This study examines cardiovascular responses indicating challenge (vs. threat) during motivated performance of women under social identity threat. Low gender identified women should primarily be concerned with their personal identity and self-worth, leading them to benefit from self-affirmation under social identity threat. Highly identified women, conversely, should care more for the value of their group and benefit more from group affirmation. Among 64 female participants social identity threat was induced by emphasizing gender differences in car-parking ability. Then, participants received an opportunity to affirm the self or the group and worked on a car-parking task. During this task, cardiovascular challenge versus threat responses were assessed according to the biopsychosocial model (Blascovich, 2008). Results confirmed predictions by showing that self-affirmation elicited cardiovascular patterns indicating challenge in low identifiers, while group affirmation elicited challenge in high identifiers. Theoretical implications for work on social identity are discussed.

People are particularly attracted to groups that value morality. However, in social and work life, team decision-making sometimes involves balancing moral considerations with achievement goals in ambiguous situations. We examined how the importance attached to morality and competence in experimentally created task teams influenced perceived team attractiveness and motivational responses. Results showed that team attractiveness was fully determined by value attached to morality in a team. However, cardiovascular responses revealed that when actually engaging in a team interaction where unanimous decisions had to be made about competing considerations, value attached to both morality and competence in a team influenced participants? motivational states. Congruence between the value attached to morality and competence elicited adaptive challenge responses, while incongruence between these team features elicited maladaptive threat. These results have important theoretical and practical implications.