Melanie C Steffens
Biographic Data
| ID | 90574 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Melanie C Steffens |
| GIVEN NAMES | Melanie C |
| FAMILY NAME | Steffens |
| SIGNATURE | STEFFENS M C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Koblenz and Landau |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 313 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Underestimating sexism: Is gender categorization key?
In everyday life it can be controversial whether gender-based discrimination (i.e., sexism) has occurred or not. Claims of sexism are sometimes doubted, rejected, or cause backlash. The main aim of the present research was to investigate whether sexism is (relatively) underestimated. We experimentally tested whether instances of sexism are regarded as less discriminatory than the same instances involving racism, another prevalent form of discrimi…
Did Descriptive and Prescriptive Norms About Gender Equality at Home Change During the Covid-19 Pandemic? A Cross-National Investigation
Using data from 15 countries, this article investigates whether descriptive and prescriptive gender norms concerning housework and child care (domestic work) changed after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Results of a total of 8,343 participants ( M = 19.95, SD = 1.68) from two comparable student samples suggest that descriptive norms about unpaid domestic work have been affected by the pandemic, with individuals seeing mothers’ relative to fa…
A needs-based level of construal: Members of perceived victim and perpetrator groups prefer to represent transgressions at different levels of abstraction
Informed by the needs-based model of reconciliation, we hypothesized that members of perceived perpetrator groups would prefer more abstract representations of historical or present transgressions than members of perceived victim groups. Six lab experiments (total N = 2,363; preregistered) and one study that examined the language used in Twitter posts (1,496 tweets; preregistered) supported this hypothesis across different intergroup contexts: th…
The gender gap in the care economy is larger in highly developed countries: Sociocultural explanations for paradoxical findings
Despite the growing demand for care economy employees (e.g., nurses, teachers, and social workers), men remain underrepresented in these careers. While economically developed countries support more equal rights for women and men, their labor markets are highly gender segregated (Charles, 1992, 2003). We conducted a focused investigation of this paradoxical pattern in the care economy, testing whether gender gaps in care economy career interest ar…
Framing the inclusiveness of the national ingroup: Do identity-related frames affect national identity representations salience
Gender Gap in Parental Leave Intentions: Evidence from 37 Countries
Despite global commitments and efforts, a gender‐based division of paid and unpaid work persists. To identify how psychological factors, national policies, and the broader sociocultural context contribute to this inequality, we assessed parental‐leave intentions in young adults (18–30 years old) planning to have children (N = 13,942; 8,880 identified as women; 5,062 identified as men) across 37 countries that varied in parental‐leave policies and…
What do I want to be? Predictors of communal occupational aspirations in early to middle childhood
Research investigating occupational aspirations in childhood is scarce. In addition, most research on occupational aspirations has focused on increasing the number of women in agentic jobs. In the present work, we investigate factors associated with communal occupational aspirations in two studies with young children (Study 1: 159 children [84 boys, 75 girls], M age = 5.51 years, SD = 0.37; Study 2: 96 children [48 boys, 48 girls]; M age = 9.44 y…
Racism in Europe: Characteristics and Intersections With Other Social Categories
Concerning race and its intertwinements with gender, sexual orientation, class, accents, or ability there is a scarcity of social psychological research in Europe. With an intersectional approach studying racism in Europe it is possible to detect specific experiences of discrimination. The prevalent understanding of European racism is connected to migration from the former colonies to the European metropoles and the post-Second-World-War immigrat…
Meta-Analytic Use of Balanced Identity Theory to Validate the Implicit Association Test
This meta-analysis evaluated theoretical predictions from balanced identity theory (BIT) and evaluated the validity of zero points of Implicit Association Test (IAT) and self-report measures used to test these predictions. Twenty-one researchers contributed individual subject data from 36 experiments (total N = 12,773) that used both explicit and implicit measures of the social–cognitive constructs. The meta-analysis confirmed predictions of BIT’…
A brief diversity training: Raising awareness of ingroup privilege to improve attitudes towards disadvantaged outgroups
Diversity training is a popular strategy to reduce prejudice within educational settings. However, in practice, diversity training rarely relies on social‐psychological theory, and research on its effectiveness in real‐world settings is scarce. Previous research regarding diversity training has particularly neglected an important theoretical concept: privilege as the counterpart of discrimination. Therefore, we developed a diversity training aimi…
Using Scenarios for Measuring the Affective and Behavioral Components of Attitudes Toward Lesbians and Gay Men: Validation of the Saba Scale
Do People Remember What Is Prototypical? The Role of Accent-Religion Intersectionality for Individual and Category Memory
Evidence suggests that accents can be typically more powerful in activating ethnicity categorization than appearance. Concurrently, some social categories, such as ethnicity, can be linked with other categories, such as religion. We investigate how people categorize those who belong to a (mis)matching pair of categories? In the present study, we investigated Germans' categorization of women either wearing a headscarf (Muslim religious symbol), or…
Gender (Conformity) Matters: Cross-Dimensional and Cross-Modal Associations in Sexual Orientation Perception
Although sexual orientation (SO) is perceptually ambiguous, people are able to detect it with above-chance accuracy from faces and, sometimes, from voices. Despite a multitude of "gaydar" studies, it is unclear (1) whether vocal or facial signals carry more SO information, (2) whether raters refer to target's SO instead of gender-role conformity when forming SO impressions, and (3) whether there are any differences for female and male targets. We…
What did they say? How subgroup stereotypes influence memory for superordinate groups
Which kind of political campaign messages do people perceive as election pledges
Foreign-Looking Native-Accented People: More Competent When First Seen Rather Than Heard
Psychological research has neglected people whose accent does not match their appearance. Most research on person perception has focused on appearance, overlooking accents that are equally important social cues. If accents were studied, it was often done in isolation (i.e., detached from appearance). We examine how varying accent and appearance information about people affects evaluations. We show that evaluations of expectancy-violating people s…
Traditional Masculinity and Femininity: Validation of a New Scale Assessing Gender Roles
Gender stereotype theory suggests that men are generally perceived as more masculine than women, whereas women are generally perceived as more feminine than men. Several scales have been developed to measure fundamental aspects of gender stereotypes (e.g., agency and communion, competence and warmth, or instrumentality and expressivity). Although omitted in later version, Bem's original Sex Role Inventory included the items "masculine" and "femin…
As high as it gets: Ingroup projection processes in the superordinate group humans
Frauen – Männer – Karrieren
Ironic Effects of Sexual Minority Group Membership: Are Lesbians Less Susceptible to Invoking Negative Female Stereotypes than Heterosexual Women
Male Role Endorsement Explains Negative Attitudes Toward Lesbians and Gay Men Among Students in Mexico More Than in Germany
Anti-gay attitudes vary across cultures because the larger social context plays a role in attitude formation. Psychological correlates of these attitudes have been investigated in the United States and Europe. Endorsement of traditional gender roles has emerged from that research as a central correlate, next to religiosity and personal contact with lesbians/gay men. In a cross-sectional study, we tested whether these correlates are relevant in Me…
How diversity training can change attitudes: Increasing perceived complexity of superordinate groups to improve intergroup relations
When I Becomes We: Associative Self-Anchoring Drives Implicit Intergroup Bias in Minimal Groups
Preference for in-groups over out-groups (intergroup bias) is a general and robust phenomenon. The personal self has been theorized to be a source of intergroup bias. In two studies, participants were categorized randomly without any-not even simulated-trait-based similarity between the personal self and the in-group. Findings demonstrate that the interplay of implicit personal self-esteem and group identification (i.e., associative self-anchorin…
When Actions Speak Louder Than Words: Preventing Discrimination of Nonstandard Speakers
Prejudice against a social group may lead to discrimination of members of this group. One very strong cue of group membership is a (non)standard accent in speech. Surprisingly, hardly any interventions against accent-based discrimination have been tested. In the current article, we introduce an intervention in which what participants experience themselves unobtrusively changes their evaluations of others. In the present experiment, participants i…
Blinded by the accent! The minor role of looks in ethnic categorization
The categories that social targets belong to are often activated automatically. Most studies investigating social categorization have used visual stimuli or verbal labels, whereas ethnolinguistic identity theory posits that language is an essential dimension of ethnic identity. Language should therefore be used for social categorization. In 2 experiments, using the "Who Said What?" paradigm, the authors investigated social categorization by using…
Attitudes toward lesbians, gay men, bisexual women, and bisexual men in Germany
Attitudes toward lesbians, gay men, bisexual women, and bisexual men were assessed in a national representative sample of 2,006 self-identified heterosexual women and men living in Germany. Replicating previous findings, younger people held more favorable attitudes than older people; women held more favorable attitudes than men; and men held more favorable attitudes toward female than male homosexuality, whereas women did not differentiate. Howev…
Blinded by the accent! The minor role of looks in ethnic categorization
The categories that social targets belong to are often activated automatically. Most studies investigating social categorization have used visual stimuli or verbal labels, whereas ethnolinguistic identity theory posits that language is an essential dimension of ethnic identity. Language should therefore be used for social categorization. In 2 experiments, using the "Who Said What?" paradigm, the authors investigated social categorization by using…
Implicit and Explicit Attitudes Towards Lesbians and Gay Men
Attitudes towards lesbians and gay men, as assessed with questionnaires, have become more and more positive in the last decades. An open question is, however, whether that trend reflects true change or rather a growing reluctance to admit negative attitudes (to others and self). New procedures measuring implicit attitudes may help find an answer. In three studies with 208 students at a German university, attitudes towards lesbians and gay men wer…
Which kind of political campaign messages do people perceive as election pledges
When Actions Speak Louder Than Words: Preventing Discrimination of Nonstandard Speakers
Prejudice against a social group may lead to discrimination of members of this group. One very strong cue of group membership is a (non)standard accent in speech. Surprisingly, hardly any interventions against accent-based discrimination have been tested. In the current article, we introduce an intervention in which what participants experience themselves unobtrusively changes their evaluations of others. In the present experiment, participants i…
When it matters how you pronounce it: The influence of regional accents on job interview outcome
The visual dimension has featured prominently in person perception in the last 25 years. Alone, this dimension cannot give the complete 'picture' of others because language and speech (i.e., the auditory dimension) are also highly informative. Social-cognition research investigates the role of auditory information for impression formation. In a series of experiments, we tested perceived competence, hirability, and socio-intellectual status of dif…
Male Role Endorsement Explains Negative Attitudes Toward Lesbians and Gay Men Among Students in Mexico More Than in Germany
Anti-gay attitudes vary across cultures because the larger social context plays a role in attitude formation. Psychological correlates of these attitudes have been investigated in the United States and Europe. Endorsement of traditional gender roles has emerged from that research as a central correlate, next to religiosity and personal contact with lesbians/gay men. In a cross-sectional study, we tested whether these correlates are relevant in Me…
How to like yourself better, or chocolate less: Changing implicit attitudes with one IAT task
Gender (Conformity) Matters: Cross-Dimensional and Cross-Modal Associations in Sexual Orientation Perception
Although sexual orientation (SO) is perceptually ambiguous, people are able to detect it with above-chance accuracy from faces and, sometimes, from voices. Despite a multitude of "gaydar" studies, it is unclear (1) whether vocal or facial signals carry more SO information, (2) whether raters refer to target's SO instead of gender-role conformity when forming SO impressions, and (3) whether there are any differences for female and male targets. We…
As high as it gets: Ingroup projection processes in the superordinate group humans
How diversity training can change attitudes: Increasing perceived complexity of superordinate groups to improve intergroup relations
Racism in Europe: Characteristics and Intersections With Other Social Categories
Concerning race and its intertwinements with gender, sexual orientation, class, accents, or ability there is a scarcity of social psychological research in Europe. With an intersectional approach studying racism in Europe it is possible to detect specific experiences of discrimination. The prevalent understanding of European racism is connected to migration from the former colonies to the European metropoles and the post-Second-World-War immigrat…
When I Becomes We: Associative Self-Anchoring Drives Implicit Intergroup Bias in Minimal Groups
Preference for in-groups over out-groups (intergroup bias) is a general and robust phenomenon. The personal self has been theorized to be a source of intergroup bias. In two studies, participants were categorized randomly without any-not even simulated-trait-based similarity between the personal self and the in-group. Findings demonstrate that the interplay of implicit personal self-esteem and group identification (i.e., associative self-anchorin…
Do People Remember What Is Prototypical? The Role of Accent-Religion Intersectionality for Individual and Category Memory
Evidence suggests that accents can be typically more powerful in activating ethnicity categorization than appearance. Concurrently, some social categories, such as ethnicity, can be linked with other categories, such as religion. We investigate how people categorize those who belong to a (mis)matching pair of categories? In the present study, we investigated Germans' categorization of women either wearing a headscarf (Muslim religious symbol), or…
Gender Gap in Parental Leave Intentions: Evidence from 37 Countries
Despite global commitments and efforts, a gender‐based division of paid and unpaid work persists. To identify how psychological factors, national policies, and the broader sociocultural context contribute to this inequality, we assessed parental‐leave intentions in young adults (18–30 years old) planning to have children (N = 13,942; 8,880 identified as women; 5,062 identified as men) across 37 countries that varied in parental‐leave policies and…
Ironic Effects of Sexual Minority Group Membership: Are Lesbians Less Susceptible to Invoking Negative Female Stereotypes than Heterosexual Women
Framing the inclusiveness of the national ingroup: Do identity-related frames affect national identity representations salience
Using Scenarios for Measuring the Affective and Behavioral Components of Attitudes Toward Lesbians and Gay Men: Validation of the Saba Scale
What did they say? How subgroup stereotypes influence memory for superordinate groups
Frauen – Männer – Karrieren
Is the Implicit Association Test Immune to Faking?
One of the main advantages of measures of automatic cognition is supposed to be that they are less susceptible to faking than explicit tests. It is an empirical question, however, to what degree these measures can be faked, and the response might well differ for different measures. We tested whether the Implicit Association Test (IAT, Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998 ) cannot be faked as easily as explicit measures of the same constructs. We c…
Attitudes toward lesbians, gay men, bisexual women, and bisexual men in Germany
Attitudes toward lesbians, gay men, bisexual women, and bisexual men were assessed in a national representative sample of 2,006 self-identified heterosexual women and men living in Germany. Replicating previous findings, younger people held more favorable attitudes than older people; women held more favorable attitudes than men; and men held more favorable attitudes toward female than male homosexuality, whereas women did not differentiate. Howev…
Implicit and Explicit Attitudes Towards Lesbians and Gay Men
Attitudes towards lesbians and gay men, as assessed with questionnaires, have become more and more positive in the last decades. An open question is, however, whether that trend reflects true change or rather a growing reluctance to admit negative attitudes (to others and self). New procedures measuring implicit attitudes may help find an answer. In three studies with 208 students at a German university, attitudes towards lesbians and gay men wer…
How to like yourself better, or chocolate less: Changing implicit attitudes with one IAT task
On the leaky math pipeline: Comparing implicit math-gender stereotypes and math withdrawal in female and male children and adolescents.
Many models assume that habitual human behavior is guided by spontaneous, automatic, or implicit processes rather than by deliberate, rule-based, or explicit processes. Thus, math-ability self-concepts and math performance could be related to implicit math-gender stereotypes in addition to explicit stereotypes. Two studies assessed at what age implicit math-gender stereotyping can be observed and what the relations between these stereotypes and m…
Blinded by the accent! The minor role of looks in ethnic categorization
The categories that social targets belong to are often activated automatically. Most studies investigating social categorization have used visual stimuli or verbal labels, whereas ethnolinguistic identity theory posits that language is an essential dimension of ethnic identity. Language should therefore be used for social categorization. In 2 experiments, using the "Who Said What?" paradigm, the authors investigated social categorization by using…
When it matters how you pronounce it: The influence of regional accents on job interview outcome
The visual dimension has featured prominently in person perception in the last 25 years. Alone, this dimension cannot give the complete 'picture' of others because language and speech (i.e., the auditory dimension) are also highly informative. Social-cognition research investigates the role of auditory information for impression formation. In a series of experiments, we tested perceived competence, hirability, and socio-intellectual status of dif…
Male Role Endorsement Explains Negative Attitudes Toward Lesbians and Gay Men Among Students in Mexico More Than in Germany
Anti-gay attitudes vary across cultures because the larger social context plays a role in attitude formation. Psychological correlates of these attitudes have been investigated in the United States and Europe. Endorsement of traditional gender roles has emerged from that research as a central correlate, next to religiosity and personal contact with lesbians/gay men. In a cross-sectional study, we tested whether these correlates are relevant in Me…
How diversity training can change attitudes: Increasing perceived complexity of superordinate groups to improve intergroup relations
When I Becomes We: Associative Self-Anchoring Drives Implicit Intergroup Bias in Minimal Groups
Preference for in-groups over out-groups (intergroup bias) is a general and robust phenomenon. The personal self has been theorized to be a source of intergroup bias. In two studies, participants were categorized randomly without any-not even simulated-trait-based similarity between the personal self and the in-group. Findings demonstrate that the interplay of implicit personal self-esteem and group identification (i.e., associative self-anchorin…
When Actions Speak Louder Than Words: Preventing Discrimination of Nonstandard Speakers
Prejudice against a social group may lead to discrimination of members of this group. One very strong cue of group membership is a (non)standard accent in speech. Surprisingly, hardly any interventions against accent-based discrimination have been tested. In the current article, we introduce an intervention in which what participants experience themselves unobtrusively changes their evaluations of others. In the present experiment, participants i…
Ironic Effects of Sexual Minority Group Membership: Are Lesbians Less Susceptible to Invoking Negative Female Stereotypes than Heterosexual Women
Traditional Masculinity and Femininity: Validation of a New Scale Assessing Gender Roles
Gender stereotype theory suggests that men are generally perceived as more masculine than women, whereas women are generally perceived as more feminine than men. Several scales have been developed to measure fundamental aspects of gender stereotypes (e.g., agency and communion, competence and warmth, or instrumentality and expressivity). Although omitted in later version, Bem's original Sex Role Inventory included the items "masculine" and "femin…
As high as it gets: Ingroup projection processes in the superordinate group humans
Frauen – Männer – Karrieren
Foreign-Looking Native-Accented People: More Competent When First Seen Rather Than Heard
Psychological research has neglected people whose accent does not match their appearance. Most research on person perception has focused on appearance, overlooking accents that are equally important social cues. If accents were studied, it was often done in isolation (i.e., detached from appearance). We examine how varying accent and appearance information about people affects evaluations. We show that evaluations of expectancy-violating people s…
What did they say? How subgroup stereotypes influence memory for superordinate groups
Which kind of political campaign messages do people perceive as election pledges
A brief diversity training: Raising awareness of ingroup privilege to improve attitudes towards disadvantaged outgroups
Diversity training is a popular strategy to reduce prejudice within educational settings. However, in practice, diversity training rarely relies on social‐psychological theory, and research on its effectiveness in real‐world settings is scarce. Previous research regarding diversity training has particularly neglected an important theoretical concept: privilege as the counterpart of discrimination. Therefore, we developed a diversity training aimi…
Using Scenarios for Measuring the Affective and Behavioral Components of Attitudes Toward Lesbians and Gay Men: Validation of the Saba Scale
Do People Remember What Is Prototypical? The Role of Accent-Religion Intersectionality for Individual and Category Memory
Evidence suggests that accents can be typically more powerful in activating ethnicity categorization than appearance. Concurrently, some social categories, such as ethnicity, can be linked with other categories, such as religion. We investigate how people categorize those who belong to a (mis)matching pair of categories? In the present study, we investigated Germans' categorization of women either wearing a headscarf (Muslim religious symbol), or…
Gender (Conformity) Matters: Cross-Dimensional and Cross-Modal Associations in Sexual Orientation Perception
Although sexual orientation (SO) is perceptually ambiguous, people are able to detect it with above-chance accuracy from faces and, sometimes, from voices. Despite a multitude of "gaydar" studies, it is unclear (1) whether vocal or facial signals carry more SO information, (2) whether raters refer to target's SO instead of gender-role conformity when forming SO impressions, and (3) whether there are any differences for female and male targets. We…
Meta-Analytic Use of Balanced Identity Theory to Validate the Implicit Association Test
This meta-analysis evaluated theoretical predictions from balanced identity theory (BIT) and evaluated the validity of zero points of Implicit Association Test (IAT) and self-report measures used to test these predictions. Twenty-one researchers contributed individual subject data from 36 experiments (total N = 12,773) that used both explicit and implicit measures of the social–cognitive constructs. The meta-analysis confirmed predictions of BIT’…
What do I want to be? Predictors of communal occupational aspirations in early to middle childhood
Research investigating occupational aspirations in childhood is scarce. In addition, most research on occupational aspirations has focused on increasing the number of women in agentic jobs. In the present work, we investigate factors associated with communal occupational aspirations in two studies with young children (Study 1: 159 children [84 boys, 75 girls], M age = 5.51 years, SD = 0.37; Study 2: 96 children [48 boys, 48 girls]; M age = 9.44 y…
Racism in Europe: Characteristics and Intersections With Other Social Categories
Concerning race and its intertwinements with gender, sexual orientation, class, accents, or ability there is a scarcity of social psychological research in Europe. With an intersectional approach studying racism in Europe it is possible to detect specific experiences of discrimination. The prevalent understanding of European racism is connected to migration from the former colonies to the European metropoles and the post-Second-World-War immigrat…
Psychology (28 works) · Social Psychology (24 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (23 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Developmental psychology (9 works) · Perception (9 works) · Social Psychology (9 works) · Cognitive psychology (8 works) · Gender Diversity and Inequality (8 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (7 works)