Walton, Murphy, Ryan, 2015.pdfVIP

Stereotype Threat in Organizations: Implications for Equity and Performance Gregory M. Walton,1,! Mary C. Murphy,2,! and Ann Marie Ryan3,! 1Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305; email: gwalton@ 2Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 47405 3Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48824 Annu. Rev. Organ. Psychol. Organ. Behav. 2015. 2:523–50 First published online as a Review in Advance on January 30, 2015 The Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior is online at This article’s doi: 10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-032414-111322 Copyright ? 2015 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved !All three authors contributed equally to this work. Keywords stereotype threat, gender, race, performance Abstract Over the past 20 years, a large body of laboratory and field research has shown that, when people perform in settings in which their group is negatively stereotyped, they may experience a phenomenon called stereotype threat that can undermine motivation and trust and cause underperformance. This review describes that research and places it into an organizational context. First, we describe the processes by which stereotype threat can impair outcomes among people in the workplace. Next, we delineate the situational cues in organizational settings that can exacerbate stereotype threat, and explain how and why these cues affect stereotyped individuals. Finally, we discuss rel- atively simple empirically based strategies that organizations can im- plement to reduce stereotype threat and create conditions in which employees and applicants from all groups can succeed. 523 An nu . R ev . O rga n. Ps yc ho l. O rga n. Be ha v. 20 15 .2: 52 3-5 50 . D ow nlo ad ed fr om w ww .an nu alr ev iew s.o rg A cc ess pr ov ide d b y 1 07 .22 0.1 8.8 5 o n 0 4/1 5/1 5. Fo r p ers on al us e o nly . INTRODUCTION Stereotype threat is a situati