the impact of aging policy on ageism—typically, an unintended consequence. Ageism is linked to $63 billion in health care costs, so its antecedents are of interest. We test the association between Aging Policy Agenda Setting and Societal Age Stereotypes and hypothesize a mediating pathway via Medicalization of Aging, moderated by demographics.Research Design and MethodsScholars identified Singapore’s Pioneer Generation Policy (PGP) as one of the largest policy implementations in recent years, where the agenda was set by the Prime Minister at an equivalent State of the Union address in 2013, and US$7 billion allocated to fund outpatient health care costs for aged 65 years or older. More than 400,000 older adults received a PGP card and home visits by trained volunteers who co-devised a personalized utilization plan. We leveraged a 10-billion-word data set with more than 30 million newspaper and magazine articles to dynamically track Societal Age Stereotype scores over 8 years from pre- to postpolicy implementation.ResultsSocietal Age Stereotypes followed a quadratic trend: Prior to the Aging Policy Agenda Setting from 2010 to 2014, stereotypes were trending positive; after 2014, it trended downward to become more negative. Medicalization of Aging mediated the relationship between Aging Policy Agenda Setting and Societal Age Stereotypes. Furthermore, Old-age Support Ratio moderated the mediational model, suggesting that the impact of policy on medicalization is stronger when a society is more aged.Discussion and ImplicationsWe provided a framework for policymakers to ameliorate the unintended consequences of aging policies on societal ageism—if unaddressed, it will exert an insidious toll on older adults, even if initial policies are well-intentioned.

19.3 TRAUMA-FOCUSED CBT FOR LGBTQ YOUTH OF COLOR WHO EXPERIENCE COMMERCIAL SEXUAL EXPLOITATION

LGBTQ youth of color are at heightened risk for experiencing commercial sexual exploitation (CSE) and developing complex traumatic stress reactions. This presentation describes tailoring applications of trauma-focused CBT (TF-CBT) for LGBTQ youth of color who experience CSE. Kelly Kinnish, PhD, and Judith Cohen, MD, describe TF-CBT modifications for LGBTQ youth of color who experience CSE developed through Project Intersect in Atlanta and a National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) learning community. In addition to general TF-CBT modifications for youth who experience CSE, additional specific tailoring modifications include: 1) incorporating into youth and caregiver psychoeducation, trauma narration, and processing the impact of false societal stereotypes about LGBTQ youth of color on their trauma experiences, reminders, vulnerability to CSE, view of self, and relationship to others (eg, trust, intimacy); 2) integrating the impact of systemic racism, heterosexism, and/or cisgenderism into all TF-CBT components; and 3) enhancing caregiver support/advocacy related to intersectional trauma. Through describing composite cases, Drs. Kinnish and Cohen illustrate how TF-CBT is successfully tailored for LGBTQ youth of color who experience CSE. With appropriate applications and tailoring, TF-CBT can be helpful for LGBTQ youth of trauma who experience CSE.

Experimental evidence of disparities in biology teachers’ responses to student writing

ABSTRACT Writing activities can function as powerful teaching tools in science education – but are their benefits realised equitably? The answer may depend in part on how teachers interpret and respond to student writing in light of societal stereotypes that link scientific competence, linguistic competence, and racial, ethnic, or gender identity. In this experiment, high school biology teachers (n = 70) in a U.S. state evaluated and gave feedback on a purported student writing sample. No main effect of student writer’s racialised/gendered identity was found; however, non-Hispanic White teachers gave lower ratings when the writing sample was attributed to a Latina female student rather than a non-Hispanic White male student. The reverse pattern was apparent in the ratings of Hispanic teachers and other teachers of colour. All teachers wrote generally similar feedback, but non-Hispanic teachers of colour and White teachers wrote shorter feedback to a Latina student when ‘her’ score was low, a relationship which did not appear in feedback written to a non-Hispanic White male student. Although most of these disparities did not exhibit statistical significance, many effect sizes were relatively large and may merit further study. Practical implications for equity in science education are discussed.

Societal Age Stereotypes in the U.S. and U.K. from a Media Database of 1.1 Billion Words.

Recently, 194 World Health Organization member states called on the international organization to develop a global campaign to combat ageism, citing its alarming ubiquity, insidious threat to health, and prevalence in the media. Existing media studies of age stereotypes have mostly been single-sourced. This study harnesses a 1.1-billion-word media database comprising the British National Corpus and Corpus of Contemporary American English—with genres including spoken/television, fiction, magazines, newspapers—to provide a comprehensive view of ageism in the United Kingdom and United States. The US and UK were chosen as they are home to the largest media conglomerates with tremendous power to shape public opinion. The most commonly used synonym of older adults was identified, and its most frequently used descriptors were analyzed for valence. Such computational linguistics techniques represent a new advance in studying aging narratives. The key finding is consistent, though no less alarming: Negative descriptions of older adults outnumber positive ones by six times. Negative descriptions tend to be physical, while positive ones tend to be behavioral. Magazines contain the highest levels of ageism, followed by the spoken genre, newspapers, and fiction. Findings underscore the need to increase public awareness of ageism and lay the groundwork to design targeted societal campaigns to tackle ageism—one of our generation’s most pernicious threats.

Children acknowledge physical constraints less when actors behave stereotypically: Gender stereotypes as a case study.

A fundamental part of understanding structural inequality is recognizing that constrained choices, particularly those that align with societal stereotypes, are poor indicators of a person's desires. This study examined whether children (N=246 U.S. children, 53% female; 61% White, 24% Latinx; 5-10years) acknowledge constraints in this way when reasoning about gender-stereotypical choices, relative to gender-neutral and gender-counterstereotypical choices. Results indicated that children more frequently inferred preferences regardless of whether the actor was constrained when reasoning about gender-stereotypical choices, as compared to gender-neutral or gender-counterstereotypical choices. We also found evidence of an age-related increase in the general tendency to acknowledge constraints. We discuss the broader implications of these results for children's understanding of constraints within society.

Measuring Societal Biases from Text Corpora with Smoothed First-Order Co-occurrence

Text corpora are widely used resources for measuring societal biases and stereotypes. The common approach to measuring such biases using a corpus is by calculating the similarities between the embedding vector of a word (like nurse) and the vectors of the representative words of the concepts of interest (such as genders). In this study, we show that, depending on what one aims to quantify as bias, this commonly-used approach can introduce non-relevant concepts into bias measurement. We propose an alternative approach to bias measurement utilizing the smoothed first-order co-occurrence relations between the word and the representative concept words, which we derive by reconstructing the co-occurrence estimates inherent in word embedding models. We compare these approaches by conducting several experiments on the scenario of measuring gender bias of occupational words, according to an English Wikipedia corpus. Our experiments show higher correlations of the measured gender bias with the actual gender bias statistics of the U.S. job market – on two collections and with a variety of word embedding models – using the first-order approach in comparison with the vector similarity-based approaches. The first-order approach also suggests a more severe bias towards female in a few specific occupations than the other approaches.

An fNIRS Investigation of Masculinity, Femininity, and Sex on Nonparents' Empathic Response to Infant Cries.

According to societal stereotypes, the female sex and people who are more feminine have been considered to be more empathic than males and people who are more masculine. Therefore, females and feminine individuals are expected to respond more empathically to an infant’s cries. While this hypothesis was tested using self-report scales, it has not been explored thoroughly in terms of prefrontal cortex (PFC) activity, which may be a more objective means of measuring empathy. Specifically, the medial PFC (mPFC) is involved in social cognitive processing and thus a good proxy to measure the level of empathy. This study aims to (1) assess if the empathic response, in terms of medial PFC (mPFC) activity, to infant cries differ between sexes; (2) investigate if the empathic response is moderated by levels of masculinity and femininity. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) was used to measure nonparent participants’ (18 males, 20 females) mPFC response to infant cries of different pitches (high and low). The Toronto Empathy Questionnaire was used to measure trait empathy and Bem’s Sex Role Inventory was used to measure the level of masculinity and femininity. Results revealed that biological sex had no significant effect on the empathic response towards infant cries of varying pitch. Furthermore, masculinity, not femininity, was correlated with an increase in empathic response in the mPFC to high but not low-pitch infant cries. We reason that this is because of the higher aversiveness and inflicted pain associated with higher-pitched cries, which induces more emotional and physical pain that masculine individuals seek to avoid. Overall, the results suggest that greater masculinity would imply greater mentalizing and processing of empathy-related information.

Videoconferencing Etiquette: Promoting Gender Equity During Virtual Meetings.

Considerable evidence has demonstrated that gender influences interactions during in-person meetings, most commonly, negatively impacting women and persons of color. Pervasive gender stereotypes about roles that were (and are) occupied by men and women lead to implicit assumptions about competency in said roles. For example, women may receive more negative verbal interruptions or nonverbal cues that undermine their authority as a leader, a stereotypically male-typed role. The coronavirus pandemic has led to the rapid rise in videoconferencing in professional interactions; however, little is known about videoconferencing etiquette and how gender bias permeates to this new setting. Although there are many benefits to the use of this technology, it has the potential to reinforce gender bias rooted in cultural and societal norms, gender stereotypes, and traditional gender roles. The well-documented implicit biases that have been shown to favor men over women during in-person meetings may translate to further gender gaps in leadership during virtual meetings. It is also possible that videoconferencing could be used to reduce gender bias, but until we have research to shine a light on this topic, this article provides 10 tips for promoting gender equity during virtual meetings.

Do Self-Help Groups Empower Women? Evidences from Nuh District of Haryana

Men and women complement each other in many aspects of life. Nevertheless, when we talk about empowerment, there is big diversity. There are often pressures and opposition from within the family due to societal stereotypes that force women to take care of the house as her key responsibility. Unequal or unfair treatments marginalized the women and hindered their participation in socio-economic growth of the country. However, the findings of the studies showed that women participation in economic activities produced large gains in economic welfare. This study was an attempt to contribute in the debate about how the self-help groups were helpful to empower the women; as women empowerment overcame the gender disparity (the gap between men and women) and increased the participation of women in economic as politic activities of the country. For this purpose, the primary data was collected from the Nuh district of Haryana, considered the most backward district of India. This study showed that self-help group intervention had a positive role in empowering women.

Weight-related psychological inflexibility as a mediator between weight self-stigma and health-related outcomes.

Weight self-stigma, the internalization of negative societal stereotypes, is a problem among populations with high weight. Weight self-stigma is associated with psychological inflexibility and maladaptive health-related behaviors. In this study, the authors explore how weight-related psychological inflexibility may influence weight self-stigma and health-related outcomes in 79 adults with high weight. Participants were primarily White (92.4%) and female (82.3%), with an average age of 39.56 years and average body mass index of 33.78. The study uses baseline, self-report data from a larger trial. Results indicate that weight self-stigma was negatively correlated with maladaptive eating behaviors, weight, and mental health. Weight-related psychological inflexibility was found as a significant mediator for the relationship between weight self-stigma and emotional eating, sedentary behavior, and mental health. Weight-related psychological inflexibility did not mediate the relationships between weight self-stigma and other eating measures and physical activity. These results support targeting weight-related psychological inflexibility and weight self-stigma in interventions.

Support for the social-cognitive model of internalized stigma in serious mental illness

One prominent social-cognitive model of internalized stigma by Corrigan and his colleagues (2012; 2002) proposes that individuals are exposed to societal stereotypes about mental illness, at least tacitly agree with them, and may apply them to oneself, engendering harmful self-beliefs. There is limited empirical support for this model in serious mental illness. Moreover, it is not clearly established how internalized stigma and its associated factors impact recovery in this population. The current study uses structural equation modeling (SEM) to assess the social-cognitive model's goodness of fit in a sample of Veterans with serious mental illness (Veteran sample, n = 248), and then validates the model in a second and independent sample of individuals receiving community-based psychiatric rehabilitation services (community sample, n = 267). Participants completed the Self-Stigma of Mental Illness Scale (SSMIS; Corrigan et al., 2006) and measures of self-esteem, self-efficacy, and recovery attitudes. Consistent with Corrigan and colleagues' formulation of internalized stigma, SEM analyses showed a significant indirect pathway from stereotype awareness, to stereotype agreement, to application to self, to self-esteem decrement, to poorer recovery attitudes. Additionally, there was a significant direct effect from stereotype awareness to self-esteem. This study shows that individuals with serious mental illness experience psychological harm from stigma in two ways: (1) through perceived public prejudice and bias, and (2) through internalizing these negative messages. In particular, stigma harms individuals' self-esteem, which then reduces their recovery attitudes.

Age as an Overlooked Element of Diversity: Approaches to Addressing Intergenerational Perspectives

Outside of gerontology, age is an often underappreciated element of diversity. At a time when all generations must work together to provide inclusive, multi-faceted solutions to today’s societal problems, ageist and generational stereotypes are often barriers to meaningful intergenerational exchanges. Age derogation and negative stereotypes have been used to splinter communities, perpetuate misinformation, and trivialize intergenerational conversations. As researchers, educators, and practitioners, we understand why age matters, but our students, community leaders, and employers may not. It is our disciplinary obligation to convince those who ignore, dismiss, or misrepresent age of the importance of this aspect of diversity for navigating any multigenerational setting. In this talk, we provide three approaches to addressing age-related beliefs in the classroom. We begin by exploring the impact of generational stereotypes within minority communities. For the LGBT community, negative stereotypes coupled with rapid social change have lead to a growing generational gap. We then shift perspectives to examine the role that lifespan developmental psychology can play in preparing students to enter a diverse multigenerational workforce. Here, we discuss research on age identity and generational identity as distinct and self-enhancing life-span processes, and highlight the developmental barriers that must be navigated in order to foster intergenerational cohesion. Finally, we discuss the findings from Generation to Generation, an intergenerational discussion course for older and younger adults, designed to promote productive intergenerational contact. The results provide evidence that intergenerational discussion may facilitate improved connections between generations.

Asking Young Adults about Their Attitudes toward and Knowledge of Sex in Later Life

Sexual expression is a lifelong need related to health and wellbeing. However, older adults’ sexuality is often neglected and stigmatized due to societal ageist stereotypes portraying them as asexual. Although baby boomers’ generation resists such portrayals, societal acceptance of sexuality in later life is slow to materialize. The purpose of this study was to explore this acceptance among young adults while focusing on three research questions: (1) How much do young adults know about older adults’ sexuality and how do they feel about it? (2) Do young adults’ knowledge and views of later-life sexuality vary by gender? (3) Do young adults’ views of later-life sexuality vary based on their general attitudes toward sexuality? Data collection included online and intercept survey methods. The sample (N=270) was young (M=21.58 years, SD=4.32) and included 149 women and 113 men. Results revealed that young adults had medium levels of knowledge, yet rather permissive/open-minded attitudes regarding later-life sexuality. Higher levels of knowledge were unrelated to more permissive attitudes. Independent samples t-test revealed no differences by gender in young adults’ knowledge and attitudes. However, multiple regression results indicated that general liberal attitudes toward sexuality (β=.772, t=17.867, p=.000) and viewing sex as leisure activity (β=.147, t=3.338, p=.001) are significant predictors of having more permissive/open-minded attitudes toward older adults’ sexuality (R2=.557, F(3,266)=111.390, p=.000). These findings suggest that socio-psychological (rather than cognitive and demographic) factors drive the acceptance of later-life sexuality among young adults. This study offers valuable insights for knowledge, practice, and advocacy concerning older adults’ sexuality.

The influence of prescriber and patient gender on the prescription of benzodiazepines: evidence for stereotypes and biases?

Benzodiazepines are commonly prescribed globally. We hypothesize that gender stereotypes influence benzodiazepine prescriptions insofar as male prescribers are more likely to prescribe benzodiazepines to female patients. Our nationwide cohort study included 2,127,441 patients with a psychiatric disorder (ICD-9 codes 290-319) and 38,932 prescribers as part of the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database (1997-2013). We evaluated the effects of patient and prescriber gender on the proportion of patients prescribed benzodiazepines and the cumulative dosage of benzodiazepine prescription (mg) using generalized estimating equation and general linear models. The proportion of patients prescribed benzodiazepines was higher among male (vs. female) prescribers [odds ratio (OR) = 1.06, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.05-1.07] and among female (vs. male) patients (OR = 1.08, 95% CI = 1.08-1.09). Similarly, male prescriber gender (β = 10,292.2, SE = 1265.5, p < 0.001) and female patient gender (β = 7913.7, SE = 627.1, p < 0.001) predicted higher cumulative dosages of benzodiazepine prescription. Mean cumulative dosage was highest among female patients seen by male prescribers (β = 4283.7, SE = 717.6, p < 0.001). The results were consistent in sensitivity analyses of patients with anxiety disorder (n = 1,632,363), major depression (n = 1,122,796), or chronic administration (n = 1,981,819), and prescribers with psychiatrists (n = 1276), and non-psychiatrists (n = 33,268). Male prescribers were more likely to prescribe benzodiazepines to female patients relative to male patients. This gender bias in prescription is significant and warrants careful attention at point of care. We hypothesize that internalized societal biases and stereotypes affect benzodiazepine prescribing behaviour.

How Perception of Being Recognized or Not Recognized by Instructors as a “Physics Person” Impacts Male and Female Students’ Self-Efficacy and Performance

Physics has historically been portrayed as a field for brilliant men. Many prior studies have focused on the reasons for women’s underrepresentation in physics and related disciplines from different perspectives and strategies to improve the learning environments so that all students can excel in physics courses. Due to societal stereotypes, women often have significantly lower physics self-efficacy than men even when they perform similarly, and many shy away from physics-related majors and careers. Moreover, being recognized by the instructor as a student who can excel in physics can be valuable for all students in physics courses. However, it is particularly important for underrepresented students, including women and ethnic and racial minorities, partly due to the societal stereotypes associated with who can excel in physics and lack of role models.

Navigating belonging as a Muslim Moroccan female entrepreneur

ABSTRACT Entrepreneurship and families are inextricably intertwined. However, there is limited research on how female ethnic minority entrepreneurs achieve belonging and how they navigate the values and norms of their family, the ethnic community, and, for instance, clients. This article theorizes the processes of entrepreneurial belonging through an empirically informed ethnography of Muslim Moroccan female entrepreneurs (MMFEs) in the Netherlands. The analysis unveils the perceptions and contradictions regarding achieving belonging through navigating gender, ethnicity, and religion, but also relationships with family, community, and other stakeholders. It demonstrates how MMFEs must pierce through societal and professional stereotypes to establish themselves as entrepreneurs.

Social Entrepreneurship, Startup External Financing, and Societal Stereotypes

In the nascent entrepreneurial context, firm and owner characteristics are often the main factors that lenders use to evaluate potential borrowers. Using the societal stereotypes perspective, the double hurdle estimation approach, and a nationally representative sample of U.S. nascent entrepreneurs’ data, we find that social entrepreneurs receive less external financing than their counterparts. However, we find evidence that social entrepreneurs that have more startup and managerial experience are more likely to receive external funding. Also, nascent social entrepreneurs with startup experience receive larger amounts of external investment than their counterparts.

Immoral, Incompetent, and Lacking Warmth: How Stereotypes of Teenage Fathers Compare to Those of Other Parents

Constructions of teenage fathers largely portray them as absent, criminal, and violent (Johansson and Hammaren 2014; Kiselica and Kiselica 2014), with their identity tied to the role of breadwinner rather than parent. Although teenage fathers report being judged and belittled, little is known about societally held stereotypes toward teenage fathers. With samples of participants in Australia, we conducted three studies, based on the Stereotype Content Model, to explore societal stereotypes, and attitudes more broadly, of teenage fathers, including factors that may influence attitudes. Study 1 (n = 177) investigated attitudes toward teenage fathers, compared to teenage mothers and adult parents, demonstrating they were perceived least favorably. Study 2 (n = 94) explored whether the attitudes and stereotypes of teenage fathers held by university students were similar or different to those of men who are low SES and male adolescents. We found that, similar to male adolescents in general, teenage fathers were seen as lacking maturity and that, similar to men who are low SES, stereotypes were contemptuous. We did not find expected differences in perceived morality. Finally, Study 3 (n = 462) explored whether attitudes toward teenage fathers were less negative if they were perceived to be employed. They were not. Overall, our findings suggested teenage fathers are perceived to lack maturity, morality, competence, warmth, and capacity to parent. Whether they were employed or not made little difference to people’s perceptions. Our findings suggest that stereotypes of teenage fathers are largely contemptuous, which can be internalized by teenage fathers and may reduce their help-seeking.

Examining Christians' Reactions to Reminders of Religion-Science Conflict: Stereotype Threat versus Disengagement.

Stereotypes of religion (particularly Christianity) as incompatible with science are widespread, and prior findings show that Christians perform worse than non-Christians on scientific reasoning tasks following reminders of such stereotypes. The present studies (N = 1,456) examine whether these reminders elicit stereotype threat (i.e., fear of confirming negative societal stereotypes about one's group), disengagement (i.e., distancing oneself from a domain perceived as incongruent with the values of one's group), or both. In Studies 1 and 2, Christians demonstrated lower task performance and greater subjective feelings of stereotype threat (but did not spend less time on the task) relative to non-Christians when beliefs about Christianity-science incompatibility were chronic or made salient. Furthermore, the effects of incompatibility stereotypes on performance were most pronounced among Christians who identified strongly with science and hence worried most about confirming negative stereotypes (Studies 3-4). Implications for Christians' responses to religion-science conflict narratives and participation in science are discussed.

The relative importance of personal beliefs, meta-stereotypes and societal stereotypes of age for the wellbeing of older people

AbstractNegative images of old age can harm older individuals’ cognitive and physical functioning and health. Yet, older people may be confronted with age stereotypes that are inconsistent with their own personal beliefs. We examine the implications for older people's wellbeing of three distinct elements of age stereotypes: their personal beliefs about their age group, their perception about how others generally perceive older people (i.e.their meta-stereotypes) and the societal age stereotypes that are empirically widely shared in society. Using measures from the Stereotype Content Model and survey data of older people from the United Kingdom (UK) (Study 1, N = 171), we found only partial overlap between older people's personal beliefs and their meta-stereotypes. Personal beliefs were unrelated to wellbeing, but positive meta-stereotypes of older people's competence were linked to higher wellbeing. These findings were largely replicated with a sample of baby-boomers from Switzerland (Study 2, N = 400) controlling for socio-demographics. Study 3 used representative survey data (N = 10,803) across 29 European countries, to test and confirm that the link between positive competence meta-stereotypes and wellbeing can be generalised to different cultures, and that positive warmth meta-stereotypes were an additional predictor. At the country level, societal age stereotypes about competence were positively related to the wellbeing of older people, but only in countries that provide greater opportunities for competence attainment.