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To attract and retain a more diverse workforce, organisations include diversity statements on their websites. These diversity statements signal an organisation’s commitment to diversity (McNab & Johnston, 2002) and that the workplace is inclusive and fair to members of different groups (Dover et al., 2020). In their statements or on the webpages dedicated to diversity and inclusion, organisations often mention several group categories as examples for diversity (e.g., gender, sexuality, age). Although organisations mention categories, they tend not to say anything about their intersections (Krivoshchekov et. al., manuscript under review), thus operating under the assumption that “one size fits all.” Such an approach does not take into account that people’s workplace and diversity initiatives experiences are influenced by their intersecting identities (Opara et al., 2020; Wong et al., 2022). Critically, mentioning separate categories might not support diversity within individuals because people tend to think of prototypical members when presented with a group category (Bailey et al., 2019; Sternberg et al., 2023). Using single separate categories in diversity statements raises a question about who comes to people’s mind when they read organisational diversity statements. A tendency to refer to a single category alters one’s perception of a group by making certain members a category default. For instance, in the Western culture, the category ‘people’ was mostly found to be defaulted to male (Bailey et al., 2022), White (Devos & Banaji, 2005; Hegarty & Buechel, 2006), straight (Hegarty et al., 2004; Lick & Johnson, 2016), and young (North & Fiske, 2015). As a result, some intersecting categories are less accessible and overlooked when processing the larger category (Carnaghi et al., 2022; Coladonato et al., 2022; Klysing, 2023; Purdie-Vaughns & Eibach, 2008; Schug et al., 2015; Sternberg et al., 2023; Thomas et al., 2014). Thus, when organisations produce diversity statements, they might try to break the cognitive accessibility of single typical categories (i.e., White, young, straight, male), and therefore they create diversity statements in which they try to make people think of other (i.e., atypical) categories. Importantly, the accessibility of categories can be affected by the context (Bailey et al., 2019). Because diversity statements are designed to attract candidates from underrepresented groups (Dover et al., 2020) and therefore mention them frequently in their diversity initiatives, recipients’ accessible categories should be categories that are otherwise atypical, namely, those oppositional to the category defaults. For instance, in a diversity statement, gender is anticipated to make “women” more accessible than “men,” race/ethnicity is anticipated to make “Black” more accessible than “White.” This is because groups that are more frequently instantiated tend to come to the perceivers’ mind first (Bailey et al., 2019; Barsalou, 1985). To examine this, we will ask participants to read a diversity statement, then we will present them with pictures of people that represent different intersections and ask them to rank pictures in the order from who they think is being referred to the most at the top to being referred to the least at the bottom. Therefore, we hypothesise that participants will rank members of atypical single categories higher than members of typical single categories after reading a diversity statement (hypothesis 1). For example, people will rank women higher than men, Black people higher than White people, adults higher than young. Nevertheless, organisations run into a risk that, instead of breaking the accessibility of typical categories, they produce a different set of typical categories (i.e., category defaults) that will be more accessible, including those with only single atypical category (e.g., women) but neglecting others with multiple atypical categories (e.g., Black elderly women). For instance, when reading a diversity statement, one might think of an elderly Black woman or an elderly (White male) person. If one social category is made accessible, perceivers risk using that category over alternatives and keep other ones as defaults (i.e., a woman but young), which are usually more accessible. We argue that a diversity statement without any references to intersectionality is not enough to make the intersectionality of multiple atypical categories highly accessible, which is vital for diversity initiatives (see Opara et al., 2020; Wong et al., 2022). At the same time, the way information is presented (i.e., framing) might facilitate the accessibility of intersectional categories among readers. For instance, compared to framing “gender as binary”, “gender as diverse or irrelevant” increased perceived gender diversity in the organisation (Klysing et al., 2022). As such, we predict that when presented with pictures of people with different intersections participants will rank people with multiple atypical categories higher (more at the top) than people with single atypical categories after reading a diversity statement that refers to intersectionality than after a diversity statement that does not mention intersectionality (hypothesis 2). Finally, we will explore which categories participants tend to mention after reading a diversity statement and whether participants will more frequently mention multiple intersectional atypical categories after reading a diversity statement that refers to intersectionality than after a diversity statement that does not mention intersectionality. Further, we are interested in the order of the mentioned categories. In the case of diversity initiatives, there are certain groups that people tend to associate with organisational diversity initiatives. For example, despite gender (as a whole) being the most frequently mentioned category in diversity statements across European organisations (Krivoshchekov et. al., manuscript under review), diversity initiatives are usually designed to support women but not non-binary individuals (see e.g., Dover et al., 2020). As such, some groups will be more likely to be mentioned first. Therefore, we will explore the order in which participants will mention group categories.

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-jls-10.1177_0261927X221137581 for A Cognitive Look at the “Invisibility” of Older Gay Men Within the Categories ‘Gay Man’ and ‘Elderly Man’ by Rosandra Coladonato, Andrea Carnaghi, Mary Ann Ciosk, Mauro Bianchi and Valentina Piccoli in Journal of Language and Social Psychology

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-gpi-10.1177_1368430220987606 for No country for old gay men: Age and sexuality category intersection renders older gay men invisible by Andrea Carnaghi, Patrice Rusconi, Mauro Bianchi, Fabio Fasoli, Rosandra Coladonato and Peter Hegarty in Group Processes & Intergroup Relations

A controversial hypothesis, named the Sexualized Body Inversion Hypothesis (SBIH), claims similar visual processing of sexually objectified women (i.e., with a focus on the sexual body parts) and inanimate objects as indicated by an absence of the inversion effect for both type of stimuli. The current study aims at shedding light into the mechanisms behind the SBIH in a series of 4 experiments. Using a modified version of Bernard et al.´s (2012) visual-matching task, first we tested the core assumption of the SBIH, namely that a similar processing style occurs for sexualized human bodies and objects. In Experiments 1 and 2 a non-sexualized (personalized) condition plus two object-control conditions (mannequins, and houses) were included in the experimental design. Results showed an inversion effect for images of personalized women and mannequins, but not for sexualized women and houses. Second, we explored whether this effect was driven by differences in stimulus asymmetry, by testing the mediating and moderating role of this visual feature. In Experiment 3, we provided the first evidence that not only the sexual attributes of the images but also additional perceptual features of the stimuli, such as their asymmetry, played a moderating role in shaping the inversion effect. Lastly, we investigated the strategy adopted in the visual-matching task by tracking eye movements of the participants. Results of Experiment 4 suggest an association between a specific pattern of visual exploration of the images and the presence of the inversion effect. Findings are discussed with respect to the literature on sexual objectification.

It is well known that categorization of targets as ingroup or outgroup members affects human behaviours. However, little is known about whether this process affects the perception of emotions via the mood boosted by a minimal sense of belonging vs. loneliness. Here for the first time, we recast this problem by investigating the dependence of the emotional semantic congruency effect (ESC) in the social context. ESC is an effect observed in an Emotional Comparison Task (ECT) with pairs of facial expressions of emotions, in which the speed of response is faster for emotional (positive/negative) rather than neutral faces, regardless of response side, with an overall speed advantage for positive over negative emotions (emotion anisotropy). In four experiments we manipulated the social context in terms of sense of belonging vs. loneliness by combining presence/absence of Social Categorization (minimal group paradigm) and presence/absence of Intragroup/Intergroup Competition (the best individual/cumulative performance). Subjects performed the ECT individually though concurrently in groups of 8 participants. Results showed that Intergroup Competition speeded up overall responses, while Social Categorization per se enhanced the emotion anisotropy in favour of a happiness advantage. In ECT, Competition and Social Categorization independently affect two performance’s components both probes of participants’ mood state: arousal, relying on response speeds, and valence, relying on emotion anisotropy. In conclusion, belonging to a group, which creates significant social connections and dampens feeling of loneliness, enhances the quality of global experience.

Preference for one's own group is a widespread phenomenon. Results with dominant and minority group participants, however, are not consistent about whether the ingroup is always implicitly favored. The majority of these findings is related mostly to the northern-American context. Also, these findings are from studies that relied on a single implicit assessment. We compared Black and White participants in Portugal on their spontaneous reactions using two types of implicit measures: A semantic priming paradigm and an automatic approach/avoidance task. Results showed immediate outgroup-avoidance and ingroup-approach responses for dominant and minority participants, respectively. Moreover, both dominant and minority participants associated their ingroup with positive characteristics, more so than the outgroup. Results are discussed within the theoretical frame of Social Identity Theory and System Justification Theory.