Rigid social categorization can lead to negative social consequences such as stereotyping and prejudice. The authors hypothesized that bodily experiences of fluidity would promote fluidity in social-categorical thinking. Across a series of experiments, fluid movements compared with nonfluid movements led to more fluid lay theories of social categories, more fluidity in social categorization, an...

The factor structure, reliability, and validity of the Help-Seeker Stereotype Scale (HSSS), an instrument measuring the strength of respondents’ endorsement of negative stereotypes about people who seek help from a psychologist, was explored over the course of three studies. In Study 1, 50 items designed to capture negative, self-esteem harming stereotypes of help seekers were generated. Pilot ...

Two studies tested the prediction that belief in a negative stereotype about an in-group will cause members to shift from viewing their in-group as a social identity to viewing it as a frame of reference. The stereotype that was the focus of inquiry was the belief that women have less aptitude at math and spatial tasks than do men. In both studies, female participants took a test of math and sp...