Angela C. Bell

Lafayette College · Department of Psychology

One potential obstacle to cooperation between political parties is ingroup projection, the tendency for members of subgroups to define superordinate groups based on characteristics of their own ingroups. In five studies spanning 11 years and three presidential administrations, we demonstrated that ingroup projection can be an obstacle that prevents...

Across three experiments, participants were provided with a list of racist behaviors that purportedly were enacted from a fellow student but in fact were based on the participants' own behaviors. People consistently evaluated themselves as less racist than this comparison other, even though this other's racist behaviors were identical to their own....

Masculine self-concept refers to a man's psychological sense of being male. In this study, we used the Semantic Misattribution Procedure to assess men's implicit masculine self-concept. As expected, implicit masculine self-concept was not associated with social desirability, but was positively associated with several gender-relevant outcomes, inclu...

Stereotypic backhanded compliments are defined as compliments that praise a stigmatized individual for violating a negative stereotype (e.g., "You're smart, for a woman."). Although commonly used in everyday language, few studies have examined these comments empirically. As such, the purpose of the present work was twofold. First, we sought to dete...

For over 50 years a debate has existed over the use of Native American sport mascots; however, few empirical studies on the topic exist. The present study examined if supraliminal exposure to Native American mascots results in the application of negative stereotypes toward Native American people. Results indicated that the effect of Native American...

This article reports the development and psychometric properties of the Masculinity Contingency Scale (MCS), a measure designed to assess the extent that a man's self-worth is derived from his sense of masculinity. Across 4 studies, results provided support for this new measure's reliability and validity. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyse...

The impact of negative stereotypes can be harmful, and as a result, stigmatized targets are often motivated to deny their accuracy. However, at times, targets of even the most unflattering stereotypes embrace them as valid. Early stigma researchers conceptualized this self-stereotyping as a form of internalized self-hatred. However, within the last...

Storybook tales, movies, and beauty magazines often communicate the message that beauty is malleable. Malleable beliefs are generally found to be beneficial, but this is not the case in the beauty domain. Across two studies, we found that the “beauty is malleable” belief puts women (but not men) at risk for harmful appearance concerns, such as basi...

The present work examined the negative consequences that result when stigmatized individuals endorse negative in-group stereotypes after failure. Study 1 found that women given the opportunity to blame their math failure on the stereotype "women are bad at math" showed higher stereotype endorsement, exerted less effort on a subsequent math test, an...