Ironic effects of explicit gender prejudice on women’s test performance

As prejudice becomes more subtle in its manifestations, members of stigmatized groups must often contend with the ambiguity of not knowing whether others are biased against them. In this study, we tested whether explicitly communicated gender prejudice would facilitate women’s performance on a difficult task compared to contexts where such discrimination might be possible but is not explicitly communicated. The findings revealed that the task performance of women who are chronically concerned about gender discrimination suffered when a male interviewer’s gender attitudes were ambiguous, relative to when his attitudes were either explicitly chauvinistic or explicitly egalitarian. As expected, the performance of women low in discrimination concerns was not affected by the experimental manipulation. The findings are discussed in light of growing evidence for the ironic effects of prejudice for the targets of stigma.