Leadership and the Stereotype Content Model: Examining Gender and Ethnicity
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2021-09
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Abstract
The current dissertation incorporated the stereotype content model in examining perceptions of leadership among different intersections of gender and race/ethnicity. To do so, we first measured warmth and competence stereotypes of different leaders in male and female sex-typed industries, as well as a variety of intersections of gender and race/ethnicity, in Study 1 (384 MTurk participants). A cluster analysis was conducted, which yielded four clusters of groups: low warmth, high competence; mid-warmth, low competence; mid-warmth, mid-high competence; and high warmth, low-mid competence. It was found that leaders in female sex-typed industries were stereotyped as being mostly warm, and leaders in male sex-typed industries were stereotyped as being mostly competent. We also compared perceptions of leadership effectiveness between social categories from each of the four clusters in Studies 2 (500 MTurk participants) and 3 (397 student participants). These social categories were White men, White women, Arab men, and Arab women. Surprisingly, it was found that the White male leader was not rated as the most effective leader in both studies and instead, the Arab female leader was rated as the most effective leader in Study 3. In addition, we found that perceptions of warmth and competence mediated these relationships. Reasons for these findings are explored, such as the outside context, as well as cognitive mechanisms such as subtyping, double standards of competence, and expectancy-violations. Lastly, we examined whether impression management tactics (self-promotion and ingratiation tactics specifically) would increase perceptions of competence and warmth, and consequently leadership potential, in Studies 4 (321 MTurk participants) and 5 (360 student participants). It was found that self-promotion tactics in an interview setting led to increases in competence perceptions, which then led to greater perceptions of leadership potential. Although ingratiation increased warmth perceptions, it did not always lead to improvements in leadership potential ratings. Therefore, we suggest that self-promotion techniques are a viable method of improving leadership perceptions in an interview and reasons for why such firm conclusions cannot be drawn for ingratiation techniques are explored. Lastly, we discuss future directions for this research and other practical implications.
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Lee, C. (2021). Leadership and the stereotype content model: examining gender and ethnicity (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.