Although there are numerous theories through which bias against women in the workplace has been studied, the impact of role congruity theory is perhaps the most pervasive. Role congruity theory suggests that women are discriminated against because ideas of proper feminine gender roles do not mesh with the stereotypes of a leader, with the results being that women in leadership positions are not viewed favorably and the leadership role itself is minimized when women are in charge (Eagly & Karau, 2002). The method through which these biases are perpetrated varies, as does the reasoning behind their occurrence. This paper will explore some of these methods and will help explain how and why they occur in order to raise awareness of the phenomenon
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Scott and Brown (2006) used a lexical decision task to study automaticity in notions of leadership with a sample of Canadian undergraduates. They hypothesized that from the period of encoding, women are already at a disadvantage in being viewed as effective leaders due to the fact when considering their leadership abilities, the communal stereotype interferes in information processing. This means that they expected participants to have a difficult time matching agentic leadership behavior with women, and communal behavior with men. Utilizing a 2 x 2 within-subjects design, they found partial support for this hypothesis because participants had a harder time recognizing feminine traits after being presented with agentic …show more content…
The possible explanation they suggest is that perceptions of personal responsibility likely mediate levels of trust because they are deemed environmental and therefore changeable. Although women were indicated to be trusted more in this study, the remaining results highlight the fact that prejudice is prevalent in society. It is likely that another study that would specifically seek to measure trust between men and women would present different results. Other than the practical implications of pervasive discrimination in society, these results provide additional support for automaticity in cognition as it relates to differing levels of trust toward dominant and subordinate groups. These results also suggest that socially dominant groups have a vested interest in maintaining the status
Scott and Brown (2006) used a lexical decision task to study automaticity in notions of leadership with a sample of Canadian undergraduates. They hypothesized that from the period of encoding, women are already at a disadvantage in being viewed as effective leaders due to the fact when considering their leadership abilities, the communal stereotype interferes in information processing. This means that they expected participants to have a difficult time matching agentic leadership behavior with women, and communal behavior with men. Utilizing a 2 x 2 within-subjects design, they found partial support for this hypothesis because participants had a harder time recognizing feminine traits after being presented with agentic …show more content…
The possible explanation they suggest is that perceptions of personal responsibility likely mediate levels of trust because they are deemed environmental and therefore changeable. Although women were indicated to be trusted more in this study, the remaining results highlight the fact that prejudice is prevalent in society. It is likely that another study that would specifically seek to measure trust between men and women would present different results. Other than the practical implications of pervasive discrimination in society, these results provide additional support for automaticity in cognition as it relates to differing levels of trust toward dominant and subordinate groups. These results also suggest that socially dominant groups have a vested interest in maintaining the status