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College Women’s Self-Leadership Stereotypes as a Function of Prime Similarity and Motherhood Information

Received: 26 December 2018    Accepted: 22 January 2019    Published: 21 February 2019
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Abstract

The goal of the study was to understand under what circumstances exposure to primes of women leaders can influence young women’s implicit and explicit identification with leadership gender stereotypes. Previous research has emphasized the importance of perceived similarity in terms of personality traits; the current study explored whether adding information regarding the role models’ motherhood status facilitated or impaired such models’ inspirational potential. Eighty-seven college women in the U.S. participated in the 2 X 2 design in which fabricated feedback indicated whether participants’ gendered personality traits were similar or dissimilar to six successful women role models, presented either as mothers or with no mention of mother status. As expected, exposure to the successful women leaders produced counterstereotypic implicit self-leader associations only in the similar mother-mentioned condition. That is, only the participants who were told they had similar traits to the women leaders who were mothers associated themselves with the agentic (counterstereotypical) traits of typical leaders. Explicit self-stereotypes were not influenced by either manipulation unless participants accepted the (false) feedback regarding (dis)similarity. Discussion emphasized the importance of perceived similarity as mediating the effectiveness of exposure to successful role models and the value of including information about the motherhood status of such models, at least for young women.

Published in Psychology and Behavioral Sciences (Volume 8, Issue 1)
DOI 10.11648/j.pbs.20190801.13
Page(s) 15-25
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Role Models, Implicit Stereotypes, Leadership Stereotypes, Gender Stereotypes, Motherhood, Implicit Attitudes

References
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Cite This Article
  • APA Style

    Susan Anne Basow, Emily Crawford. (2019). College Women’s Self-Leadership Stereotypes as a Function of Prime Similarity and Motherhood Information. Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, 8(1), 15-25. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.pbs.20190801.13

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    ACS Style

    Susan Anne Basow; Emily Crawford. College Women’s Self-Leadership Stereotypes as a Function of Prime Similarity and Motherhood Information. Psychol. Behav. Sci. 2019, 8(1), 15-25. doi: 10.11648/j.pbs.20190801.13

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    AMA Style

    Susan Anne Basow, Emily Crawford. College Women’s Self-Leadership Stereotypes as a Function of Prime Similarity and Motherhood Information. Psychol Behav Sci. 2019;8(1):15-25. doi: 10.11648/j.pbs.20190801.13

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  • @article{10.11648/j.pbs.20190801.13,
      author = {Susan Anne Basow and Emily Crawford},
      title = {College Women’s Self-Leadership Stereotypes as a Function of Prime Similarity and Motherhood Information},
      journal = {Psychology and Behavioral Sciences},
      volume = {8},
      number = {1},
      pages = {15-25},
      doi = {10.11648/j.pbs.20190801.13},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.pbs.20190801.13},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.pbs.20190801.13},
      abstract = {The goal of the study was to understand under what circumstances exposure to primes of women leaders can influence young women’s implicit and explicit identification with leadership gender stereotypes. Previous research has emphasized the importance of perceived similarity in terms of personality traits; the current study explored whether adding information regarding the role models’ motherhood status facilitated or impaired such models’ inspirational potential. Eighty-seven college women in the U.S. participated in the 2 X 2 design in which fabricated feedback indicated whether participants’ gendered personality traits were similar or dissimilar to six successful women role models, presented either as mothers or with no mention of mother status. As expected, exposure to the successful women leaders produced counterstereotypic implicit self-leader associations only in the similar mother-mentioned condition. That is, only the participants who were told they had similar traits to the women leaders who were mothers associated themselves with the agentic (counterstereotypical) traits of typical leaders. Explicit self-stereotypes were not influenced by either manipulation unless participants accepted the (false) feedback regarding (dis)similarity. Discussion emphasized the importance of perceived similarity as mediating the effectiveness of exposure to successful role models and the value of including information about the motherhood status of such models, at least for young women.},
     year = {2019}
    }
    

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    T2  - Psychology and Behavioral Sciences
    JF  - Psychology and Behavioral Sciences
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    AB  - The goal of the study was to understand under what circumstances exposure to primes of women leaders can influence young women’s implicit and explicit identification with leadership gender stereotypes. Previous research has emphasized the importance of perceived similarity in terms of personality traits; the current study explored whether adding information regarding the role models’ motherhood status facilitated or impaired such models’ inspirational potential. Eighty-seven college women in the U.S. participated in the 2 X 2 design in which fabricated feedback indicated whether participants’ gendered personality traits were similar or dissimilar to six successful women role models, presented either as mothers or with no mention of mother status. As expected, exposure to the successful women leaders produced counterstereotypic implicit self-leader associations only in the similar mother-mentioned condition. That is, only the participants who were told they had similar traits to the women leaders who were mothers associated themselves with the agentic (counterstereotypical) traits of typical leaders. Explicit self-stereotypes were not influenced by either manipulation unless participants accepted the (false) feedback regarding (dis)similarity. Discussion emphasized the importance of perceived similarity as mediating the effectiveness of exposure to successful role models and the value of including information about the motherhood status of such models, at least for young women.
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Author Information
  • Department of Psychology, Lafayette College, Easton, USA

  • Department of Psychology, Lafayette College, Easton, USA

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