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This chapter focuses on how stereotype threat is produced and sustained through threatening situational cues in an environment—such as its organization, features, and physical characteristics—that suggest the possible mistreatment or devaluation of stigmatized individuals. First, we illustrate how threatening situational cues engender a vigilance process whereby stigmatized individuals direct attention toward additional cues to determine the value and meaning of their social identity in a setting. We review how both explicit and subtle situational cues elicit stereotype threat, particularly among racial minorities in academic settings and women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) domains. We propose that the meaning people assign to those cues ultimately affects whether they will become vulnerable to—or protected against—stereotype threat. Further, we suggest that situational cues are meaningful to the extent that they elicit identity-related concerns, such as concerns for belonging, institutional fairness, or of being marginalized in a setting. Finally, we explore how “identity-safe” cues in a setting can eliminate stereotype threat by reducing identity threat concerns and signaling to stigmatized individuals that their social identity will not be a liability to their outcomes. Understanding how situational cues trigger and diffuse identity threat offers hope for changing the dynamics of social identity threat and ultimately points toward a new wave of identity threat research—investigating the interactive and contextual nature of identity-safe cues to create environments that are welcoming and comfortable for all groups.

Intentions to do more good and less bad are reliably associated with actual efforts in the intended directions. However, the link between intention and behavior is modest, largely due to the fact that people, despite having formed strong intentions, fail to act on them. Given this predicament, one wonders what people can do to facilitate the translation of intentions into behavior. This chapter argues that people should engage in a second act of willing by making if-then plans (implementation intentions) that specify how the (goal) intention is to be realized. It asserts that such plans produce automatic action control by intentionally delegating the control of one's goal-directed thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to specific situational cues. Thus, by forming implementation intentions, people can strategically switch from conscious and effortful control of their goal-directed behaviors to being automatically controlled by selected situational cues. This type of automatic action control is strategic automaticity or instant habits.

This chapter discusses motivational factors and the contributors responsible for the empathic and prosocial behavior of young children. The reasons that people engage in prosocial behaviors, including self-benefit and society’s approval, are discussed. Empathy as an underlying prosocial behavior, along with its associated process sympathy, is studied to determine whether these are the factors responsible for young children’s prosocial behavior. The chapter discusses young children’s understanding of the situational cues and responding empathically to them. Instrumental helping acts of children aimed at helping other people in attaining their goals rather than looking for self-benefit are discussed, as is the role of culture and experience in influencing young children’s prosocial behavior.

Inspired by Kurt Lewin's (1935) field theory, social psychologists have sought to demonstrate that a wide range of human behavior, socially desirable as well as undesirable, is under the control of immediate situational forces. Indeed, the field of social psychology has been defined as the study of situational determinants of thought, feeling, and action. Research on automaticity has provided a new impetus to the study of situational control over behavior. This research suggests that situational cues can govern behavior without being consciously processed and without making a deliberate choice of an appropriate course of action. Short-term motives, especially those that are automatically triggered by the immediate stimulus situation, may prevent people from pursuing their long-term goals. This chapter examines how people protect their long-term goals against temporary, situationally elicited motives and proposes that when short-term motives threaten the attainment of long-term goals, people proactively employ counteractive self-control strategies—strategies that are designed to offset the influence of short-term motives on behavior. Evidence lends support for the goal-directedness assumption of counteractive control.