Gender Biases in (Inter) Action

Abstract

Although explicit stereotypes of women in the workplace have become increasingly positive (Duehr & Bono, 2006), negative stereotypes persist at an implicit level, with women being more likely associated with incompetent-and men with competent-managerial traits (Latu et al., 2011). Drawing upon work on self-fulfilling prophecies and interracial interactions, we investigated whether and how implicit and explicit gender stereotypes held by both male interviewers and female applicants predicted women's interview outcomes. Thirty male interviewers conducted mock job interviews with 30 female applicants. Before the interview, we measured interviewers' and applicants' implicit and explicit gender stereotypes. The interviewers' and applicants' implicit stereotypes independently predicted external evaluations of the performance of female applicants. Whereas female applicants' higher implicit stereotypes directly predicted lower performance, male interviewers' implicit stereotypes indirectly impaired female applicants' performance through lower evaluations by the interviewer and lower self-evaluations by the applicant. Moreover, having an interviewer who was at the same time high in implicit and low in explicit stereotypes predicted the lowest performance of female applicants. Our findings highlight the importance of taking into account both implicit and explicit gender stereotypes in mixed-gender interactions and point to ways to reduce the negative effects of gender stereotypes in job interviews. 2013 , compared to 9.6% in 1995(Catalyst, 2011. Women also lead several powerful European nations such as Germany, Switzerland, Denmark and Norway. Moreover, organizations are increasingly committed to promoting gender equality through diversity programs and policies. However, despite an improvement in explicit gender stereotypes (Duehr & Bono, 2006;Stoker, Van der Velde, & Lammers, 2012), negative stereotypes persist at an implicit level, with women being more likely to be implicitly associated with negative managerial traits (Latu et al., 2011) and with roles incompatible with leadership (Nosek, Banaji, & Greenwald, 2002;Rudman & Kilianski, 2000).One pivotal point at which gender stereotypes can manifest themselves in workplace inequality is in the door to employment itself: the job interview. But what is the role that gender stereotypes play in female job applicants' interview performance and employers' interview-based job decisions? More specifically, if stereotyping contributes to gender inequality in such decisions, is it the interviewers' or female applicants' stereotypes of women in the workplace that drive the effects, and is it implicit or explicit stereotypes that have the most influence? Drawing upon prior empirical work on bias in interracial interactions (Dovidio, 2001;Dovidio, Kawakami, & Gaertner, 2002) as well as self-fulfilling prophecies (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968;Word, Zanna, & Cooper, 1974), we designed a paradigm to assess the effects of gender stereotypes held by both male interviewers and femal...

Implicit and Explicit Gender Stereotypes at the Bargaining Table: Male Counterparts’ Stereotypes Predict Women’s Lower Performance in Dyadic Face-to-Face Negotiations

“…For example, when investigating the effects of White physicians' racial bias on Black patients, Penner and colleagues (Penner et al 2010) found that Black patients reacted most negatively when they interacted with a White physician who was high in implicit but low in explicit bias (aversive racist). Similarly, within mixed-gender job interviews, Latu and colleagues (Latu et al 2015) showed that male interviewers' explicit and implicit stereotypes interacted to predict lower performance of women applicants. Female job candidates' performance (as rated by trained external evaluators) suffered the most when they were interviewed by male interviewers who were, at the same time, high in implicit but low in explicit gender stereotypes (aversive sexist).…”

“…In the current study we wish to expand this prior research by investigating the interactive roles of implicit and explicit gender stereotypes on face-to-face negotiations, while concomitantly investigating, for the first time to our knowledge, the influence of additional contextual factors such as gender and power roles. Drawing from the racial bias literature (Penner et al 2010) as well as job interview research (Latu et al 2015), we suggest that negotiating counterparts' implicit and explicit stereotypes will act in conjunction to predict women's ability to claim value at the bargaining table. More specifically, we reason that women's negotiated outcomes may be a function of their negotiation counterparts' explicit and implicit gender stereotypes, and we expect women's performance to suffer the most when they negotiate with men who are simultaneously high in implicit, but low in explicit, stereotypes (i.e., aversive sexists).…”

“…However, such positive explicit stereotypes may be the result of social desirability concerns, that is, people not being willing to report negative thoughts about women in workplace settings. Indeed, when measuring implicit stereotypes, which bypass (to a certain extent) such social desirability concerns, negative views about women in the workplace continue to exist (Latu et al 2011) and to disadvantage women in stereotypically male domains such as managerial decisions and job interviews (Latu et al 2015, Latu et al 2011. In other words, some individuals may have egalitarian views toward others at an explicit level, but they may continue to hold negative beliefs at an implicit level (Dovidio et al 2001).…”

“…Second, face-to-face negotiation interactions are a useful medium for investigating the role of gender stereotypes on women's performance because they allow for precise and objective quantification of women's performance (e.g., level of salary, signing bonus, number of vacation days). Although the influences of implicit and explicit gender stereotypes have been documented in face-to-face interactions such as job interviews (Latu et al 2015), performance measures may have been influenced by raters' own gender stereotypes. Given the quantitative nature of negotiation outcomes, performance is objectively and realistically measured.…”

“…We investigate whether positive or negative beliefs (stereotypes) about the negotiation ability of one or both genders permeate salary negotiations contributing to gender differences in objective performance. Women's performance may be associated with their counterparts' explicit gender stereotypes, which are typically captured through self-reports as well as by implicit stereotypes which are usually activated with relatively lower conscious awareness (Latu et al 2015).…”