Susan T. Fiske’s research while affiliated with Princeton University and other places

Traditional gendered arrangements—norms, roles, prejudices, and hierarchies—shape every human life. Associated harms are primarily framed as women’s issues due to more severe consequences women face. Yet, gendered arrangements also shape men ’s relationships, career paths, and health. Current work on gender equity overlooks men’s perspectives. Despite benefits they gain from out-ranking women, men’s position paradoxically entraps them in restrictive roles, compelling them to prioritize dominance. An inclusive framework challenges prevailing narratives by considering personal costs borne by men. Identifying with a man’s traditional role is a mixed privilege, as five gendered arrangements show for men who subscribe to them: 1. Masculine norms can restrict men’s choices and are associated with adverse health trajectories; 2. Some men’s disengagement from communal roles denies them positive outcomes associated with caring for others; 3. Hostile sexism fosters antipathy, fueling tension in some men’s interactions with women; 4. Benevolent sexism forces some men into scripted interactions, preventing genuine connections and burdening them with unrealistic breadwinner and protector roles; 5. Societal shifts in gender hierarchies can elicit threat responses in men, depending on intersections with social class and racial identities. Understanding costs to men calls for more empirical research. Gender equity for men, whose circumstances differ from those of women, would enable men to make informed choices and achieve better outcomes for themselves—paralleling the progress women have made in many areas of life. Striving for equity for all genders can ultimately enhance overall human well-being.

According to ambivalent sexism theory (Glick & Fiske, 1996), the coexistence of gendered power differences and mutual interdependence creates two apparently opposing but complementary sexist ideologies: hostile sexism (HS; viewing women as manipulative competitors who seek to gain power over men) coincides with benevolent sexism (BS; a chivalrous view of women as pure and moral, yet weak and passive, deserving men’s protection and admiration, as long as they conform). The research on these ideologies employs the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory, used extensively in psychology and allied disciplines, often to understand the roles sexist attitudes play in reinforcing gender inequality. Following contemporary guidelines, this systematic review utilizes a principled approach to synthesize the multidisciplinary empirical literature on ambivalent sexism. After screening 1,870 potentially relevant articles and fully reviewing 654 eligible articles, five main domains emerge in ambivalent sexism research (social ideologies, violence, workplace, stereotypes, intimate relationships). The accumulating evidence across domains offers bottom-up empirical support for ambivalent sexism as a coordinated system to maintain control over women (and sometimes men). Hostile sexism acts through the direct and diverse paths of envious/resentful prejudices, being more sensitive to power and sexuality cues; Benevolent sexism acts through prejudices related to interdependence (primarily gender-based paternalism and gender-role differentiation), enforcing traditional gender relations and being more sensitive to role-related cues. Discussion points to common methodological limitations, suggests guidelines, and finds future avenues for ambivalent sexism research.

Mental representations of human social groups – social stereotypes – are widespread and consequential. Such mental representations are systematic and multidimensional (e.g., stereotypes of immigrant groups are organized by perceived warmth and competence). We show that adaptive exploration alone can create structured societal stereotypes that cascade from historical affordances – such as which group happened to be the first one adequate at a job – without requiring decision-makers to have malicious intentions or cognitive limitations, or social groups to differ in information accessibility or intrinsic quality. Rather than framing social perception as a static, one-shot event, we consider the consequences of sequential decisions in a setting where exploring new options carries an implicit cost (resulting in an “explore-exploit tradeoff”). In this setting, when groups have equal and high potential to succeed in diverse jobs, decision-makers nonetheless settle on a single social group to perform each job and form impressions of that group accordingly. Using stereotypes of immigrant groups based on warmth and competence as an example, we formalize this process as a contextual multi-armed bandit problem, show testable predictions from computational simulations, and demonstrate that human participants act consistently with these predictions in behavioral experiments. Our results show how rich, multidimensional stereotypes can emerge in an absolutely minimal setting.

This volume traces the life journeys of a cohort of influential and transformative women in psychology, now in or nearing retirement, who have changed the discipline and the broader world of academia in significant ways. The 26 reflective essays record how these scholars thrived in an academic landscape that was often, at best, unwelcoming, and, at worst, hostile, toward them. They explicitly and implicitly acknowledge that their paths were inextricably linked with the evolution of women's roles in society; they highlight and celebrate their achievements as much as they acknowledge and recognize the obstacles, barriers, and hurdles they overcame. They tell their stories with candor and humor, resulting in a compilation of inspiring essays. The end result of these individual narratives is a volume that provides a unique resource for current and future academics to help them navigate through the crossroads, curves, and challenges of their own careers in academia.

Inaccurate stereotypes -- perceived differences among groups that do not actually differ -- are prevalent and consequential. Past research explains stereotypes as emerging from motivational biases, cognitive limitations, and information deficits. An alternative proposal focuses on exploration: An initial arbitrary interaction, if rewarding enough, may discourage investigating alternatives that would be equal or better. Historical accidents can snowball, through locally rational choices, into globally inaccurate generalizations. Thus, inaccurate stereotypes can emerge from otherwise rational exploration, even in the absence of real group differences. Ironically, the mere act of rationally choosing between groups with the goal of maximizing the long-term benefit of local interactions is enough to produce globally inaccurate stereotypes. Formally describing this problem using multi-armed bandits shows how an optimal solution with existing psychological support (Thompson sampling) produces inaccurate stereotypes. This result replicates in two large online experiments (N = 2404). This minimal-process paradigm thus suffices to produce bias.

Artificial intelligence increasingly suffuses everyday life. However, people are frequently reluctant to interact with A.I. systems. This challenges both the deployment of beneficial A.I. technology and the development of deep learning systems that depend on humans for oversight, direction, and training. Previously neglected but fundamental, social-cognitive processes guide human interactions with A.I. systems. In five behavioral studies (N = 3,099), warmth and competence feature prominently in participants’ impressions of artificially intelligent systems. Judgments of warmth and competence systematically depend on human-A.I. interdependence. In particular, participants perceive systems that optimize interests aligned with human interests as warmer and systems that operate independently from human direction as more competent. Finally, a prisoner’s dilemma game shows that warmth and competence judgments predict participants’ willingness to cooperate with a deep learning system. These results demonstrate the generality of intent detection to interactions with technological actors. Researchers and developers should carefully consider the degree and alignment of interdependence between humans and new artificial intelligence systems.

When we first wrote Social Cognition (1984), social psychology's crisis critiqued methods, replicability, theory, and relevance. Social cognition research illustrates four phases of response to these challenges. First, the Cognitive Miser approach introduced methods less prone to experimenter or participant interference: looking time as attention, categorical memory for who said what. Next, the Motivated Tactician approach addressed replicability by identifying moderator variables, primarily goals and motivations. For example, interdependence (Fiske) and threat (Taylor) are prominent motivations in our respective research. The third wave, perceivers as Activated Actors, translated mental states to behavior, using theory-guided prediction. In intergroup bias, for example, Fiske's Stereotype Content Model predicts patterns of discriminatory behavior distinctive to each combination of stereotypic warmth and competence. Going beyond reported behavior, distinctive activations emerged in brain-imaging and muscle responses. In health psychology, Taylor's Positive Illusions theory predicts people cope with life-threatening illness by viewing the odds optimistically, the self positively, and possible control affirmatively. Again, the social cognitive processes interplay with psycho-physiology. Recently, social cognitive approaches have increasingly addressed inequality: health disparities, bias interventions, power dynamics, class effects, social morality, and intent inferences. Viewing perceivers as Inequality Enablers answers any remaining doubts about the field's continuing relevance.