Date of Award
2009
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Psychology
First Advisor
Crystal Hoyt
Second Advisor
Cindy Bukach
Abstract
Despite numerous advances in the eld of women's rights and a general decline in explicit discrimination, there still exists a dramatic lack of women in leadership positions across America. This research seeks to expand upon past studies suggesting that there is a basic cognitive incongruency between traditional male and leadership roles which leads ordinarily "unbiased" individuals to perceive women as less suited r leadership positions than men. Thus, this experiment investigates the implicit biases against women leaders by asking if the subtle addition of gender information alters individuals' initial impressions of leadership capability in an applied hiring task involving resumes, letters of reference, and trait-based evaluations. Results suggest that once gender was made salient through a letter of reference men are evaluated more favorably than women as leaders, as measured by greater difference scores between the initial and post trait questionnaires in terms of their agentic and overall leadership trait scores than males.
Recommended Citation
Frazier, Rebecca S., "Can she ever be "The Man"? : the effect of gender on implicit perceptions of leadership ability in an applied hiring task" (2009). Honors Theses. 1070.
https://scholarship.richmond.edu/honors-theses/1070