How and Why Are Inequities Maintained? 5 from Walton and Spencer (2009), whose meta-analyses demonstrated that stereotyped students’ performance improved under conditions that chal- lenged stereotype threat (e.g., in contexts where the test was deemed as nondiagnostic or unrelated to group differences). This is also in line with intervention studies geared toward reducing stereotype threat, which have also been shown to be effective (Walton & Spencer, 2009). SELF-STEREOTYPING AND IN-GROUP DEROGATION If self-fulfilling prophecies and stereotype threat can be construed as situations whereby stereotypes held by one group influence and shape the outcomes experienced by another, then self-stereotyping and in-group derogation involve the complementary and often concurrent tendency for groups to endorse the very same stereotypes used against themselves. Like self-fulfilling prophecy, self-stereotyping, in its earlier iterations, was used to explain both phenomena related to intergroup conflict and inequality as well as phenomena outside this domain—for example, self- stereotyping in advantaged, self-selected, temporary social groups (e.g., fraternities and sororities: Biernat, Vescio, & Green, 1996 psychology students vs. students from other majors, such as physics and business: Spears, Doojse, & Ellemers, 1997). However, insofar as its relation to the maintenance of inequity, the focus here will be on the cases where self- stereotyping and in-group derogation led to promoting preexisting gaps between groups. Like stereotype threat, most of the work on self-stereotyping and in- group derogation has focused on women and ethnic minorities. Here, self- stereotyping refers to the tendency to see oneself in line with the existing stereotypes that are relevant to one’s in-group (Hogg & Turner, 1987), whereas in-group derogation refers to the more specific phenomenon of holding negative attitudes against one’s in-group (Ma-Kellams, Spencer- Rodgers, & Peng, 2011). In other words, while self-stereotyping is not nec- essarily valenced, because it depends on the nature and content of the stereotype, in-group derogation, by definition, is. In the context of self-stereotyping in particular, Asian American women viewed themselves as better verbally when reminded of their gender but better mathematically when reminded of their ethnicity European Ameri- can men and women also viewed themselves in line with the relevant ste- reotype in terms of verbal versus math abilities as a function of whether their gender or ethnicity was activated (Sinclair, Hardin, & Lowery, 2006— parallel to what has been shown in stereotype threat contexts: Shih, Pit- tinsky, & Ambady, 1999). Interestingly, African Americans did not show evidence of self-stereotyping (Sinclair et al., 2006), which suggests that at least in this case, self-stereotyping may not be a relevant force in explaining inequity. Additional studies have confirmed that self-stereotyping is com- mon for gender (e.g., Guimond, Chatard, Martinet, Crisp, & Redersdorff,
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