Stereotypes are generally harmful, regardless of the content being positive or negative. However, people may perceive certain stereotypes are more acceptable or less harmful than others. We are interested in seeing the varying degree of how people perceive the social acceptability of the stereotypes about women’s interest or ability in computer science. We hypothesize that stereotypes about women being less interested in STEM fields are more socially acceptable than stereotypes about their ability in computer science. For this purpose, we intend to conduct a survey study including 4 scales measuring how much participants, students from University of Washington, believe it is socially acceptable to assume gender stereotypes about women’s interest and ability in computer science. Data will be analyzed using a dependent t-test. We hypothesize that people believe it is less socially acceptable to talk about the stereotypes about women having less ability than being less interested in computer science. The finding may stop the adverse intuition that expressing some stereotypes are tolerated and further motivate women to express their interest in computer science as the stereotypes about their interest should be just as unacceptable as any stereotypes regarding their ability. Future work could develop interventions to spread the awareness that having either types of stereotypes about women on computer science topics, no matter woman’s interest or ability, should be considered harmful.

Past research found racial diversity in the workplace can increase equity (e.g. Edelman et al., 2001), but could proximity to diversity make White leaders less likely to be held accountable for bias? I conducted two studies examining how having racial diversity near, but not within, the work team may influence people’s perceptions of workplace equity. In Study 1, participants recruited through Prolific (N = 252) rated how equitable they think a White leader would be in two conditions: one where all other leaders are White and one where the other leaders are racially diverse. Participants were informed that the White leader works entirely independently from the other leaders. Results show that participants rated the leader as more equitable in the diverse condition as compared to the all-White condition. Study 2 examines whether proximity to diversity could shield White leaders from accountability in an ambiguous situation where racial bias may have played a role. Results show that participants (N = 234) rated the leader's decision as less likely to be driven by racial bias in the diverse leadership (vs. all-White) condition. Mediation analysis shows that perceiving the leader as more equitable in the diverse leadership condition helps explain the present effect. Implication suggests that people may be less sensitive to detecting bias in diverse environments. Future work should disaggregate the experiences of people of color, examining whether there may be differences among racial groups in how the effect operates. Individual differences may also be moderating factors for the investigated effect.