The retail sector spends millions of dollars each year advertising to consumers. This is a considerable investment for companies seeking effective ways to inform and persuade the consumer. Consequently, retailers need to develop creative message strategies and tactics that will positively affect consumer attitudes. One particular tactic available to retailers is the use of a spokesperson in the advertisement. Salespersons are used in numerous advertisements and can provide key benefits to an advertiser. However, to maximize these benefits, retailers need to carefully select the spokesperson that will be most effective for their store and product. This purpose of this research is to examine the characteristics that influence consumers' perceptions of print advertisements that include a spokesperson in the advertisement. Most of the past literature concerning spokespersons has concentrated on the consumer perspective of meeting and interacting with a living, breathing person. This research seeks to use the past research on salespeople to examine the spokesperson as a cue in a print advertisement. In this perspective, the consumer views the spokesperson from a visual-only perspective. The proposed experiment will utilize print advertisements from two retail businesses. More specifically the study will investigate how consumers react if the individual viewed in the advertisement is typical (matches with their preconceived stereotype) or if the salesperson is atypical (does not match with their preconceived stereotype). This research also examines how men and women are viewed differently in the spokesperson role and how changes in physical appearance may impact consumers' perceptions. The research also studies the influence of spokesperson stereotypes on consumers' cognitive responses.

This research addresses the question of whether individuals or groups induce deeper message processing of persuasive messages. An interaction between group entitativity and whether the group is an ingroup or an outgroup is predicted, where ingroups low on entitativity and outgroups high on entitativity are expected to induce deeper message processing. Entitativity measures the extent an aggregate of people is seen as a group (D. T. Campbell, 1958). Previous research shows contradictory results. S. G. Harkins and R. E. Petty (1987) have shown that high entitativity causes more message focus than low entitativity. R. J. Rydell and A. R. McConnell (2005) have shown that low entitativity causes more message focus than high entitativity. Hypotheses were not supported by the data. Post hoc analyses suggest that motivation to process persons and messages was greatest in the high entitativity ingroup condition. Predictions were revised by adding motivation as a variable. / by Karoly I. Balazs. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2010. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2010. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Research on social judgment typically emphasizes one of three processes that enable unequivocal understanding of events with ambiguous causality. In the social influence perspective, people are susceptible to the interpretations offered by others. In the explicit attitudes perspective, people interpret events in line with their consciously held attitudes and values. In the implicit attitudes perspective, people interpret events in line with unconscious biases. The model investigated in the present study assumes that these processes vary in salience depending on people's mindset. Participants with low versus high implicit racial bias toward Blacks read a narrative concerning this altercation under either a lowlevel or a high-level mindset and then read a summary that blamed one of the parties or they did not read a summary. As predicted, low-level participants allocated responsibility to the African-American if they had a high implicit racial bias and to the White if they had a low implicit racial bias, regardless of the summary manipulation. Contrary to prediction, however, high-level participants' allocation of responsibility did not reflect their explicit prejudicial attitudes. Instead, they corrected for their implicit biases in their trait inferences and affective reactions, in line with research suggesting that a high-level mindset promotes self-regulatory processes in social judgment. / by Susan D. Sullivan. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013. / Includes bibliography. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / System requirements: Adobe Reader.

This study examined the results of the National Prison Wardens’ Survey to ascertain the levels of job satisfaction, occupational sentiments, and work-related stress among prison wardens and to establish whether these variables differed between male and female respondents. The findings indicated that wardens generally experience high levels of job satisfaction, reflect positive occupational sentiments, and report low levels of work-related stress. Additionally, results from the Chi-square tests and Lambda measures of association indicated that little to no relationship existed between gender and any of the explored variables. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2014. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

"Investing in Stereotypes" unearths a tradition of humor that may initially sound counter-intuitive: it sees stereotypes as valuable. Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Charles Wright, and Suzan-Lori Parks reveal the way racial and sexual stereotypes paradoxically complicate their subjects in the very attempt to simplify them. The compulsive repetition of stereotypes and the contradictory meanings that stereotypes embody create absurdly comical effects that are, in the hands of these writers, surprisingly humanizing. To unveil the tensions in, say, Sambo, the happy plantation slave who is at once harmless and savage, completely known and enigmatic, is to invest in the stereotype's comic implication that the subjects it hopes to fix are endlessly changing and exhaustingly complex--that those subjects are, in fact, human. Departing from the most common techniques used to resist stereotypes (inversion, exaggeration, and modification), investment, as I theorize it, is a comic form of engagement that enacts Du Bois's concept of second-sight: the ability to perceive the blind-spots of another's cultural perspective from the vantage point of one's own. I begin the dissertation with Hurston because the sort of second-sight her characters practice is the precondition for Ellison's democratic America, Wright's empathic witnessing, and Parks's sovereign communities. Hurston uses tactics of trickery, even more nuanced than Henry Gates's field-framing concept of "Signifyin(g)," to encourage her readers to account for their cultural blind-spots by forcing them to move between the contradictions within a stereotype. For example, when the speaker of "How It Feels to Be Colored Me" vacillates between being "savage" and "cosmic" as she dons the Sambo stereotype, she creates epistemological uncertainty about the cultural knowledge the reader uses to racialize others. By helping people in conflicting positions of power understand their common humanity and their mutually limiting misrecognitions, comic second-sight can work to bridge social divides. "Investing in Stereotypes" shows why the humor of the oppressed deserves more than the scant scholarly attention it has received and also unearths a mode of oppositional consciousness crucial for the emancipationist project of African American literary studies.

The proposed study explores the experiences of nonnative speakers when they interact with native speakers in conflict situations. The aim of the study is to test if nonnative speakers experience stereotype threat when interacting with native speakers in conflict situations and, if so, to examine how stereotype threat affects their regulatory focus, conflict behaviors, and outcomes. A serial mediation model with three mediators (stereotype threat, regulatory focus, conflict behaviors) will be tested. This study contributes to the field of organizational psychology and conflict studies by 1) extending stereotype threat literature and examining nonnative speakers as a social identity group that experiences stereotype threat, 2) exploring the effects of stereotype threat in a conflict context, and 3) extending workforce diversity literature and examining language diversity in relation to conflict-related behaviors and outcomes in organizational settings. The findings from the proposed study offer insights into understanding the effects of language diversity on conflict dynamics within the increasingly globalized, multi-cultural world of organizations.

The goal of the current study was to explore whether personality differentially predicts performance for male and female leaders. The predictive relationship between personality assessment and performance evaluation is a cornerstone of performance management practice. Using the lens of gender stereotype theory, the relationship between personality assessment and performance evaluation was reconsidered. It was hypothesized that the gender stereotypes associated with certain leader personality traits may have a differential impact on the performance evaluations of female leaders. In order to test this, gender as a moderator in the relationship between Hogan personality assessments and multi-rater performance evaluations was examined in a sample of mid- to senior-level leaders at a large multi-national consumer products organization. Results revealed no significant differences in the performance evaluations of male and female leaders. Results provided partial support for the proposition that personality differentially predicts performance for male and female leaders; the traits that predicted performance for female leaders differed from the traits that predicted performance for male leaders. Significant gender differences in personality were broadly consistent with gender stereotypes, but were not central to the relationship between personality and performance. Exploratory analyses revealed that the predictive relationship between personality and performance also varied by leader ethnicity, with personality only significantly predicting performance for White leaders. The predictive relationship between personality and performance also varied intersectionally, with personality only significantly predicting performance for White and non-US male leaders; personality did not significantly predict performance for female leaders of any ethnicity. This study highlights the unique contribution of stereotype theory to the structures of performance management and adds nuance to the conversation on performance evaluation for leaders of non-dominant social identity groups.

Parents are the first source of a child's learning of her or his gender. In fact, sex-role stereotyping of infants by parents may occur within the first 24 hours of birth. This study examined the nature of parental stereotyping on the basis of their infant's sex by obtaining parents' descriptions of their newborn and toy and clothing preferences for their newborn. In 1974, Rubin found that parents responded stereotypically to their infants on the basis of sex. Following Rubin's interview approach, 50 parent pairs from two urban hospitals were asked to participate in a parent-infant study and were subsequently interviewed 24 hours postpartum. Parents were asked open-ended descriptive questions about their newborn, given a semantic differential scale of 18 bi-polar objectives, asked about the importance of others recognizing their baby's sex, and asked a set of questions relating to the preference of clothing and toy choices for their newborn. Findings suggest that parents do stereotype their infants on the basis of biological sex. Sons were more likely to be described as strong, perfect, big or big-featured and energetic,--while daughters received more descriptions that mentioned their eyes, skin, or facial features and were also more likely to be described as small, tiny, or weak. Parents of boys were also more likely to state a preference for gender-specific toys and clothing. Infant sex did not make a notable difference on the importance that parents attributed to others recognizing their baby's sex. Fathers were more likely to perceive and describe their daughters more stereotypically than were mothers of either daughters or sons. Further studies to investigate gender stereotyping and its consequences as well as the interplay between the macro and micro levels of gender relations in society are suggested.

Stereotype threat refers to the pressure that individuals feel when they are at risk of confirming a demeaning stereotype about themselves. Research has found that stereotype threat impairs performance on cognitive-based tasks by inducing mental interference (e.g., Schmader & Johns, 2003). This thesis hypothesised that this finding would generalise to driving and that drivers who are better able to inhibit cognitive interference (i.e., with better inhibitory ability) would be less susceptible to the disruptive effect of stereotype threat than drivers who are less able (i.e., with poorer inhibitory ability). A series of three experiments conducted in a driving simulator tested the predictions using the gender stereotype of driving skills and investigated the interpretation of the results. The experiments revealed that stereotype threat exerted both a facilitative and debilitative influence on driving performance, as indicated by different performance measures. The facilitative effect diminished when drivers experienced increased mental demands or when they were assessed by an unexpected performance measure, while the debilitative effect was more likely observed among drivers who received negative feedback than drivers who received positive feedback. Moreover, the results supported the prediction that inhibitory ability would moderate the detrimental impact of stereotype threat as the performance of drivers with poorer inhibitory ability was impeded more than that of drivers with better inhibitory ability. Regarding the processes underlying the present findings, the experiments provided suggestive evidence that stereotype threat elicits cognitive interference and simultaneously motivates drivers to concentrate on particular performance areas in an attempt to refute the stereotype. In combination, these processes appear to be at least partly responsible for the performance deficits and boosts observed.

There is little consensus in the social-cognitive literature concerning the way in which prejudice and stereotyping are related, though a number of explanatory models have been proposed. The present research program empirically examines one recent model; Lepore and Brown's Associative Strength Model (ASM: 1997; 1999; 2002). The main premise of the ASM is that differential endorsement of stereotypic content leads to individual variation in the content that is automatically activated upon categorisation. Specifically, it predicts that high-prejudice people automatically activate negative stereotypic traits, and low-prejudice people automatically activate positive stereotypic traits. The current research used a primed lexical decision task to examine prejudicelinked differences in automatic stereotype activation. In addition, an impression formation task based on that of Lepore and Brown was included to measure stereotype application. Experiments 1A and 1B attempted to evaluate the predictions of the ASM using the category and stereotype of Asians. However, neither experiment was able to demonstrate a priming effect, prejudice-linked or otherwise, using this social category. Experiments 2 and 3, in contrast, successfully induced stereotype activation using the category of gay men. Furthermore, results were consistent with the predictions of the ASM. After priming with the category of gay men, high-prejudice participants exhibited greater activation of negative stereotypic traits and low-prejudice participants exhibited greater activation of positive stereotypic traits. However, parallel patterns of stereotype application were not found in the impression formation task, with participants forming positive impressions, regardless of prejudice. Experiment 4 used an honesty manipulation to investigate the possibility that self-presentational concerns were responsible for the discrepancies between stereotype activation and application. Consistent with this argument, Experiment 4 found prejudice-linked patterns of stereotype application that mirrored the patterns of stereotype activation when self-presentation concerns were reduced. When instructed to be honest, high-prejudice participants in the gay prime condition formed negative impressions and low-prejudice participants in the gay prime condition formed positive impressions. The current program of research provides the first direct empirical support for the predictions of the Associative Strength Model concerning stereotype activation. In addition, new questions have been raised that future research should seek to explore.