The threat of appearing lazy, inefficient, and slow?: Stereotype threat in the public sector

Katharina Dinhof; Sheeling Neo; Isa Bertram; Noortje de Boer; Gabriela Szydlowski; Lars Tummers; Jurgen Willems

doi:10.1080/14719037.2023.2229326

The threat of appearing lazy, inefficient, and slow? Stereotype threat in the public sector

Katharina Dinhof^*, Sheeling Neo, Isa Bertram, Noortje de Boer, Gabriela Szydlowski, Lars Tummers, Jurgen Willems

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

Public employees are stereotyped as lazy, inefficient, and slow. When made aware of such stereotypes, they may experience stereotype threat that impairs their task-performance. Across two pre-registered, large-scale between-subjects experiments (n1 = 1,543; n2 = 1,147), we found that performance in terms of task correctness, processing time, and effort was unaffected by information of negative public employee stereotypes. Our results do not indicate stereotype threat effects for public employees in terms of task-performance. This finding offers valuable theoretical and practical implications for the understanding of public sector stereotypes and public sector reputation.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	1941-1962
Number of pages	22
Journal	Public Management Review
Volume	26
Issue number	7
Early online date	2 Jul 2023
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2023.2229326
Publication status	Published - 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Keywords

experimental research
job-related task-performance
public sector stereotypes
stereotype threat

Access to Document

10.1080/14719037.2023.2229326Licence: CC BY-NC-ND

The threat of appearing lazy inefficient and slow Stereotype threat in the public sectorFinal published version, 999 KBLicence: CC BY-NC-ND

Cite this

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