Steven Stroessner: Barnard College, Columbia University

Motivations are generally concerned with maintaining safety (prevention) or ensuring advancement (promotion) (Regulatory focus theory; Higgins, 1997). Four experiments examined whether information implying imminent threat would interact with regulatory focus to affect endorsement of stereotypes and stereotype-based policies. Because threatening information is more relevant to the safety goals of prevention-focused individuals than the advancement goals of promotion-focused individuals, endorsement of threat-relevant stereotypes was expected to increase under high threat but only for people operating under a under prevention focus. Support for this prediction was obtained in four distinct and socially important domains. In three experiments, prevention-focused individuals made judgments and endorsed policies consistent with stereotypes when threat was perceived to be high rather than low. In a fourth experiment in which the stereotypicality of the target was manipulated, only prevention-focused individuals were more likely to endorse scrutinizing a target stereotypically associate with danger under high threat conditions. Across the experiments, promotion-focused individuals tended to exhibit less stereotyping under high threat, suggesting that they were engaged in systematic processing under low regulatory fit. These results demonstrate that safety concerns produce vigilance toward threats in the social environment, but that responses to threat vary with its perceived imminence. Threat-relevant stereotypes are utilized when safety concerns are paramount.