Janet B Ruscher
Biographic Data
| ID | 650289 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Janet B Ruscher |
| GIVEN NAMES | Janet B |
| FAMILY NAME | Ruscher |
| SIGNATURE | RUSCHER J B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Tulane University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1641-3638 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 75 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1990 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Partisans’ Noncomplex Impressions of a Candidate Who Wore a Racially Insensitive Costume
Scandals such as racially insensitive costuming do not always ruin political ambitions. Instead, partisan supporters’ voting intentions can remain strong when they rely upon simplistic impressions. In this experiment, U.S. adults presented with a (fictitious) political candidate with similar (or different) sociopolitical positions were confronted with a news story about the candidate's racially insensitive Halloween costume during his college yea…
What’s in a name . . . and for whom? How public spaces named for prejudiced individuals impact targets of prejudice
Public spaces that are named for or commemorate prejudiced historical figures may harm targets of prejudice. They can signal what a community believes or values and, consequently, may exacerbate targets’ perceptions of hostility, reduced safety, and low belongingness. Across six studies ( n = 505 BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, and people of color]; n = 1,230 White U.S. university students), we examined: the effect of space names on target versus nonta…
Behavioral Mimicry and Interaction Expectations Influence Affect in Interracial Interactions
Viral sticks, virtual stones: Addressing anonymous hate speech online
Woods and Ruscher examine hate speech as a multifaceted phenomenon that has adapted to novel communication contexts and opportunities. In particular, online communication represents a growing opportunity for individuals to engage in anonymous hate speech, a situation that merits additional research for several reasons. The authors posit, first, that this specific type of hate speech warrants focused research because it may not altogether fit into…
Dehumanizing representations of women: The Shaping of Hostile Sexist Attitudes Through Animalistic Metaphors
Women are frequently depicted as non-human objects or animals. While female animalization has typically been conceptualized in the psychological literature as communicating a unitary perception of women, linguistic research suggests that there are at least two distinct animalizing linguistic metaphors for women that depict women at opposite ends of a sex-based power differential: ‘women-are-predators’ and ‘women-are-prey’. Are these linguistic me…
Adult Attachment Predicts Advice, Exemplar Sharing, and Questions to Acquaintances Recently Diagnosed With Cancer
This study examined how adult attachment patterns influence communication to acquaintances with cancer diagnoses. Adults completed Brennan et al.’s measures of attachment anxiety and avoidance, then reported their likelihood of expressing various comments to a recently diagnosed acquaintance. Anxiety predicted expressions of admiration, sharing cancer exemplars, and questions about the cancer (i.e., all potentially intimacy-enhancing), as well as…
Expectations about re-entering the weekly cycle following disruption by familial death or holiday
In industrialized nations, patterns of behavior such as attending work or school are strongly predicted by the seven-day weekly calendar. The weekly cycle can be disrupted by unexpected events (e.g. familial death) or planned days off (e.g. vacation). Because the weekly cycle typically begins on Monday, people should expect others who experience disruption to re-enter the weekly cycle on Mondays in order to synchronize with the conventional weekl…
Describing Grief Under Cyclical Versus Linear Conceptions of Time
Priming linear versus cyclical conceptions of time influences affective forecasts and descriptions of grief. Relative to a linear or static prime, a cyclical prime prompted predictions of shorter grief duration, reliance on cyclical language, characterization of recovery as return to routine, and reduced characterization of the bereaved person as passive. To contrast, a linear prime uniquely prompted spatiotemporal metaphors, advising against pre…
Moving Forward: The Effect of Spatiotemporal Metaphors on Perceptions About Grief
Two distinct spatial metaphors for the passage of time can produce disparate judgments about grieving. Under the object-moving metaphor, time seems to move past stationary people, like objects floating past people along a riverbank. Under the people-moving metaphor, time is stationary; people move through time as though they journey on a one-way street, past stationary objects. The people-moving metaphor should encourage the forecast of shorter g…
Constructive feedback in cross-race interactions
In two experiments, White college students provided a local high-school student with feedback on her substandard college admissions essay, via electronic mail. Motivation to provide appropriate feedback was manipulated by alleging comparison to experts or novices. Experiment 1 compared feedback to White versus Black recipients, with the expectation that accountability would attenuate previously observed positivity biases in cross-race feedback. E…
The Development of Shared Stereotypic Impressions in Conversation: An Emerging Model, Methods, and Extensions to Cross-Group Settings
The authors' research over the past 10 years has examined how dyads work together to find a common ground understanding through which to develop a shared impression. This article begins by examining the extant motivations underlying such efforts and presents a model of why and under what conditions shared stereotypic impressions develop. The article then turns to the mechanisms through which these shared stereotypic impressions develop through co…
How Newly Acquainted Dyads Develop Shared Stereotypic Impressions through Conversation
This study investigated how feelings of closeness at initial acquaintance encourage the development of shared stereotypic impressions of others through conversation. At least early in a relationship, closer dyads may be especially inclined to get along with one another. In order to satisfy this goal, they should focus their conversations around easily agreed upon stereotypic attributes and spontaneously express agreement about those attributes. A…
Lady, Girl, Female, or Woman: Sexism and Cognitive Busyness Predict Use of Gender-Biased Nouns
Two studies investigated whether modern sexism predicts men's use of gender-biased terms for women. When established norms suggest a preference for neutral terms (e.g., woman, female), men lower in sexism should avoid potentially biased terms (e.g., lady, girl). Adhering to such an established norm, however, may require conscious effort. In Study 1, men lower in modern sexism used fewer gender-biased terms in a written format than did men higher …
Shared impression formation in the cognitively interdependent dyad
We examined the role of cognitive interdependence in determining how close friends form shared impressions of another person. Cognitive interdependence should provide a processing advantage, such that close friends are more efficient in forming shared impressions and are more successful at doing so. Under normal circumstances, the conversations of close friends should be marked by little necessity to make explicit requests for information, mutual…
Off-Target Verbosity Evokes Negative Stereotypes of Older Adults
Off-target verbosity is the inclusion of irrelevant information into an inappropriately lengthy narrative and is a characteristic exhibited by about 20% of older people. This experiment demonstrated that off-target verbosity elicited negative stereotypes of older adults among younger listeners. The talkative speaker who remained on-target did not elicit stereotypes as strongly, however, and even helped listeners remember details of the speaker's …
Meta‐accuracy about potential relationship partners' models of others
We investigated whether people can determine which partners are best able to confirm their self‐views. Results suggest that people are able to determine the valence of a potential romantic partner's model of other (i.e., they are meta‐accurate). Previous research indicates that people expect to have their specific negative and positive self‐views confirmed by partners whose model of other matches the valence of their self‐view. In the present stu…
Prejudice and Stereotyping in Everyday Communication
Multiple communicators with unique target information transmit less stereotypical impressions.
Four studies examined how multiple communicators who have unique target information transmit less stereotypical impressions. Co-communicators with unique information should feel accountable for providing unique perspectives and consequently will try to be accurate. This accuracy goal should increase their focus on stereotype-incongruent behaviors, resulting in more counterstereotypical transmissions. Study 1 showed that communicators with unique …
Multiple communicators with unique target information transmit less stereotypical impressions
Modern Racism as a Predictor of the Linguistic Intergroup Bias
Despite the fact that Maass, Salvi, Arcuri, and Semin's linguistic intergroup bias (LIB) seems to be an indicator of prejudice, research has failed to consider whether this phenomenon differs according to people's dispositional level of prejudice. The present study hypothesized that European Americans higher in prejudice against African Americans would demonstrate linguistic abstraction of stereotypical behaviors to a greater degree than European…
Choosing to sever or maintain association induces biased impression formation
Impression formation should be biased in individuals who decide to maintain or sever association because they desire to form impressions that support their decision. Because such individuals also should wish to appear objective, decision-supporting information should be irrelevant to obvious reasons for the decision (e.g., a target's social stigma). Accepting the veracity of the target's stereotype-irrelevant attributes supports the decision and …
Revising disrupted impressions through conversation
This study examined how a negative revelation (e.g., discovering a previously unknown stigma) disrupts dyads' shared impressions of another person; dyads attempt to revise impressions by focusing on negative, stigma-congruent information. Because some individual social cognitive processes have dyad-level analogues (e.g., transactive memory), it was proposed that the time dyads allocate to discussing certain information mimics individual attention…
Interpersonal competition can cause individuating processes
Two experiments investigated whether competitors attend to and individuate opponents. Interdependence theories predict that people individuate others on whom their outcomes depend rather than stereotyping them; this has been tested for cooperative but not for competitive interdependence. Competition separates such phenomena as unit formation in cooperation from interdependence per se, posited to be the crucial variable. In two experiments, Ss exp…
Interpersonal competition can cause individuating processes
Two experiments investigated whether competitors attend to and individuate opponents. Interdependence theories predict that people individuate others on whom their outcomes depend rather than stereotyping them; this has been tested for cooperative but not for competitive interdependence. Competition separates such phenomena as unit formation in cooperation from interdependence per se, posited to be the crucial variable. In two experiments, Ss exp…
Lady, Girl, Female, or Woman: Sexism and Cognitive Busyness Predict Use of Gender-Biased Nouns
Two studies investigated whether modern sexism predicts men's use of gender-biased terms for women. When established norms suggest a preference for neutral terms (e.g., woman, female), men lower in sexism should avoid potentially biased terms (e.g., lady, girl). Adhering to such an established norm, however, may require conscious effort. In Study 1, men lower in modern sexism used fewer gender-biased terms in a written format than did men higher …
Dehumanizing representations of women: The Shaping of Hostile Sexist Attitudes Through Animalistic Metaphors
Women are frequently depicted as non-human objects or animals. While female animalization has typically been conceptualized in the psychological literature as communicating a unitary perception of women, linguistic research suggests that there are at least two distinct animalizing linguistic metaphors for women that depict women at opposite ends of a sex-based power differential: ‘women-are-predators’ and ‘women-are-prey’. Are these linguistic me…
Shared impression formation in the cognitively interdependent dyad
We examined the role of cognitive interdependence in determining how close friends form shared impressions of another person. Cognitive interdependence should provide a processing advantage, such that close friends are more efficient in forming shared impressions and are more successful at doing so. Under normal circumstances, the conversations of close friends should be marked by little necessity to make explicit requests for information, mutual…
Modern Racism as a Predictor of the Linguistic Intergroup Bias
Despite the fact that Maass, Salvi, Arcuri, and Semin's linguistic intergroup bias (LIB) seems to be an indicator of prejudice, research has failed to consider whether this phenomenon differs according to people's dispositional level of prejudice. The present study hypothesized that European Americans higher in prejudice against African Americans would demonstrate linguistic abstraction of stereotypical behaviors to a greater degree than European…
Moving Forward: The Effect of Spatiotemporal Metaphors on Perceptions About Grief
Two distinct spatial metaphors for the passage of time can produce disparate judgments about grieving. Under the object-moving metaphor, time seems to move past stationary people, like objects floating past people along a riverbank. Under the people-moving metaphor, time is stationary; people move through time as though they journey on a one-way street, past stationary objects. The people-moving metaphor should encourage the forecast of shorter g…
Constructive feedback in cross-race interactions
In two experiments, White college students provided a local high-school student with feedback on her substandard college admissions essay, via electronic mail. Motivation to provide appropriate feedback was manipulated by alleging comparison to experts or novices. Experiment 1 compared feedback to White versus Black recipients, with the expectation that accountability would attenuate previously observed positivity biases in cross-race feedback. E…
Describing Grief Under Cyclical Versus Linear Conceptions of Time
Priming linear versus cyclical conceptions of time influences affective forecasts and descriptions of grief. Relative to a linear or static prime, a cyclical prime prompted predictions of shorter grief duration, reliance on cyclical language, characterization of recovery as return to routine, and reduced characterization of the bereaved person as passive. To contrast, a linear prime uniquely prompted spatiotemporal metaphors, advising against pre…
The Development of Shared Stereotypic Impressions in Conversation: An Emerging Model, Methods, and Extensions to Cross-Group Settings
The authors' research over the past 10 years has examined how dyads work together to find a common ground understanding through which to develop a shared impression. This article begins by examining the extant motivations underlying such efforts and presents a model of why and under what conditions shared stereotypic impressions develop. The article then turns to the mechanisms through which these shared stereotypic impressions develop through co…
How Newly Acquainted Dyads Develop Shared Stereotypic Impressions through Conversation
This study investigated how feelings of closeness at initial acquaintance encourage the development of shared stereotypic impressions of others through conversation. At least early in a relationship, closer dyads may be especially inclined to get along with one another. In order to satisfy this goal, they should focus their conversations around easily agreed upon stereotypic attributes and spontaneously express agreement about those attributes. A…
Revising disrupted impressions through conversation
This study examined how a negative revelation (e.g., discovering a previously unknown stigma) disrupts dyads' shared impressions of another person; dyads attempt to revise impressions by focusing on negative, stigma-congruent information. Because some individual social cognitive processes have dyad-level analogues (e.g., transactive memory), it was proposed that the time dyads allocate to discussing certain information mimics individual attention…
Expectations about re-entering the weekly cycle following disruption by familial death or holiday
In industrialized nations, patterns of behavior such as attending work or school are strongly predicted by the seven-day weekly calendar. The weekly cycle can be disrupted by unexpected events (e.g. familial death) or planned days off (e.g. vacation). Because the weekly cycle typically begins on Monday, people should expect others who experience disruption to re-enter the weekly cycle on Mondays in order to synchronize with the conventional weekl…
Off-Target Verbosity Evokes Negative Stereotypes of Older Adults
Off-target verbosity is the inclusion of irrelevant information into an inappropriately lengthy narrative and is a characteristic exhibited by about 20% of older people. This experiment demonstrated that off-target verbosity elicited negative stereotypes of older adults among younger listeners. The talkative speaker who remained on-target did not elicit stereotypes as strongly, however, and even helped listeners remember details of the speaker's …
Meta‐accuracy about potential relationship partners' models of others
We investigated whether people can determine which partners are best able to confirm their self‐views. Results suggest that people are able to determine the valence of a potential romantic partner's model of other (i.e., they are meta‐accurate). Previous research indicates that people expect to have their specific negative and positive self‐views confirmed by partners whose model of other matches the valence of their self‐view. In the present stu…
Interpersonal competition can cause individuating processes
Two experiments investigated whether competitors attend to and individuate opponents. Interdependence theories predict that people individuate others on whom their outcomes depend rather than stereotyping them; this has been tested for cooperative but not for competitive interdependence. Competition separates such phenomena as unit formation in cooperation from interdependence per se, posited to be the crucial variable. In two experiments, Ss exp…
Revising disrupted impressions through conversation
This study examined how a negative revelation (e.g., discovering a previously unknown stigma) disrupts dyads' shared impressions of another person; dyads attempt to revise impressions by focusing on negative, stigma-congruent information. Because some individual social cognitive processes have dyad-level analogues (e.g., transactive memory), it was proposed that the time dyads allocate to discussing certain information mimics individual attention…
Choosing to sever or maintain association induces biased impression formation
Impression formation should be biased in individuals who decide to maintain or sever association because they desire to form impressions that support their decision. Because such individuals also should wish to appear objective, decision-supporting information should be irrelevant to obvious reasons for the decision (e.g., a target's social stigma). Accepting the veracity of the target's stereotype-irrelevant attributes supports the decision and …
Prejudice and Stereotyping in Everyday Communication
Multiple communicators with unique target information transmit less stereotypical impressions.
Four studies examined how multiple communicators who have unique target information transmit less stereotypical impressions. Co-communicators with unique information should feel accountable for providing unique perspectives and consequently will try to be accurate. This accuracy goal should increase their focus on stereotype-incongruent behaviors, resulting in more counterstereotypical transmissions. Study 1 showed that communicators with unique …
Multiple communicators with unique target information transmit less stereotypical impressions
Modern Racism as a Predictor of the Linguistic Intergroup Bias
Despite the fact that Maass, Salvi, Arcuri, and Semin's linguistic intergroup bias (LIB) seems to be an indicator of prejudice, research has failed to consider whether this phenomenon differs according to people's dispositional level of prejudice. The present study hypothesized that European Americans higher in prejudice against African Americans would demonstrate linguistic abstraction of stereotypical behaviors to a greater degree than European…
Meta‐accuracy about potential relationship partners' models of others
We investigated whether people can determine which partners are best able to confirm their self‐views. Results suggest that people are able to determine the valence of a potential romantic partner's model of other (i.e., they are meta‐accurate). Previous research indicates that people expect to have their specific negative and positive self‐views confirmed by partners whose model of other matches the valence of their self‐view. In the present stu…
Off-Target Verbosity Evokes Negative Stereotypes of Older Adults
Off-target verbosity is the inclusion of irrelevant information into an inappropriately lengthy narrative and is a characteristic exhibited by about 20% of older people. This experiment demonstrated that off-target verbosity elicited negative stereotypes of older adults among younger listeners. The talkative speaker who remained on-target did not elicit stereotypes as strongly, however, and even helped listeners remember details of the speaker's …
Shared impression formation in the cognitively interdependent dyad
We examined the role of cognitive interdependence in determining how close friends form shared impressions of another person. Cognitive interdependence should provide a processing advantage, such that close friends are more efficient in forming shared impressions and are more successful at doing so. Under normal circumstances, the conversations of close friends should be marked by little necessity to make explicit requests for information, mutual…
How Newly Acquainted Dyads Develop Shared Stereotypic Impressions through Conversation
This study investigated how feelings of closeness at initial acquaintance encourage the development of shared stereotypic impressions of others through conversation. At least early in a relationship, closer dyads may be especially inclined to get along with one another. In order to satisfy this goal, they should focus their conversations around easily agreed upon stereotypic attributes and spontaneously express agreement about those attributes. A…
Lady, Girl, Female, or Woman: Sexism and Cognitive Busyness Predict Use of Gender-Biased Nouns
Two studies investigated whether modern sexism predicts men's use of gender-biased terms for women. When established norms suggest a preference for neutral terms (e.g., woman, female), men lower in sexism should avoid potentially biased terms (e.g., lady, girl). Adhering to such an established norm, however, may require conscious effort. In Study 1, men lower in modern sexism used fewer gender-biased terms in a written format than did men higher …
The Development of Shared Stereotypic Impressions in Conversation: An Emerging Model, Methods, and Extensions to Cross-Group Settings
The authors' research over the past 10 years has examined how dyads work together to find a common ground understanding through which to develop a shared impression. This article begins by examining the extant motivations underlying such efforts and presents a model of why and under what conditions shared stereotypic impressions develop. The article then turns to the mechanisms through which these shared stereotypic impressions develop through co…
Constructive feedback in cross-race interactions
In two experiments, White college students provided a local high-school student with feedback on her substandard college admissions essay, via electronic mail. Motivation to provide appropriate feedback was manipulated by alleging comparison to experts or novices. Experiment 1 compared feedback to White versus Black recipients, with the expectation that accountability would attenuate previously observed positivity biases in cross-race feedback. E…
Moving Forward: The Effect of Spatiotemporal Metaphors on Perceptions About Grief
Two distinct spatial metaphors for the passage of time can produce disparate judgments about grieving. Under the object-moving metaphor, time seems to move past stationary people, like objects floating past people along a riverbank. Under the people-moving metaphor, time is stationary; people move through time as though they journey on a one-way street, past stationary objects. The people-moving metaphor should encourage the forecast of shorter g…
Describing Grief Under Cyclical Versus Linear Conceptions of Time
Priming linear versus cyclical conceptions of time influences affective forecasts and descriptions of grief. Relative to a linear or static prime, a cyclical prime prompted predictions of shorter grief duration, reliance on cyclical language, characterization of recovery as return to routine, and reduced characterization of the bereaved person as passive. To contrast, a linear prime uniquely prompted spatiotemporal metaphors, advising against pre…
Adult Attachment Predicts Advice, Exemplar Sharing, and Questions to Acquaintances Recently Diagnosed With Cancer
This study examined how adult attachment patterns influence communication to acquaintances with cancer diagnoses. Adults completed Brennan et al.’s measures of attachment anxiety and avoidance, then reported their likelihood of expressing various comments to a recently diagnosed acquaintance. Anxiety predicted expressions of admiration, sharing cancer exemplars, and questions about the cancer (i.e., all potentially intimacy-enhancing), as well as…
Expectations about re-entering the weekly cycle following disruption by familial death or holiday
In industrialized nations, patterns of behavior such as attending work or school are strongly predicted by the seven-day weekly calendar. The weekly cycle can be disrupted by unexpected events (e.g. familial death) or planned days off (e.g. vacation). Because the weekly cycle typically begins on Monday, people should expect others who experience disruption to re-enter the weekly cycle on Mondays in order to synchronize with the conventional weekl…
Dehumanizing representations of women: The Shaping of Hostile Sexist Attitudes Through Animalistic Metaphors
Women are frequently depicted as non-human objects or animals. While female animalization has typically been conceptualized in the psychological literature as communicating a unitary perception of women, linguistic research suggests that there are at least two distinct animalizing linguistic metaphors for women that depict women at opposite ends of a sex-based power differential: ‘women-are-predators’ and ‘women-are-prey’. Are these linguistic me…
Behavioral Mimicry and Interaction Expectations Influence Affect in Interracial Interactions
Viral sticks, virtual stones: Addressing anonymous hate speech online
Woods and Ruscher examine hate speech as a multifaceted phenomenon that has adapted to novel communication contexts and opportunities. In particular, online communication represents a growing opportunity for individuals to engage in anonymous hate speech, a situation that merits additional research for several reasons. The authors posit, first, that this specific type of hate speech warrants focused research because it may not altogether fit into…
What’s in a name . . . and for whom? How public spaces named for prejudiced individuals impact targets of prejudice
Public spaces that are named for or commemorate prejudiced historical figures may harm targets of prejudice. They can signal what a community believes or values and, consequently, may exacerbate targets’ perceptions of hostility, reduced safety, and low belongingness. Across six studies ( n = 505 BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, and people of color]; n = 1,230 White U.S. university students), we examined: the effect of space names on target versus nonta…
Partisans’ Noncomplex Impressions of a Candidate Who Wore a Racially Insensitive Costume
Scandals such as racially insensitive costuming do not always ruin political ambitions. Instead, partisan supporters’ voting intentions can remain strong when they rely upon simplistic impressions. In this experiment, U.S. adults presented with a (fictitious) political candidate with similar (or different) sociopolitical positions were confronted with a news story about the candidate's racially insensitive Halloween costume during his college yea…
Psychology (23 works) · Social Psychology (22 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (13 works) · Social Psychology (10 works) · Perception (8 works) · Cognitive psychology (7 works) · Communication (7 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (6 works) · Developmental psychology (6 works) · Social perception (6 works)