The threat of appearing lazy, inefficient, and slow? Stereotype threat in the public sector

Abstract

Public employees are stereotyped as lazy, inefficient, and slow. When made aware of such stereotypes, they may experience stereotype threat that impairs their task-performance. Across two pre-registered, large-scale between-subjects experiments (n1 = 1,543; n2 = 1,147), we found that performance in terms of task correctness, processing time, and effort was unaffected by information of negative public employee stereotypes. Our results do not indicate stereotype threat effects for public employees in terms of task-performance. This finding offers valuable theoretical and practical implications for the understanding of public sector stereotypes and public sector reputation.