| Three studies examined the influence of positive role models on individuals' beliefs about their ingroup and themselves. Studies 1 and 2 investigated the influence of famous women in counterstereotypic and stereotypic roles on women's automatic stereotypes about their ingroup and themselves. Results showed that participants exposed to women leaders expressed more automatic counterstereotypic beliefs about their ingroup compared to participants exposed to stereotypic or neutral stimuli. Furthermore, the more participants perceived the leaders' success as personally attainable, the less they were likely to stereotype. Study 3 examined the mechanism underlying the role models' influence on perceivers' implicit self conceptions. Results showed that for participants who were exposed to female leaders, recall of ambitious memories increased the perception of attainability of success compared to participants who were exposed to women supporters. However, the type of exemplars and the type of memories recalled did not have any effect on their automatic self-conceptions. |
