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These findings also distinguish the effects of personal objectivity from those of nonsexist credentials (Monin and Miller, 2001 B. Monin and D.T. Miller, Moral credentials and the expression of prejudice, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81 (2001), pp. 33–43. Abstract | Full Text via CrossRef | View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus (53)Monin & Miller, 2001). Prior research finds that providing people with the opportunity to affirm their nonsexist identity (e.g., by disagreeing with blatantly sexist statements) leads them to discriminate against women more. While both credentialing and personal objectivity effects address the factors that reduce inhibitions against using social stereotypes, they are not the same.

Nonsexist credentialing is theorized to exert a uniform effect—it increases discrimination against women.

Suggesting to evaluators that they are objective leads them to do what they believe to be objective (as measured by stereotypic beliefs items such as “Sometimes it’s the objective thing to do to hire a man rather than a woman”)—a consistency effect.

In contrast, suggesting to evaluators that they are nonsexist makes them more sexist—an “ironic” effect. Additionally, a sense of personal objectivity may have general effects beyond the moral domain.
It may affect not only gender discrimination, but domains such as consumer choices and voting behavior, that is, any domain where a sense of personal objectivity might increase the consistency between people’s beliefs, thoughts, and intuitions on the one hand and their behavior on the other.

A strong form of our hypothesis is that an “I think it, therefore it’s true” mindset leads people to act not simply on their beliefs, but on cognitive content that is temporarily accessible—even if that content issues not from personal beliefs but from incidental environmental stimuli.

6 of the 11 items contained a word relevant to gender stereotypes (pink, gossiped, Barbie, make-up, nurse, and emotional). None of the gender stereotype words was the word that had to be crossed out. In the control condition, the 6 items contained neutral words (e.g., gallons, store, chair, building, curtain, train). This unobtrusive priming procedure served as our experimental manipulation of gender stereotype accessibility

No participant indicated that his or her responses might have been influenced by the sentence unscrambling task (i.e., rated the prime’s influence as above the midpoint of 5 on the 1–9 scale).

Non-consciously priming gender stereotypes led to discrimination against a female job applicant, but only among participants made to feel objective.

A sense of personal objectivity made evaluators more likely to act on their stereotypic thoughts, even though those thoughts arose from a contextual manipulation rather than from their long-held beliefs.

Notably, this study used a scenario in which participants chose between a male and female applicant, as opposed to evaluating either a male applicant or a female applicant (as in Experiments 1 and 2).

****Such choices heighten careful monitoring and reduce the influence of judgmental biases (Baron, 1994 J. Baron, Nonconsequentialist decisions, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 17 (1994), pp. 1–10.Baron, 1994).

Ironically, feeling objective made people more subjective.

That self-perceived objectivity can facilitate hiring discrimination has both theoretical and pragmatic implications. It suggests that organizational contexts in which evaluators are encouraged to view themselves as objective may lead them to express their personal biases.
For example, the practice of wearing lab coats in laboratory settings may make people feel that they are dispassionately rational, leading them to act on stereotypic beliefs and thoughts that they might have.
And the use of certain formal titles in professional and organizational contexts (e.g., sir, director, professor) may implicitly instigate a sense that one’s judgmental tendencies are above reproach.

Simply advancing in the corporate hierarchy may further give rise to a sense of objectivity.

When individuals believe that others agree with their attitudes, they act on them more.

The present discussion also pertains to the controversy over when attitudes predict behavior (Ross & Nisbett, 1991). Initial findings suggested that attitudes make only a trivial contribution to actual behaviors ([Kelman, 1974], [LaPierre, 1934] and [Wicker, 1969]). However, later work demonstrated that properties of the attitude, such as its accessibility (Fazio & Williams, 1986), importance (Krosnick, 198 cool , and specificity (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1977) moderate attitude–behavior correspondence.


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