Modification of the Backlash Avoidance Model
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STATUS AS A BUFFER TO THE CONSEQUENCES OF BACKLASH FEAR: MODIFICATION OF THE BACKLASH AVOIDANCE MODEL By SARA K. MANUEL A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Psychology Written under the direction of Laurie A. Rudman And approved by _____________________________________ _____________________________________ _____________________________________ _____________________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey October 2016 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Status as a buffer to the consequences of backlash fear: Modification of the backlash avoidance model by SARA K. MANUEL Dissertation Director: Laurie A. Rudman Despite advances toward equality, stereotypes still restrict the roles of individuals within society. Violation of these stereotypes results in backlash, in the form of social and financial penalties (Rudman, 1998), serving to discourage vanguards. Women specifically risk backlash for demonstrating agency, and in an effort to avoid this backlash, may mitigate their agentic expressions, compromising performance (Rudman, Moss-Racusin, Glick, & Phelan, 2012). The Backlash Avoidance Model (BAM; Moss- Racusin & Rudman, 2010) identifies low perceived entitlement as the mechanism through which backlash fear influences performance. Yet, with the rise of many prominent women in traditionally atypical domains, how do some women effectively express agency and attain success? I hypothesized that status—a perceived performance advantage (Fişek, Berger, & Norman, 2005)—protects women’s perceived entitlement, resulting in optimal performance on tasks requiring agency. This dissertation introduced the Modified-BAM (M-BAM), which incorporates the role of status in women’s backlash ii avoidance strategies to account for initial differences in perceived entitlement that allow some women to perform agentic tasks without disruption from fear of backlash. The study tested the outlined theory and the hypothesized M-BAM by manipulating women’s perception of status through a bogus aptitude measure. Although the M-BAM was not supported by the data, status did uniquely boost women’s interest to persevere in the relevant domain, suggesting that it does enhance self-efficacy. Larger implications of the results related to the advancement of vanguards in an array of atypical domains are discussed. Keywords: backlash, backlash avoidance, gender stereotypes, status, advancement of women Word count: 237 iii Table of Contents Abstract of the dissertation ................................................................................................. ii List of Tables ..................................................................................................................... vi List of Illustrations ............................................................................................................ vii Backlash .............................................................................................................................. 1 Do traditional gender stereotypes still exist in the present day? ..................................... 3 Backlash as a penalty for gender stereotype violation .................................................... 7 Role Congruity Theory.................................................................................................... 8 Status Incongruity Hypothesis ...................................................................................... 10 Backlash Avoidance.......................................................................................................... 14 Fear of backlash ............................................................................................................ 15 Perceived entitlement .................................................................................................... 17 Status & Gender Relations ................................................................................................ 22 Status and the creation of social structures ................................................................... 22 Status and power ........................................................................................................... 24 Social status and gender ................................................................................................ 27 Status, gender, & modern society.................................................................................. 29 Status as a Moderator of Backlash Fear and Perceived Entitlement ................................ 31 Status and perceived entitlement ................................................................................... 33 Status as a moderating variable in the BAM ................................................................. 36 Application to the Delivery of Criticism .......................................................................... 37 Backlash avoidance & delivering criticism ................................................................... 38 Testing the Role of Status in Backlash Avoidance Strategies .......................................... 40 Method .............................................................................................................................. 41 Pilot Study ..................................................................................................................... 41 Testing the M-BAM ...................................................................................................... 42 Participants .................................................................................................................... 43 Procedure ....................................................................................................................... 44 Materials ........................................................................................................................ 48 iv Results ............................................................................................................................... 51 Preliminary Analyses .................................................................................................... 51 Main Analyses ............................................................................................................... 52 Model Evaluation .......................................................................................................... 54 Discussion ......................................................................................................................... 56 Limitations and future directions .................................................................................. 57 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 61 References ......................................................................................................................... 63 Appendix A ....................................................................................................................... 79 Appendix B ....................................................................................................................... 81 Appendix C ....................................................................................................................... 82 Appendix D ....................................................................................................................... 86 Appendix E ....................................................................................................................... 93 Appendix F........................................................................................................................ 95 Appendix G ....................................................................................................................... 96 Appendix H ....................................................................................................................... 97 v List of Tables Table 1. Means and standard deviations of main variables by condition ......................... 99 Table 2. Correlations ....................................................................................................... 101 Table 3. Results of the moderated mediation analyses used to test the M-BAM ........... 102 vi List of Illustrations Figure 1. Hypothesized Modified-Backlashed Avoidance Model. ................................... 98 Figure 2. The M-BAM as tested using PROCESS. .......................................................... 99 vii MODIFICATION OF THE BACKLASH AVOIDANCE MODEL 1 Status as a Buffer to the Consequences of Backlash Fear: Modification of the Backlash Avoidance Model Backlash Group membership, whether race, gender, religious, or educational, spontaneously provides observers with expectancies of traits, behaviors, roles, attitudes, and the beliefs of others (Schneider, 2004). These expectancies, or stereotypes, allow perceivers to conserve cognitive resources while navigating through their environment by producing predictable impressions on which to respond (Macrae, Milne, & Bodenhausen, 1994). When new information threatens these stereotypes (and thus the ease in observing and interacting with the world), perceivers often respond negatively. Individuals who actively disconfirm stereotypes (vanguards) may become the recipients of backlash, resulting