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Social-psychological explanations
Psychologists have long studied issues related to discrimination, motivation, and performance. In more recent years, social psychologists have examined how certain social-psychological phenomena may apply directly to the STEM fields, and may explain the relative lack of gender diversity within these fields.

Stereotypes and heuristics
A heuristic is a cognitive shortcut that people use to make decisions. Stereotypes, or commonly held beliefs about certain groups, are often employed as heuristics when making decisions in social situations. Stereotypes about what someone in a STEM field should look and act like may cause established members of these fields to overlook individuals who may be highly competent but may not fit people's idea of how a person in a STEM field should appear. The role congruity theory of prejudice states that perceived incongruity between gender stereotypes and the stereotypes associated with a particular role or occupation can result in negative evaluations. In addition, negative stereotypes about women's quantitative abilities may lead people to devalue their work or discourage these women from continuing in STEM fields.

Individuals of a particular gender are often perceived to be better suited to particular careers or areas of study than those of the other gender. A study by Gaucher et al. found that job advertisements for male-dominated careers tended to use more agentic words associated with male stereotypes. If individuals are given information about a prospective student’s gender, they may infer that he or she possesses traits consistent with stereotypes for that gender. Social role theory states that men are expected to display agentic qualities and women to display communal qualities. These expectations can influence hiring decisions. Madera et al. found that women tended to be described in more communal terms and men in more agentic terms in letters of recommendation. In addition, these researchers found that communal characteristics were negatively related to hiring decisions in academia.

Discrimination
Some researchers have demonstrated a general evaluative bias against women. In an audit study in which they sent email requests to meet to professors in doctoral programs at the top 260 U.S. universities, researchers found evidence for discrimination against ethnic minorities and women relative to Caucasian men. While it was impossible to determine whether any particular individual in this study was exhibiting discrimination, since each participant only viewed a request from one potential graduate student, the overall tendency to favor Caucasian men over all other groups indicates that discrimination is still very much an issue. In another study, science faculty were sent the materials of student who was applying for a lab manager position at their university. The materials were the same for each participant, but each participant was randomly assigned either a male or a female name. The researchers found that faculty members rated the male candidate as both more competent and more hireable than the female candidate, despite the fact that the applications were identical except for the applicant's gender. Again, it is impossible to say whether any of the individual faculty members were acting in a discriminatory fashion, but it is apparent that there is still a wide-spread bias against women in science fields.

Implicit discrimination
In highly competitive STEM fields, the support and encouragement of a mentor can make a lot of difference in women’s decisions of whether or not to continue pursuing a career in their discipline This may be particularly true for younger individuals who may face many obstacles early on in their careers. Since these younger individuals often look to those who are more established in their discipline for help and guidance, the responsiveness of these potential mentors and their willingness to help is incredibly important. Regardless of whether the majority of those in STEM fields outwardly agree with importance of increasing the representation of women in these areas, they may still hold biases—conscious or not—that affect how they interact with women looking to enter their particular discipline. If these biases manifest themselves in the differential treatment of women, particularly in respect to their willingness to assist young women in their respective field of study, this could impact the number of women choosing to enter into, and persist in, STEM careers.

Stereotype threat
Stereotype threat arises from the fear that one’s actions will confirm a negative stereotype about one’s ingroup. This fear creates additional stress, consuming valuable cognitive resources and lowering task performance in the threatened domain. Individuals are susceptible to stereotype threat whenever they are assessed in a domain for which there exists a negative stereotype about a group to which they belong. Stereotype threat has been shown to undermine the academic performance of women and girls in math and science to the extent that standard measures of academic achievement often underestimate the abilities of women and girls in these subjects. Laboratory experiments have also found that individuals who identify strongly with a certain area (e.g. math) are more likely to have their performance in that area hampered by stereotype threat than those who identify less strongly with the area. This means that even highly motivated students from negatively stereotyped minority groups are likely to be adversely affected by stereotype threat and, as a result, may come to disengage from the stereotyped domain.

Black Sheep effect
See also Black sheep effect

The Black Sheep effect occurs when individuals are likely to evaluate members of their ingroup more favorably than members of their outgroup when those members are highly qualified (Taylor & Hosch, 2004). However, when an individual’s ingroup members have average or below average qualities, he or she is likely to evaluate them much lower than outgroup members with equivalent qualifications. This might suggest that women who are already established in STEM fields will be especially likely to help women who are earlier on in their career trajectories when these younger women display qualifications but will be less likely than their male colleagues to help younger women who do not display such qualifications.

Queen Bee effect
The Queen Bee effect is similar to the Black Sheep effect but applies only to women. It explains why higher-status women, particularly in male-dominated professions, may actually be far less likely to help other women than their male colleagues might be. The study by Ellemers et al. found that while doctoral students in a number of different disciplines did not exhibit any gender differences in work commitment or work satisfaction, faculty members at the same university believed that female students were less committed to their work than male students. What was particularly surprising was that these beliefs by faculty members were most strongly endorsed by female faculty members, rather than male faculty members. One potential explanation for this finding is that individual mobility for a member of a negatively-stereotyped group is often accompanied by a social and psychological distancing of oneself from the group. This implies that women who are successful in male-dominated careers don't see their own success as proof that negative stereotypes about women's quantitative and analytical abilities are wrong but rather as proof that they personally are exceptions to the rule. Thus, such women may actually play a role in perpetuating, rather than abolishing, these negative stereotypes.