Gender stereotypes explain different mental prototypes of male and female leaders
Faculty Advisor
Date
2022
Keywords
gender stereotypes, leadership, mental representations, social perceptions
Abstract (summary)
Previous research has demonstrated that social stereotypes associated with women's gender can preclude them from leadership positions. It remains unclear whether these stereotypes affect how people perceive male and female leaders, however. To examine people's stereotypes, we extracted their mental representations of male and female leaders and typical men/women (referred to as nonleaders) using reverse correlation. We then asked perceivers to rate these prototypes’ apparent leadership ability and traits related to power and warmth across contexts that represented typically masculine, feminine, or neutral domains. Leaders in a feminine context appeared more leaderlike than nonleaders, but as equally leaderlike in neutral and masculine contexts. Moreover, female leader faces appeared more powerful than female nonleader faces but male leader and nonleader faces appeared equally powerful. Male leaders were perceived as warmer than male nonleaders, however, whereas female leaders and nonleaders were perceived as equally warm. Thus, people’s gender, social stereotypes, and the context in which leaders are judged influence how people conceive of male and female leaders, with counterstereotypical attributes distinguishing leaders within their gender.
Publication Information
Giacomin, M., Tskhay, K. O., & Rule, N. O. (2022). Gender stereotypes explain different mental prototypes of male and female leaders. The Leadership Quarterly, 33(6). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2021.101578
Notes
Item Type
Article
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Rights
All Rights Reserved