Bystanders to Bias: Witnessing Gendered Microaggressions Affects Men's and Women's Outcomes in STEM Small Group Contexts

Authors

Nadia Vossoughi, Grinnell College
Logan C. Burley, Queen's University
Ryan P. Foley, University of Michigan
Lorelle A. Meadows, Michigan Technological UniversityFollow
Denise Sekaquaptewa, University of Michigan

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2-14-2025

Department

Department of Psychology and Human Factors

Abstract

We tested whether merely witnessing gendered microaggressions affects group work experiences among male and female undergraduate computer science and engineering students. Across three experiments (N = 753), we randomly assigned computer science and engineering students to witness microaggressions targeting female students, or control interactions, using a video manipulation. Witnessing microaggressions-compared to the control-resulted in heightened gender-specific stereotyping concerns, with women being concerned about appearing incompetent and men being concerned with appearing sexist. For both women and men, witnessing microaggressions resulted in decreased enthusiasm for participating in group work. Moreover, for women, the relationship between decreased enthusiasm and witnessing microaggressions was partially mediated by increased concerns about being stereotyped as incompetent. Across the experiments, mixed results emerged regarding the effect of witnessing microaggressions on the recall of engineering content in the video. This research extends previous work focused on personally experiencing microaggressions to merely witnessing them, showing that positivity toward anticipated group work is diminished for both women and men when they see peers engaging in microaggressions.

Publisher's Statement

Copyright: © 2025 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Publisher’s version of record: https://doi.org/10.3390/bs15020215

Publication Title

Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland)

Recommended Citation

Vossoughi, N., Burley, L. C., Foley, R. P., Meadows, L. A., & Sekaquaptewa, D. (2025). Bystanders to Bias: Witnessing Gendered Microaggressions Affects Men's and Women's Outcomes in STEM Small Group Contexts. Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland), 15(2). http://doi.org/10.3390/bs15020215
Retrieved from: https://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/michigantech-p2/1469

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Version

Publisher's PDF