Effect of salience of the gender category on men's automatic gender prejudice under self-threat

Abstract

It has been consistently demonstrated that self-threat induces automatic prejudice. The present study investigated whether men would not exhibit automatic prejudice even in the self-threat condition if the gender category was not salient. We manipulated the salience of the gender category and the threat to selfworth, and then measured automatic gender prejudice with an evaluative priming task. Our results showed that when the gender category was salient, men in the self-threat condition automatically inhibited activation of positive concepts by the woman prime compared with those in the non-threat condition. In contrast, such an effect did not emerge when the gender category was not salient. Hence, when the salience of the ingroup- outgroup category is decreased, men do not exhibit automatic prejudice even under self-threat.