Search results

Research has found that stereotypes affect occupational choices, but there has been almost no research on how they specifically affect the choice of becoming an entrepreneur. This study bridges different fields of research by combining theories on entrepreneurial intent, self-esteem, and stereotypes. The author argues that in situations of insufficient information individuals assess prospective careers in commercial and social entrepreneurship by means of stereotypes, and the author is the first to explore the influence of commercial and social entrepreneurial stereotypes on an individual’s intention to start a commercial (for-profit) or social (not for-profit) venture. The author uses the framework outlined by the stereotype content model to disclose the existence of distinct stereotypes for commercial and social entrepreneurs exist and, thereafter, the author analyzes the influences of both entrepreneurial stereotypes on the specific startup intentions. The author test the hypotheses with unique survey data from a sample of German non-entrepreneurs which reveals that commercial entrepreneurs are seen as competent but cold, whereas social entrepreneurs are regarded as warm but incompetent. Using structural equation modeling and multi-group analysis, the data implies that higher levels of perceived warmth and competence of commercial entrepreneurs have a positive indirect effect on commercial startup intentions. No such effect was found for social startup intentions; however, the results indicate that a higher societal status of social entrepreneurs exerts a positive indirect impact on the intention to start a social business. The author discusses the practical implications of our approach and point out avenues for future research.

Purpose – This study examines the relationship between endorsement of positive stereotypes of women and support for women's rights to shed light on the role that endorsement of positive stereotypes may play in maintaining social stratification.

Design/methodology/approach – The study uses data collected from a web-based survey of 181 male undergraduate students in six different universities and colleges to examine the relationship between the endorsement of positive stereotypes of women and support for women's rights. The paper examines four ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models to determine the relationship and utilizes the statistical software Stata 9.2.

Findings – Rather than a simple direct relationship, the findings suggest that the relationship between the endorsement of positive stereotypes and support for women's rights varies based on the level of hostile sexism. Increased endorsement of positive stereotypes of women was associated with decreased support for women's rights among males with the lowest level of hostile sexism, but the opposite relationship was found for males at the mean and the highest level of hostile sexism.

Research limitations/implications – The findings suggest that endorsement of positive stereotypes plays a unique role for males who do not endorse traditional sexist attitudes. Although data are not available to clarify what processes might be undergirding the relationship, the author suggests directions for future research.

Practical implications – Given the relationship found, prejudice reduction interventions that rely on the promotion of positive stereotypes of various social groups should be closely examined to determine if they actually foster attitudes that are detrimental for the eradication of social stratification.

Originality/value – This study is one of the first to examine the possible negative impacts of endorsement of positive stereotypes of women on gender stratification through a moderated relationship with levels of hostile sexism.

This chapter applies a model of Social Cognition to explain some of the underlying factors that influence unfair discrimination against immigrants in organizations.

It (1) presents a model of the attributes of immigrants that influence the categorization, stereotyping, job expectancies, and employment decisions about immigrants, (2) reviews the existing literature on biases toward immigrants, (3) offers hypotheses to guide future research, and (4) suggests strategies for overcoming unfair discrimination toward these individuals in employment contexts.

Our review of the research suggested that a number of factors influence unfair discrimination toward immigrants, including their country of origin, race/ethnicity, perceived danger, gender, socioeconomic status, education, and skill. However, most of this research has been conducted in social contexts, so we argued that additional research is needed to examine the relations between these attributes and employment decisions in work-related settings.

Our model suggests several strategies that can be used to overcome unfair discrimination against immigrants in work contexts. We outline these strategies in the chapter.

There are hostile attitudes toward immigrants around the world, which makes it difficult for them to gain and maintain employment. Thus, this chapter offers several reasons for these negative attitudes and strategies for overcoming them.

Despite the widespread negative reactions to immigrants around the world, relatively little theory and research has focused on unfair discrimination toward immigrants in work settings. Therefore, our chapter makes a unique and important contribution to understanding unfair discrimination toward immigrants, and suggests strategies that may help them overcome these problems.

This chapter examines the tension between interdependence and dominance. First, we briefly review prominent social psychological theories regarding the development and maintenance of status systems. Next we briefly describe how these structures help distribute social power in modern society. We then examine how prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination stem from status systems and interdependence, using the Stereotype Content Model (Fiske, Xu, Cuddy & Glick, 1999; Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002). Next, we consider the unique circumstances of gender relations and how they give way to complementary justifications of gender inequality, using Ambivalent Sexism Theory (Glick & Fiske, 1996, 1999, 2001a, 2001b). Last, we review evidence to support our argument that women do not necessarily acquiesce joyfully to the present hierarchical arrangement, but rather guide their choices by their pragmatic alternatives, as dictated by benevolent and hostile ideologies.

To provide a comprehensive review of theoretical and research advances in affect control theory from 1988 to 2013 for academic and student researchers in social psychology.

Against the background of a concise history of affect control theory from its beginnings in the 1960s to its maturation in the late 1980s, a comprehensive review of research and publications in the last 25 years is reported in five sections: Theoretical Advances (e.g., self and institutions, nonverbal behavior, neuroscience, artificial intelligence); Technological Advances (e.g., electronic data collection, computer simulations, cultural surveys, equation refinement, small groups analysis); Cross-Cultural Research (archived data and published analyses); Empirical Tests of the Theory; and Substantive Applications (e.g., emotions, social and cultural change, occupations/work, politics, gender/ideology/subcultures, deviance, criminology, stereotyping, physiological behavior).

Reveals an impressive number of publications in this area, including over 120 articles and chapters and four major books, and a great deal of cross-cultural research, including European, Asian, and Middle-Asian cultures.

Because of limitations of space, the review does not cover the large number of theses, dissertations, and research reports.

No other review of affect control theory with this scope and detail exists.

We argue that voice – the sound that people produce when they speak – is an important resource for entrepreneurs, especially when they are pitching to potential investors. We integrate evidence from entrepreneurship, social psychology and linguistics to show that the voice can be regarded both as a tool for entrepreneurs to utilize and as a vital source of information allowing listeners to make judgements about the speaker and their message. To better understand how the voice may be used and interpreted in investment pitches, we develop a model of the relationship between the entrepreneurial voice and investor judgments. Voice depends on entrepreneurs’ characteristics including gender and communication goals but can be utilized to express emotions (purposefully or not) and signal qualities such as competence and trustworthiness. How potential investors interpret these displays depends on cultural expectations and stereotypes. Our review illustrates that female entrepreneurs may find it more difficult to persuade investors due to their naturally higher voice pitch and bias against speech patterns prevalent among young women. We highlight directions for future research exploring the voice as a unique cultural resource for entrepreneurs.

Political science is often derided for being a “soft” science, one unable to generate hard predictions about political behavior, or without the ability to test its hypotheses, unlike physics, biology, or, among the social sciences, economics. Standards of hypothesis testing, data collection, and testing were unfairly seen to be lacking in comparison with the hard sciences. Accordingly, political scientists often had to struggle to have the knowledge produced about political behavior taken seriously. It would not be too remiss to identify an inferiority complex among political scientists, when they discussed the pantheon of scientific disciplines and their low position in it.

The paradigmatic shift in gender theory, which focuses attention away from the individual and toward structural accounts, has undoubtedly advanced the amount and quality of research on gender as a macro-level phenomenon. However, social psychological accounts of gender have been less frequent among gender scholars in sociology, perhaps due to the perception that studying individuals might reinvigorate sex role and socialization accounts. This concern is especially understandable since sociology as a field has yet to fully incorporate current theories of gender (Stacey & Thorne, 1985; Ferree & Hall, 1996). For example, Ferree and Hall (1996) have shown that many introductory sociology textbooks still present gender as simply the product of socialization, even while examining other bases of inequality, such as race and class, at a structural level. Rather than rehearsing past debates, we argue that social psychological perspectives make a unique contribution to bridging the multiple levels of the gender system, and are especially well suited to helping us understand the ways that gender is achieved through interaction. Understanding gender as an interactive process sheds light on how structural conditions constrain individual choices as well as how structural patterns of gender inequality are generated and recreated. Discovering mechanisms at the micro level, which play an active role in the persistence of inequality, is especially fruitful because they suggest ways by which gender inequality might be lessened.