Key Points
- Stereotype threat is associated with lower career aspirations, job attitudes, performance, and well-being in workers.
- Workers with stereotype threat are more likely to leave than those with lower stereotype threat (turnover intentions).
- As a stigmatized group, the older workers are more vulnerable to stereotype threat than their female counterparts and feel its associated outcomes worse.
- People can cope with stereotype threat using functional behaviors or dysfunctional behaviors.
Stereotyping and Stereotype Threat as a Source of Exhaustion and Holding Back
As humans, we are all prone to biases and logical fallacies as a courtesy of our system 1, as Kahneman – one of my favorite psychologists and researchers, put it. Stereotyping is just one of these biases. As individuals, we are aware that people can associate us and our behaviors with stereotypes (in this case, only the negative ones), and we tend to be sensitive, as it might harm our standing and relations. We feel reluctant and fear that our actions might be perceived as related to a group we are associated with. This phenomenon is called ” stereotype threat ” by IO psychologists. Although avoiding being stereotyped might sound preferable, as stereotypes can be harmful, it is also a strain that doesn’t let us be ourselves.
Stereotype Threat In The Workplace
We are not going to mention how bad being stereotyped and stereotyping are for people. That’s already known, but we will talk about stereotype threat in the workplace. A recent meta-analysis by Hippel et al. (2024) studied stereotype threat and its potential outcomes in organizations. Their study combined 57 studies comprising 40,134 employees from 13 different countries. The findings suggest that stereotype threat can be a stressor, a source of exhaustion, and an obstacle that holds employees back.
How Stereotype Threat Affects Employees at Work
Research shows that stereotype threat—the fear of confirming negative stereotypes—can influence employees in several ways:
- Career Aspirations: Stereotype threat is associated with lower career aspirations, indicating that the employees who have high stereotype threat tend to advance less and have a more negative perspective of their careers for the future (a.k.a., occupational future time perspective).
- Job Attitudes and Performance: Employees under stereotype threat often feel less committed to their organization, less satisfied with their jobs, less engaged, and they perform worse. But interestingly, this doesn’t seem to relate to organizational citizenship behaviors.
- Well-Being: Stereotype threat is associated with negative emotional and physical effects: higher exhaustion, feelings of identity separation, negative emotions, and lower positive emotions, self-confidence, and authenticity at work.
- Withdrawal Behaviors: Employees experiencing stereotype threat are more likely to think about leaving their jobs, showing increased turnover intentions. Although the employees seem more likely to leave, they are not more likely to sabotage and disrupt work.
Who is the Bigger Victim: Females vs Old Workers?
When females and older workers are compared as stigmatized groups, the relationship between stereotype threat and work outcomes for older workers showed a stronger relationship than for female workers, indicating that our older counterparts are more vulnerable to stereotype threat and might be more negatively impacted by it
These findings highlight how stereotype threat can harm both the mental health and performance of us as workers based on our demographics and emphasize the need for workplaces to create more supportive and inclusive environments for us.
Coping With Stereotype Threat: Is It Getting Any Better?
When it comes to coping with stereotype threat, we can either pick our poison or medicine: Functional behaviors such as feedback seeking, redefining criteria for success, and choosing battles are our strategic ways of dealing with stereotype threat. On the other hand, dysfunctional ones, such as isolation, avoidance, and alcohol, are other ways we cope.
Furthermore, as we get to more recent studies, we see that adaptive coping is becoming more prevalent, hinting that whatever we are doing is working and that we are making progress in ways we cope and how less negatively impactful stereotypes are becoming.
*Note: Unfortunately, some of the coping behaviors mentioned are vague, and the study does not provide an explanation of what they specifically mean in the context of stereotype threat.
Takeaways for your practice
Set Out Worthy Targets: We can resort to setting out worthy targets and picking our battles strategically. When setting out highly valued targets, we can be more motivated and hence endure or challenge stigmas and stereotypes more resiliently
Cope and Prove Them Wrong: Adapting and coping using pre-emptive measures seems promising. Individuals can feel motivated to resist the stereotypes or show increased performance in stereotype-relevant tasks.
Support: Organizations can provide supportive environments or communities as they influence how individuals cope with stereotype threat. By providing access to resources, such as mentorship, training, or peer support, organizations can increase the likelihood of people engaging in adaptive coping behaviors.
Trustworthiness score:
This article is based on a meta-analysis that includes cross-sectional studies. Thus, we give it a moderate, 80% trustworthiness score. This means that there is a 20% chance that alternative explanations for the effects found and topics discussed are possible.
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References
von Hippel, C., Kühner, C., Coundouris, S. P., Lim, A., Henry, J. D., & Zacher, H. (2026). Stereotype Threat at Work: A Meta-Analysis. Personality & social psychology bulletin, 52(4), 927–948. https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672241297884
You can find the original article here!
