Not Feeling Good in STEM: Effects of Stereotype Activation and Anticipated Affect on Women’s Career Aspirations

Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

Authors

Despite great efforts to increase women’s participation in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), relatively few women choose careers in these fields. We argue that women might expect to feel less good in contexts where unfavorable gender stereotypes are activated in their minds (e.g., by strong underrepresentation) and, consequently, are less likely to aspire to STEM careers. In two pilot studies (Ns = 28/61), we confirmed that undergraduate women expect more negative and less positive affect (i.e., generally (un)pleasant emotions) and a heightened sense of threat in a stereotype-activating, compared to a not stereotype-activating, test scenario. In Study 1 (N = 102), the scenario indirectly lowered college women’s STEM career aspiration (adjusted for preliminary domain identification) due to lower anticipated positive affect, but not to higher negative affect, in the stereotype-activating scenario. The scenario had no detrimental effect on college men’s anticipated affect or their career aspirations. In Study 2, 91 high school students reported anticipated affect and self-efficacy in different university majors and their intentions to choose the subject as a major. The more stereotypically male (in terms of gender distribution) the subject, the more negative and the less positive was young women’s, but not young men’s, anticipated affect. Only lower positive, but not higher negative, affect predicted low study intentions over and above self-efficacy. To increase women’s aspirations, their expected feelings in STEM deserve attention. One approach to foster positive affect might be to create less stereotypical STEM contexts.

Original languageEnglish
JournalSex Roles
Volume76
Issue number1-2
Pages (from-to)40-55
Number of pages16
ISSN0360-0025
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 01.01.2017
Externally publishedYes

    Research areas

  • Anticipated affect, Emotional responses, Gender, Gender distribution, Human sex differences, Motivation, Occupational aspiration, Self-efficacy, Sex roles, STEM, Stereotype threat
  • Psychology

Documents

DOI

Recently viewed

Publications

  1. Predictive Maintenance of Bearings Through IoT and Cloud-Based Systems
  2. Emotions and multimedia learning
  3. Same Play, Different Actors?
  4. Trusting as a 'Leap of Faith': Trust-Building Practices in Client-Consultant Relationships
  5. Schreibende unterstützen lernen
  6. Treating the nestedness temperature calculator as a "black box" can lead to false conclusions
  7. Politics of Exception
  8. Morphometric differentiation in a specialised snail predatior
  9. Approaching the other
  10. Time use and time budgets
  11. Developments in Qualitative Mindfulness Practice Research
  12. Disciplines and Doubts
  13. Cultural influences on social feedback processing of character traits
  14. An archetype analysis of sustainability innovations in Biosphere Reserves: Insights for assessing transformative potential
  15. Introduction
  16. Bird community responses to the edge between suburbs and reserves
  17. Parameters, concepts and the terminology of outer space law: a review of the essential facilities served by outer space activities and the rules of interpretation for treaty law and soft law guidelines.
  18. Handbook of Philosophy of Management
  19. Taking stock–Three years of addressing societal challenges on community level through action research
  20. A comparative survey of chemistry-driven in silico methods to identify hazardous substances under REACH
  21. Experimental and numerical analysis of material flow in porthole die extrusion
  22. A milp for installation scheduling of offshore wind farms
  23. Effectiveness and Efficiency of Assertive Outreach for Schizophrenia in Germany
  24. Working with Research Integrity—Guidance for Research Performing Organisations
  25. The edge of virtual communities ?
  26. A suite of multiplexed microsatellite loci for the ground beetle Abax parallelepipedus (Piller and Mitterpacher, 1783) (Coleoptera, Carabidae)
  27. Biodiversity and Resilience of Ecosystem Functions
  28. Dematerialization