Being the only member of one’s category makes behavior read as category-driven

Evidence

Oakes, Turner, and Haslam (1991) maintained that attribution to the actor’s category membership is a joint function of the accessibility of the category membership and the fit between the observed behavior and categorical expectations. In one of their experiments, these researchers demonstrated that when an individual group member was in a “solo status” with regard to gender (i.e., the only male in a group along with five females, or vice versa), his or her deviant opinion against all other members was particularly likely to be subject to a categorical explanation (i.e., “Because men (women) typically hold this kind of view”). — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 115

Categorization

• XREF: Solo status research connects to tokenism and the experience of being the only Black or female member — relevant to discussions of belonging and bias. — connects to: Category definitions determine who mobilizes, for what, and who leads — Stephen Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Nick Hopkins, Social identity and the dynamics of…, 75
• SHARE: A solo-status finding worth sending to anyone studying workplace diversity or token dynamics.