Implicit Belittlements Call for Implicit Measures: Emotional Reactions to Youth Paternalistic Stereotypes

Age discrimination at work can potentially affect every worker. Indeed, like ‘old’ workers, young ones hired in their first job elicit the idea that they have quite interesting social abilities but lack of competence, which constitutes a case of paternalistic stereotypes (Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002). Generally, the negative (incompetence) facet of such stereotypes is not blatantly expressed, but is subtly conveyed behind an apparently positive discourse. Consequently, it is considered as being generally under-detected, while harmful. In this paper, we examine whether paternalistic stereotyping’s under-detection is real or if it is due to the use of inadequate measures. Based on a study showing that targets feel that something is wrong (Dardenne, Dumont, & Bollier 2007), we rely on affective measures to investigate whether the detection of the subtly conveyed negative facet of paternalistic stereotypes calls for subtle, implicit measures. In Study 1, explicit self-reports of targets’ affective states after a meeting with a paternalistic boss revealed mainly positive affect. In Study 2, an implicit emotional measure however revealed the presence of a negative affective state. The last Study, using a more ecological affective measure, demonstrates that paternalistic stereotypes trigger an ambivalent affective reaction. Altogether, the three studies suggest that the negative facet of paternalistic stereotypes is not as under-detected as we thought.