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This article reviews social neuroscience research on the experience of stigma from the target's perspective. More specifically, we discuss several research programs that employ electroencephalography, event-related potentials, or functional magnetic resonance imaging methods to examine neural correlates of stereotype and social identity threat. We present neuroimaging studies that show brain activation related to the experience of being stereotyped and ERP studies that shed light on the cognitive processes underlying social identity processes. Among these are two projects from our own lab. The first project reveals the important role of the neurocognitive conflict-detection system in stereotype threat effects, especially as it pertains to stereotype threat `spillover'. The second project examines the role of automatic ingroup evaluations as a neural mediator between social identity threats and compensatory ingroup bias. We conclude with a discussion of the benefits, limitations, and unique contributions of social neuroscience to our understanding of stigma and social identity threat.

For numerous public interests there are supervisory bodies, such as the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM) and the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM). Drawing on the multidisciplinary Transformative Equality Approach that was developed in the UU Gender and Diversity Hub, we argue that it is high time to establish a Netherlands Authority for Emancipation (NEMA). Rather than putting the onus for emancipation and equality on those who suffer from inequality, the government should take ownership of inequality problems by establishing a supervisory body for effective compliance and enforcement of equal treatment legislation.

For members of socially devalued or stigmatized groups, work and educational settings can threaten social identity, inducing the use of coping strategies that lower their motivation (e.g., self‐segregation, domain disengagement) rather than improving their position in the social hierarchy. We review a recent research program on women and ethnic minorities to show that members of these stigmatized groups can maintain their motivation in threatening work and educational contexts when they are offered ways to protect their social identity. For example, organizations that communicate value for the social identities of women and ethnic minorities allow members of these groups to focus on success and motivate them to improve their performance on dimensions that increase their social status. Furthermore, social identity protection has important benefits over more individualistic forms of identity protection because it maintains group members' concern for their group's plight, increasing opportunities for successful collective action. The practical implications of this work are discussed.

The positive effects of intergroup contact on prejudice reduction have been widely validated by now. However, the potential of contact for intergroup relations is only available when there is readiness to have contact with outgroup members to begin with. In two correlational studies with the main ethnic groups in postconflict Kosovo, Albanian majority (Study 1, N = 221) and Serb minority (Study 2, N = 110), we examine how social identity complexity mechanism and distinctiveness threat contribute to predicting more readiness to have contact with outgroup members. As the establishment of a new national identity unfolds, we show that while there are different processes that work for each of the groups, distinctiveness threat is a central concern to both as it mediates the relationship between identity and intergroup outcomes. For the Albanian majority group, having more complex identities (or perceiving less identity overlap between national and ethnic identity) predicts more readiness to have contact and feeling more positively towards members of the outgroup via reduced distinctiveness threat. For the Serb minority, however, threat is predicted only by strength of ethnic identification, which in turn predicts negative feelings towards members of the ethnic outgroup and less readiness to contact them. We conclude by comparing results for the majority and the minority groups and discuss strategies needed to reduce threat and improve intergroup relations in this segregated context struggling for reconciliation.

Reciprocity in informal helping, or informal volunteering, is often seen as a way to ensure that people who are not altruistically motivated exchange help. Yet, it could be problematic for those who are unable to help, as they would be excluded from this exchange. We study to what extent people's reciprocity expectations affect informal helping intentions and whether necessity of helping and perceived helpfulness (indirect reciprocity) compensate and moderate this relationship. Expectations are tested with a factorial survey conducted among the Longitudinal Internet studies for the Social Sciences panel ( N vignettes = 3,299). Multilevel regression analyses show that people have stronger intentions to help those who are likely to reciprocate but that a strong need for help and having helped others in the past are more important reasons to help. Furthermore, the effect of likelihood of reciprocity on informal helping intentions is stronger for neighbors who never helped others. Policy implications of these results are discussed.

The guilt that mothers feel about the time and energy that they invest in work instead of their family is often proposed to be an important reason for why mothers 'opt-out' the career track. We sought to understand if mothers indeed experience more work-family guilt than fathers and how this relates to both their own gender role beliefs and organizational gender norms across nine European countries. Analyses draw on the European Social Workforce Survey, with data from 2619 working parents nested in 110 organizations in 9 European countries. Results showed that when fathers and mothers work more than a full-time week (a) fathers with traditional gender role beliefs felt less guilty, and (b) especially mothers working in an organization with low support for the parent role of working fathers felt guilty. Explorative analyses showed no effect of national gender norms on gender differences in guilt. Our results are beneficial for organizations and policy makers by showing that guilt in working mothers can be reduced by developing egalitarian organizational norms, in which there is support for the parent role of mothers and fathers, potentially helping mothers to focus on their careers alongside their families.