Janssen, Oberwittler and Koeber (2020) article investigate the victimization effects on various well-being aspects. According to the report, victimization is an adverse experience that impairs the mental and physical integrity of people or deprives them significant goods, causing trauma. Most victimized individuals face difficulties adapting or coping with the harm that emanate from criminal acts. Victimization shares challenges with other adverse life events such as financial loss or traffic injury. From this article, it was found that within-person detrimental victimization consequences were significantly smaller than between-individual consequences reflected in the preexisting, time-stable factors that differentiate people who encounter victimization from people that have not.
The adverse effect of victimization results in unsafe feelings in the neighbourhood, increased worries about crime and avoidance behaviour. It was also found that the effects of repeated victimization are stronger as compared to single victimization. Single victimization has weak consequences on neighbourhood safety, generalized trust and avoidance behaviour. As much as violent victimization has more potent detrimental effects than property victimization, victimization near people’s homes has more substantial effects than any other victimization. Beyond immediate effects like physical harm and material loss, individual experiences of crime can result in negative emotions such as anger, frustration as well as depressive symptoms. This affects social cognitions concerning a person’s environment and future risks.
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Stereotype threat causes numerous detrimental effects to various stakeholders that are affected by it. Casad and Bryant (2016) discuss the stereotype threat effects in various organizations. According to the authors, stereotype threat contributes to myriad of mechanisms that cause underperformance in the domain of stereotype threat. Stereotype threat impairs negotiation skills, leadership aspirations and performance as well as entrepreneurial interests.
Experiencing stereotype limit the willingness of a person to perform well at work and makes them to experience challenges through uncertainties. This stereotype makes people assume that leaders are white males. Therefore, racial minorities and women seeking leadership position have to challenge the stereotype and face it. When people face stereotype threat, they barely assume leadership roles, especially when the only one in the group. Many people assume that a threatening environment that activates an increased risk aversion can combine with uncertainties about their success which makes them forego challenges like striving for leadership roles.
Apart from affecting leadership, stereotype threat inhibits people from participating in entrepreneurial activities. Significant traits for leaders are essential for the success of entrepreneurship activities such as risk-taking and assertiveness. female entrepreneur numbers are rising in personal and retail industries because these industries presumably revolve around female traits like nurturance, sensitivity, and fashion sense. As much as an increment has been noted in female entrepreneurs’ numbers, male entrepreneurs still outnumber those of female counterparts. In cases where contextual cues cause stereotype threat, people can strive to eradicate the risk by moving themselves away from the context and the situation.
Additionally, stereotype threat also inhibits negotiations. Because fortified negotiators are stereotyped to male qualities, women may change their negotiation strategies. Activating gender stereotype causes women to perform poorly during negotiations than when the stereotype is not activated. Stereotype threat can also affect the willingness of a person to introduce a discussion that can be negotiated.
The article ‘The Role of Situational Cues in Signaling and Maintaining Stereotype ’, by Murphy and Taylor (2015) focuses on how the stereotype is generated and maintained throughout situational cues in the environment such as its features and physical characteristics that suggest possible devaluation of stigmatized people. Murphy and Taylor indicate that threatening situational cues affect a vigilance process where stigmatized people direct their attention towards an additional cue to identify the value and the meaning of social identity in a given setting. The authors also reviewed subtle and explicit situational cues that perpetuate the stereotype threat, especially among racial minorities in academics and women in technology, science, mathematics, engineering and technology.
Situational cues are only meaningful if they elicit identity-related issues such as issues of institutional fairness, belonging and of being marginalized in a given setting. According to Murphy and Taylor, comprehending ways in which situational cues trigger as well as diffuse identity threat offers as well as changes social identity threat dynamics which ultimately points toward a wave of identity threat. The contextual and interactive nature of the stereotype threat creates a welcoming and comfortable environment for all people.
According to Casad and Merrit (2014), three significant mechanisms affect the working memory capacity of people in the workplace. These mechanisms include vigilance, physiological stress response and thought suppression. These mechanisms influence people’s behaviour beyond test performance such as attention and focus, health behaviours, organizational citizenship behaviours and intergroup interactions. Physiological stress response occurs when individuals are under stereotype threat. When a person appraises his or her resources as meeting or surpassing environmental demands, they portray a physiological challenge where the stressor is seen as a barrier that can be dealt with.
Therefore, it is significant to recognize that physiological arousal associated with stereotype threat cannot be self-reported by people but can accurately examine these responses. Besides, vigilance makes people conform to their stereotyped status, which makes them sensitive to cues that indicate significant failure. Vigilance to threatening cues can increase stereotype threat and adverse outcomes. Thought suppression is another mechanism that affects performance and outcomes in the workplace. Thought suppression heightens stereotype-relevant thoughts accessibility.
References
Casad, B. J., & Merritt, S. M. (2014). The importance of stereotype threat mechanisms in workplace outcomes. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 7(3), 413-419.
Casad, B. J., & Bryant, W. J. (2016). Addressing stereotype threat is critical to diversity and inclusion in organizational psychology. Frontiers in Psychology , 7 , 8.
Janssen, H. J., Oberwittler, D., & Koeber, G. (2020). Victimization and its consequences for well-being: A between-and within-person analysis. Journal of Quantitative Criminology , 1-40.
Murphy, M. C., & Taylor, V. J. (2015). The role of situational cues in signaling and maintaining stereotype threat.
