Loes Meeussen

Thomas More & KU Leuven

Using data from 15 countries, this article investigates whether descriptive and prescriptive gender norms concerning housework and child care (domestic work) changed after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Results of a total of 8,343 participants (M = 19.95, SD = 1.68) from two comparable student samples suggest that descriptive norms about unpai...

Despite global commitments and efforts, a gender‐based division of paid and unpaid work persists. To identify how psychological factors, national policies, and the broader sociocultural context contribute to this inequality, we assessed parental‐leave intentions in young adults (18–30 years old) planning to have children (N = 13,942; 8,880 identifi...

Despite the growing importance of care economy careers (e.g., healthcare and education), men remain underrepresented in these fields. Past research suggests that, while economically developed nations tend to support equal rights for men and women, their labor markets tend to be highly gender-segregated (Charles 1992; 2003). By examining this parado...

Gender stereotypes tell us that women are seen to have more warmth while men are seen to have more competence. This chapter outlines where these stereotypes come from and how they are socially reinforced. We explain why these stereotypes matter for social equality: Ideas of what men and women are like often translate into ideas of what men and wome...

Although higher education has become more accessible to people from lower socio-economic backgrounds, the transition to university is more difficult for first- compared to continuing-generation students. Previous research showed that social identity processes are key to understand differences between first- and continuing-generation students’ exper...

In times of societal change, like changes in gender roles, one may compliment men deciding to spend more time on childcare, or women pursuing a job higher up, to support their pioneering behaviour. However, we predict that while compliments may communicate appreciation of someone's behaviour, they simultaneously communicate that a norm has been bre...

Positive parenting prescriptions prevailing in Western countries encourage parents to regulate their emotions and, more specifically, to show more positive emotion to their children and control negative emotions while parenting. The beneficial effect of this practice on child development has been much documented, but its possible costs for parents...

Women's lower career advancement relative to men is sometimes explained by internal factors such as women's lower willingness to make sacrifices for their career, and sometimes by external barriers such as discrimination. In the current research, positing a dynamic interplay between internal and external factors, we empirically test how external wo...

Using two intervention studies, this article examines the effectiveness of a newly developed electronic job crafting intervention (i.e., e‐intervention) that aims to stimulate task, relational, and cognitive crafting and offers a time‐efficient and cost‐effective alternative to traditional face‐to‐face job crafting interventions. In Study 1, we qua...

The degree to which gender and organizational social identities are perceived as compatible has been proven a key factor in promoting creative performance, job satisfaction and organizational commitment of female workers. But what are the factors that help them develop a high level of Gender-Work Identity Integration (GWII)? Previous studies have f...

Gender stereotypes tell us that women are seen to have more warmth while men are seen to have more competence. This chapter outlines where these stereotypes come from how they are socially reinforced. We explain why these stereotypes matter for social equality: Ideas of what men and women are like often translate into ideas of what men and women sh...

We examine the degree to which women in a male-dominated field cope with daily experiences of social identity threat by distancing themselves from other women. A daily experience-sampling study among female soldiers ( N = 345 data points nested in 61 participants) showed women to self-group distance more on days in which they experienced more ident...

Positive parenting prescriptions prevailing in Western countries encourage parents to regulate their emotions and, more specifically, to show more positive emotion to their children and control negative emotions while parenting. The beneficial effect of this practice on child development has been much documented, but its possible costs for parents...

While women are increasingly entering traditionally masculine, agentic occupations and roles, there has been less of a shift in the opposite direction: men moving into traditionally feminine, communal occupations and roles. This paper outlines the negative consequences of men's low communal engagement, and how this inhibits various benefits for men...

We aim to improve our understanding of how perceptions of social inclusion come about, unfold over time, and relate to individual and group outcomes. To do so, we draw on the MARGINI model, which offers a novel theoretical account of inclusion by delineating that inclusion is the result of a dynamic interplay between the individual’s motivation to...

Despite changes in their representation and visibility, there are still serious concerns about the inclusion and day-to-day workplace challenges various groups face (e.g., women, ethnic and cultural minorities, LGBTQ+, people as they age, and those dealing with physical or mental disabilities). Men are also underrepresented in specific work fields,...

European societies and schools face the challenge of accommodating immigrant minorities from increasingly diverse cultural backgrounds. In view of significant belonging and achievement gaps between minority and majority groups in school, we examine which diversity approaches are communicated by actual school policies and which approaches predict sm...

Gender norms indicate that men should be agentic and work-oriented rather than communal and family-oriented. Yet, this traditional expectation conflicts with findings that communion is highly valued in romantic partners. Moreover, because more women in industrialized countries are pursuing careers, they may increasingly seek family-oriented partner...

First-generation students show lower academic performance at university compared to continuing-generation students. Previous research established the value in taking a social identity perspective on this social-class achievement gap, and showed that the gap can partly be explained by lower compatibility between social background and university iden...

Background and aims: Intensive mothering norms prescribe women to be perfect mothers. Recent research has shown that women’s experiences of pressure toward perfect parenting are related to higher levels of guilt and stress. The current paper follows up on this research with two aims: First, we examine how mothers regulate pressure toward perfect mo...

Previous research has revealed that women may attempt to avoid negative gender stereotypes in organizations through self-group distancing, or “queen bee”, behaviors: emphasizing masculine qualities, distancing themselves from other women, and legitimizing organizational inequality. Factors that increase self-group distancing have been identified (e...

Gender norms can lead men to shy away from traditionally female roles and occupations in communal HEED domains (Healthcare, Early Education, Domestic sphere) that do not fit within the social construct of masculinity. But to what extent do men underestimate the degree to which other men are accepting of men in these domains? Building on research re...

Meeussen, L., Delanoeije, J., Peters, P. & Kossek, E. (2017). Fitting in to find balance: A person-environment fit approach to work-life balance. Congress of the European Association of Work and Organizational Psychology (EAWOP). Dublin (Ireland). 16–19 May 2017.

Meeussen, L., & Delanoeije, J. (2017). Fitting in to find balance: A person-environment fit approach to work-lfife balance. Congress of the European Association of Work and Organizational Psychology (EAWOP). Dublin (Ireland). 16–19 May 2017.

The current paper examines antecedents and consequences of perceiving conflict between gender and work identities in male-dominated professions. In a study among 657 employees working in 85 teams in the police force, we investigated the effect of being different from team members in terms of gender on employees’ perception that their team members s...

The current study investigates how descriptive and prescriptive gender norms that communicate work and family identities to be (in)compatible with gender identities limit or enhance young men and women’s family and career aspirations. Results show that young adults (N = 445) perceived gender norms to assign greater compatibility between female and...

How do minority adolescents' personal acculturation preferences and peer norms of acculturation affect their social inclusion in school? Turkish and Moroccan minority adolescents (N = 681) reported their preferences for heritage culture maintenance, mainstream culture adoption, and their experiences of peer rejection as a key indicator of adjustmen...

The members of task groups are emotionally more similar to each other than to others outside the group; yet, little is known about the conditions under which this emotional similarity emerges. In two longitudinal studies, we tested the idea that emotions only spread when they contain information that is relevant to all group members. We compared th...

Three studies investigated the association between members’ group identification and the emotional fit with their group. In the first study, a cross-sectional study in a large organization, we replicated earlier research by showing that group identification and emotional fit are positively associated, using a broader range of emotions and using pro...

Theory and research on status attainment in work groups primarily focuses on members’ abilities and characteristics that make them appear competent as predictors of their status in the group. We complement the abilities perspective with a social identity perspective by arguing that another important determinant of a member’s status is based on the...

Research shows that culturally diverse work groups do not always reach their full potential compared to homogeneous groups. The present study examined the possibility that members of such groups are less able to construct shared values, as this may hinder group performance. We followed 33 real-life work groups over time and investigated how values...

Workforces are becoming increasingly diverse and leaders face the challenge of managing their groups to minimize costs and maximize benefits of diversity. This paper investigates how leaders’ multiculturalism and colorblindness affect cultural minority and majority members’ experiences of connectedness (feeling accepted and distancing) and relation...

Taking an intergroup relations perspective on acculturation, we ask how minority pupils’ acculturation attitudes mesh with classmates’ acculturation norms; and how ‘normative (mis)fit’ affects minority adjustment. Using Belgian CILS data (‘Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study’) of 681 (Turkish or Moroccan Belgian) minority pupils and 1930 clas...

Taking an intergroup relations perspective on acculturation, we ask how minority pupils’ acculturation attitudes mesh with classmates’ acculturation norms; and how ‘normative (mis)fit’ affects minority adjustment. Using Belgian CILS data (‘Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study’) of 681 (Turkish or Moroccan Belgian) minority pupils and 1930 clas...

This study examines the process of group identity formation through social interaction in real-life work groups, with a focus on achievement values as content of work group identities. Extending research on social identity formation, we examined the process of value convergence as group members negotiate common group goals. Specifically, we predict...

Three studies examined whether the perceived typicality of a threatening outgroup actor in media messages alters threat effects on attitudes toward the entire outgroup; and whether outgroup (dis)approval of the actor influences perceived typicality. Study 1 measured Dutch majority attitudes toward Moroccans before and after the Van Gogh murder by a...

This article describes an investigation of the effect of attitude toward and use of different components of an online smoking cessation program on stage transition based on the Transtheoretical Model. Participants were 299 users of the StopSmokingCoach, an online smoking cessation program, who completed an online questionnaire concerning their atti...