No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
“When” Versus “Whether” Gender/Sex Differences: Insights From Psychological Research on Negotiation, Risk-Taking, and Leadership
Abstract
We present a conceptual framework of situational moderators of gender/sex effects in negotiation, risk-taking, and leadership—three masculine-stereotypic domains associated with gender/sex gaps in pay and authority. We propose that greater situational ambiguity and higher relevance and salience of gender/sex increase the likelihood of gender/sex-linked behaviors in these domains. We argue that greater ambiguity increases the extent to which actors and audiences must search inwardly (e.g., mental schema, past experience) or outwardly (e.g., social norms) for cues on how to behave or evaluate a situation and thereby widens the door for gender/sex-linked influences. Correspondingly, we propose that gender/sex effects on behavior and evaluations in these domains will be more likely when gender/sex is more relevant and salient to the setting or task. We propose further that these two situational moderators may work jointly or interactively to influence the likelihood of gender/sex effects in negotiation, risk-taking, and leadership. We conclude by discussing applications of our conceptual framework to psychological science and its translation to practice, including directions for future research.
... Such mundane, rude behavior is more common than more extreme harassment (e.g., sexual harassment; Cortina et al., 2001), and can harm employees (see Schilpzand et al., 2016a andCortina et al., 2017 for reviews). There are reasons to suspect that incivility may affect women more than men: Incivility creates a situation where it is unclear what responses and actions are appropriate (Schilpzand et al., 2016a(Schilpzand et al., , 2016b, and gender differences may be more likely to occur in settings with unclear norms, when people rely more on stereotypes to determine appropriateness (Bowles et al., 2024). Additionally, although everyone can experience incivility, and the content of uncivil behavior (e.g. the words being said by the perpetrator) may not be explicitly gendered, incivility targets women more than men (Cortina et al., 2013;Gabriel et al., 2018;Miner et al., 2014;Saxena, 2023). ...
... Because uncivil situations are ambiguous, men and women may perceive different risk levels from violating gender norms. Women may believe that others are likely to apply gender stereotypes in these situations (see Bowles et al., 2024) and thus adjust their behavior to account for this possibility. For example, when there is no clear norm, women make fewer requests for deadline extensions than men because they worry that such requests would incur penalties (Whillans et al., 2021). ...
Some theories suggest that women anticipate negative consequences (i.e., backlash) for counter-stereotypical actions and take steps to avoid those consequences. We propose that women may expect gender-based backlash for voicing, or contributing ideas that challenge the status quo, and thus engage in more silence (withholding those contributions) than men. However, we also propose that women anticipate gender backlash, and hence engage in more silence, only when other group members’ behavior signals that deviating from prescribed gender norms is risky. In two studies with over 3000 participants, we found that incivility increased women’s expectation that voicing would lead to gender backlash. In turn, women engaged in more silence than men in uncivil groups, but we found no gender difference in silence in civil groups. Our findings reveal that certain situations differentially alert people to interpersonal risks, thus influencing their decision to withhold contributions.
This review proposes future directions for gender and negotiation research in light of two important labor market trends: workforces that are increasingly diverse and career advancement that is more often required to be self‐directed. I argue that these two trends have implications for research, both in terms of places where the field seems to be moving and new areas that could be ripe for exploration. I begin by underscoring the importance of context when making claims about gender and negotiation. Then, using two broad banners, diversity and careers, I review discussions that are arising from novel intersections as well as the ways that the changing workplace is shaping future research directions.
Men and women clearly differ in some psychological domains. A. H. Eagly (1995) shows that these differences are not artifactual or unstable. Ideally, the next scientific step is to develop a cogent explanatory framework for understanding why the sexes differ in some psychological domains and not in others and for generating accurate predictions about sex differences as yet undiscovered. This article offers a brief outline of an explanatory framework for psychological sex differences—one that is anchored in the new theoretical paradigm of evolutionary psychology. Men and women differ, in this view, in domains in which they have faced different adaptive problems over human evolutionary history. In all other domains, the sexes are predicted to be psychologically similar. Evolutionary psychology jettisons the false dichotomy between biology and environment and provides a powerful metatheory of why sex differences exist, where they exist, and in what contexts they are expressed (D. M. Buss, 1995).
We elucidate when and why men negotiate assertively. Threatening masculinity should increase men’s willingness to negotiate assertively in salary negotiations, which are viewed as masculine, but not in negotiations about flexible working hours, which are viewed as feminine. In two experiments including men
from Germany and the United States (U.S.; total N = 1,010), men were either threatened in terms of their masculinity or not. In Study 1, following the threat manipulation, men negotiated either salary or flexible working hours. The results from Study 1 revealed that threatened men (relative to nonthreatened men) reported more ambitious goals, intended to make more ambitious offers, and actually made more ambitious offers, but only when negotiating salary. In Study 2, men always negotiated salary, yet received different kinds of feedback involving threats to their masculinity. The results from Study 2 revealed that threatening
feedback based on both men’s prescriptions and men’s proscriptions (e.g., a lack of assertiveness and pronounced weakness), in particular, led men negotiating salary to report more ambitious goals, intend to make more ambitious offers, and actually to make more ambitious offers. Altogether, our research revealed that men show heightened assertiveness when under a specific threat and negotiating a male-typed topic. An
important question for future research is to what extent our findings generalize across different intersecting
identities, demographics, and cultures.
Research suggests that women negotiators tend to obtain worse outcomes than men; however, we argue this finding does not apply to all women. Integrating research on social hierarchies, gender in negotiations, and intersectional stereotype content, we develop a theoretical framework that explains the interactive effect of race and gender on offers and outcomes received in distributive negotiations. With a focus on Black and White women and men negotiators, we predicted that stereotypes related to their race and gender lead Black women negotiators to receive more favorable negotiation offers and outcomes than White women and Black men negotiators and this effect is explained by ascriptions of dominance and prestige, respectively. Results of three experimental studies involving diverse samples—online panel participants, individuals selling items on Craigslist, and MBA students—support these predictions. More specifically, we find that Black women negotiators are perceived as more dominant than White women negotiators, and Black women negotiators are ascribed greater prestige than Black men negotiators. These ascriptions allow Black women negotiators to receive more favorable negotiation offers and outcomes compared with White women and Black men. These findings highlight the importance of jointly considering the influence of race and gender in negotiations.
Funding: This research was supported in part by funding offered to Dr. Sreedhari D. Desai by the Collins Dawson Endowment and the Crist W. Blackwell Fund at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Supplemental Material: The online supplement is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.1629 .
Whether women and men are psychologically very similar or quite different is a contentious issue in psychological science. This article clarifies this issue by demonstrating that larger and smaller sex/gender differences can reflect differing ways of organizing the same data. For single psychological constructs, larger differences emerge from averaging multiple indicators that differ by sex/gender to produce scales of a construct’s overall typicality for women versus men. For example, averaging self-ratings on personality traits more typical of women or men yields much larger sex/gender differences on measures of the femininity and masculinity of personality. Sex/gender differences on such broad-gauge, thematic variables are large relative to differences on their component indicators. This increased effect magnitude for aggregated scales reflects gains in both their reliability and validity as indicators of sex/gender. In addition, in psychological domains such as vocational interests that are composed of many variables, at least some of which differ by sex/gender, the multivariate distance between women and men is typically larger than the differences on the component variables. These analyses encourage recognition of the interdependence of sex/gender similarity and difference in psychological data.
In the United States, leaders of the highest valued companies, best-ranked universities, and most-consumed media outlets are more likely to be White than what would be expected based on White people’s representation in the U.S. population. One explanation for this racial gap is that U.S. respondents’ prototype of a leader is White by default—which is, in turn, what causes White (vs. non-White) people to be promoted up the organizational ladder more quickly. Although this explanation has empirical support, its central premise was recently challenged by experimental evidence documenting that U.S. respondents no longer associate leaders, more than nonleaders, with being White. To reconcile these contradictory findings, we conducted three preregistered experiments (N = 1,316) on the topic of whether leaders, more than nonleaders, continue to be associated with Whiteness (i.e., being categorized as White or being represented with stereotypically White qualities). Results suggest that associations between leaders and Whiteness hold up to scrutiny, but that detecting them may depend on what methods researchers employ. In particular, when researchers use direct methods of detecting racial assumptions (e.g., self-report measures), there appears to be no evidence of an association between leaders and Whiteness (Experiment 1). Yet, when researchers use more indirect methods of detecting racial assumptions (e.g., a Princeton trilogy task), an association between leaders and Whiteness readily emerges (Experiments 2 and 3). In short, although respondents refrain from freely expressing associations they may harbor between leaders and Whiteness, these associations do not appear to have dissipated with time.
In the US, Asians are commonly viewed as the “model minority” because of their economic prosperity. We challenge this rosy view by revealing that certain Asian groups may be susceptible to lower starting salaries. In Study 1, we analyzed 19 class years of MBAs who accepted full-time job offers in the US. At first glance, Asians appeared to have starting salaries similarly high as Whites’. However, a striking gap emerged once we distinguished between East Asians (e.g., ethnic Chinese), Southeast Asians (e.g., ethnic Vietnamese), and South Asians (e.g., ethnic Indians): Whereas South Asians started with the highest salaries of all ethnicities, East/Southeast Asians were near the bottom. This salary gap was mediated by East/Southeast Asians’ propensity to not negotiate due to higher relational concerns. Importantly, negotiation predicted higher salary for each of the three groups (East/Southeast Asians, South Asians, and Whites). In further support of negotiation propensity as a mechanism, we identified industry as a boundary condition: The salary gap was not observed for consulting jobs, where MBA starting salaries are typically standard and non-negotiable. The non-consulting salary gap between East/Southeast and South Asians was estimated to be $4,002/year, a sizable difference that can compound over career life. Study 2 found similar results in a non-MBA sample while further accounting for individuals’ bargaining power (e.g., the number of alternative offers, the highest alternative offer). In revealing the differences between East/Southeast and South Asians, this research moves beyond the predominant West-vs-East paradigm, and reveals a more complex reality underneath Asian prosperity.
Psychological science is at an inflection point: The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated inequalities that stem from our historically closed and exclusive culture. Meanwhile, reform efforts to change the future of our science are too narrow in focus to fully succeed. In this article, we call on psychological scientists-focusing specifically on those who use quantitative methods in the United States as one context for such conversations-to begin reimagining our discipline as fundamentally open and inclusive. First, we discuss whom our discipline was designed to serve and how this history produced the inequitable reward and support systems we see today. Second, we highlight how current institutional responses to address worsening inequalities are inadequate, as well as how our disciplinary perspective may both help and hinder our ability to craft effective solutions. Third, we take a hard look in the mirror at the disconnect between what we ostensibly value as a field and what we actually practice. Fourth and finally, we lead readers through a roadmap for reimagining psychological science in whatever roles and spaces they occupy, from an informal discussion group in a department to a formal strategic planning retreat at a scientific society.
Agency and communion are gender-stereotypical traits, which were explicitly designed to capture desirable attributes of men and women, respectively. Whereas the existence of gender gaps in agency and communion is commonly known, it remains unknown what the average magnitude, stability (over time and develop- mental age), and variability (across cultures, sampling strategies, and measures) of these gender differences are. Consistent with social role theory (Eagly, 1987; Wood & Eagly, 2012), the current meta-analysis estimated that men tended to be more agentic than women (g = 0.40, k = 928 samples, N = 254,731 participants), whereas women tended to be more communal than men (g = −0.56, k = 937 samples, N = 254,465 participants). Moderator analyses revealed that these gender differences in agency and communion have been decreasing over time. The gender gap in communion decreased with age but increased with country-level gender occupational segregation. Further, the gender gap in agency was larger when sampling participants as couples (vs. sampling as individuals), and the gaps in both agency and communion were larger in heterosexual (vs. gay/lesbian and bisexual) samples. An important methodological moderator was measurement instrument (e.g., short-form Bem Sex Role Inventory shows much smaller gender gaps than the long-form). Altogether, we leveraged a large database to reveal effects consistent with social role theory—that men are higher in agency (masculinity) and women are higher in communion (femininity)— while simultaneously offering insight into factors (earlier time period, occupational segregation, younger age, sampling in couples, heterosexual orientation) that serve to exacerbate such effects.
Significance
Time stress—the feeling of having too many things to do and not enough time to do them—is a societal epidemic that compromises productivity, physical health, and emotional well-being. Past research shows that women experience disproportionately greater time stress than men and has illuminated a variety of contributing factors. Across nine studies, we identify a previously unexplored predictor of this gender difference. Women avoid asking for more time to complete work tasks, even when deadlines are explicitly adjustable, undermining their well-being and task performance. We shed light on a possible solution: the implementation of formal policies to facilitate deadline extension requests. These findings advance our understanding of the gendered experience of time stress and provide a scalable organizational intervention.
This chapter takes as its point of departure the design elements of the Norwegian parental leave system for fathers and examines how it works as a regulatory measure to promote equality in care work. The findings show that the design of the father’s quota as a statutory, earmarked, and non-transferrable right for fathers promotes the fathers’ use of leave and hence equality. The earmarking, and the fact that it cannot be transferred to the mother, renders it unnecessary for fathers to negotiate with the mother about this leave. The father’s quota is also an important bargaining chip in relation to working life for having time off for doing care-work. These findings support other research on fathers’ use of leave which have shown that these design characteristics of father’s quota represents a strong incentive for greater involvement in caregiving on the part of fathers.
Voice-or the expression of ideas, concerns, or opinions on work issues by employees-can help organizations thrive. However, we highlight that men and women differ in their voice self-efficacy, or the personal confidence in formulating and articulating work-related viewpoints. Such differences, we argue, can impede women's voice from emerging at work. Drawing on social cognitive theory (SCT), we propose that women tend to develop greater voice self-efficacy and thereby speak up more when they have the opportunity to observe female rather than male leaders speak up. Hence, we point to the potential absence of women leaders who can role model speaking up at work as a likely inhibiter of women's voice. Using data from a correlational field study involving 368 employees and their leaders from a variety of industries in India and an experimental study in an online panel of 546 US-based workers, we found support for our hypotheses. We discuss the implications of our research for theory and practice. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
Although acceptance of gay men has grown in recent years, gay men still regularly experience bias in their social relationships. The bias gay men experience has been theorized to stem from societal expectations regarding adherence to gender roles. Additionally, threats to masculinity have been suggested to promote antigay attitudes and discrimination among men. However, it remains unclear whether the bias gay men experience as a result of threatened masculinity is due to gay men’s sexuality, gender role adherence, or the combination. Thus, across two studies (N = 564) we examine how threats to masculinity and target adherence to traditional gender roles impact heterosexual men’s evaluations and anticipated emotional response toward gay or straight men. In Study 1, 405 heterosexual men completed a “personality test” and received either masculinity-threatening feedback or no feedback before assessing the target. We found that when threatened, heterosexual men evaluated feminine gay men less favorably and expressed greater anticipated negative emotions when thinking about interacting with them. Masculinity threat did not influence evaluations of masculine gay men or either heterosexual target. In Study 2 (n = 159), we replicated our findings and demonstrated that self-affirmation of one’s personal values can eliminate the negative reactions expressed toward gay feminine men. Anticipated negative emotions were found to mediate the impact of threat on negative evaluation of the feminine gay target in both studies. The current research provides insight into how heterosexual men’s experiences with threats to their masculinity, interacts with target sexuality, and expressions of gender influence interpersonal evaluations.
Precarious manhood beliefs portray manhood, relative to womanhood, as a social status that is hard to earn, easy to lose, and proven via public action. Here, we present cross-cultural data on a brief measure of precarious manhood beliefs (the Precarious Manhood Beliefs scale [PMB]) that covaries meaningfully with other cross-culturally validated gender ideologies and with country-level indices of gender equality and human development. Using data from university samples in 62 countries across 13 world regions (N = 33,417), we demonstrate: (1) the psychometric isomorphism of the PMB (i.e., its comparability in meaning and statistical properties across the individual and country levels); (2) the PMB’s distinctness from, and associations with, ambivalent sexism and ambivalence toward men; and (3) associations of the PMB with nation-level gender equality and human development. Findings are discussed in terms of their statistical and theoretical implications for understanding widely-held beliefs about the precariousness of the male gender role.
Understanding and remedying women's underrepresentation in majority-male fields and occupations require the recognition of a lesser-known form of cultural bias called masculine defaults. Masculine defaults exist when aspects of a culture value, reward, or regard as standard, normal, neutral, or necessary characteristics or behaviors associated with the male gender role. Although feminist theorists have previously described and analyzed masculine defaults (e.g., Bem, 1984; de Beauvoir, 1953; Gilligan, 1982; Warren, 1977), here we define masculine defaults in more detail, distinguish them from more well-researched forms of bias, and describe how they contribute to women's underrepresentation. We additionally discuss how to counteract masculine defaults and possible challenges to addressing them. Efforts to increase women's participation in majority-male departments and companies would benefit from identifying and counteracting masculine defaults on multiple levels of organizational culture (i.e., ideas, institutional policies, interactions, individuals). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
The coronavirus disease that emerged in 2019 (COVID-19) spotlights the need for effective leadership in a crisis. Leadership research in applied psychology suggests that women tend to be preferred over men as leaders during uncertain times. We contribute to this literature by examining, in the context of COVID-19, whether states with women governors had fewer deaths than states with men governors, and why. We tested this research question with publicly available data on COVID-19 deaths in the United States as of May 5, 2020 and found that states with women governors had fewer COVID-19 deaths compared to states with men governors. Governor sex also interacted with early stay-at-home orders; states with women governors who issued these orders early had fewer deaths compared to states with men governors who did the same. To provide insight into psychological mechanisms of this relationship, we conducted a qualitative analysis of governor briefings that took place between April 1, 2020 and May 5, 2020 (251 briefings, 38 governors, 1.2 million words). Compared to men, women governors expressed more empathy and confidence in their briefings. Practical implications are discussed.
Whereas leadership is generally perceived as a masculine enterprise, heroism research suggests that people view heroes as similarly masculine, but having more feminine traits. We predicted that heroes will be evaluated higher than leaders in communion but not differ in agency. In Study 1, heroes were perceived to have higher communion and similarly high agency as leaders. In Studies 2 and 3, we replicated these trait ratings focusing on perceptions of typical heroes/leaders (S2) and personal heroes/leaders (S3). In Study 4, we showed that the greater level of communion associated with heroes is independent of their gender. In Study 5, using an implicit association test, we showed there is a stronger implicit association of communion with heroes than leaders.
In the Western world, gender has traditionally been viewed in the Western world as binary and as following directly from biological sex. This view is slowly changing among both experts and the general public, a change that has been met with strong opposition. In this article, we explore the psychological processes underlying these dynamics. Drawing on previous work on gender performativity as well as gender as a performance, we develop a psychological framework of the perpetuation and disruption of the gender/sex binary on a stage that facilitates and foregrounds binary gender/sex performance. Whenever character, costume, and script are not aligned the gender/sex binary is disrupted and gender trouble ensues. We integrate various strands of the psychological literature into this framework and explain the processes underlying these reactions. We propose that gender trouble can elicit threat—personal threat, group-based and identity threat, and system threat—which in turn leads to efforts to alleviate this threat through the reinforcement of the gender/sex binary. Our framework challenges the way psychologists have traditionally treated gender/sex in theory and empirical work and proposes new avenues and implications for future research.
Considerable research has examined human mate preferences across cultures, finding universal sex differences in preferences for attractiveness and resources as well as sources of systematic cultural variation. Two competing perspectives—an evolutionary psychological perspective and a biosocial role perspective—offer alternative explanations for these findings. However, the original data on which each perspective relies are decades old, and the literature is fraught with conflicting methods, analyses, results, and conclusions. Using a new 45-country sample ( N = 14,399), we attempted to replicate classic studies and test both the evolutionary and biosocial role perspectives. Support for universal sex differences in preferences remains robust: Men, more than women, prefer attractive, young mates, and women, more than men, prefer older mates with financial prospects. Cross-culturally, both sexes have mates closer to their own ages as gender equality increases. Beyond age of partner, neither pathogen prevalence nor gender equality robustly predicted sex differences or preferences across countries.
Well-educated and prosperous, Asians are called the “model minority” in the United States. However, they appear disproportionately under-represented in leadership positions, a problem known as the “Bamboo Ceiling.” It remains unclear why this problem exists and whether it applies to all Asians or only particular Asian subgroups. To investigate the mechanisms and scope of the problem, we compared the leadership attainment of the two largest Asian subgroups in the United States: East Asians (e.g., Chinese) and South Asians (e.g., Indians). Across nine studies (N = 11,030) using mixed methods (archival analyses of chief executive officers, field surveys in large US companies, student leader nominations and elections, and experiments), East Asians were less likely than South Asians and Whites to attain leadership positions, whereas South Asians were more likely than Whites to do so. To understand why the Bamboo Ceiling exists for East Asians but not South Asians, we examined three categories of mechanisms—prejudice (inter-group), motivation (intra-personal), and assertiveness (inter-personal)—while controlling for demographics (e.g., birth country, English fluency, education, socioeconomic status). Analyses revealed that East Asians faced less prejudice than South Asians, and were equally motivated by work and leadership as South Asians. However, East Asians were lower in assertiveness, which consistently mediated the leadership attainment gap between East Asians and South Asians. These results suggest that East Asians hit the Bamboo Ceiling because their low assertiveness is incongruent with American norms concerning how leaders should communicate. The Bamboo Ceiling is not an Asian issue, but an issue of cultural fit.
According to social role theory, women are less likely to initiate negotiations and have lower expectancies about negotiation success because the feminine gender role is inconsistent with the negotiator role. However, gender differences should be amplified in masculine contexts (with even more inconsistency between the negotiator role and the feminine gender role) and reduced in feminine contexts (with more consistency between the negotiator role and the feminine gender role). We showed in Study 1 (N = 1,306 students) that negotiators’ expectancies about being successful in negotiations mediated the effect of gender on real retrospective negotiation behavior. In Study 2, an online scenario experiment (N = 167 students and employees), we found that the framing of the negotiation context (feminine vs. masculine) moderated the mediation effect. We provide implications for theory, practice, and research methods by unearthing mechanisms and moderators of gender differences in the area of negotiations.
Prior research has found that culture and gender each influence negotiation strategies and outcomes, but less is known about their interplay. We integrate these two research streams by providing a meta-analytic review of the interactive impact of gender and culture on negotiation performance. We reviewed 185 studies that reported gender differences in intra-cultural negotiation performance across 30 societies that varied across seven cultural dimensions. Results showed that Hofstede’s individualism-collectivism, GLOBE’s ingroup collectivism and assertiveness practices, and Schwartz’s harmony moderated the gender effect on negotiation performance. We found that in cultures lower in individualism, higher in ingroup collectivism practices, lower in assertiveness practices, and higher in harmony, women more likely outperformed men in negotiations. Implications for the role of gender and culture in negotiations and organizations more broadly are discussed.
The influence of race in negotiations has remained relatively underexplored. Across three studies, we theorize and find that Black job seekers are expected to negotiate less than their White counterparts and are penalized in negotiations with lower salary outcomes when this expectation is violated; especially when they negotiate with an evaluator who is more racially biased (i.e., higher in social dominance orientation). Specifically, on the basis of the prescriptive stereotype held by those higher in racial bias—that Black (as compared to White) negotiators deserve lower salaries—we predicted that Black negotiators who behave in counterstereotypical ways encounter greater resistance and more unfavorable outcomes from more biased evaluators. We tested this argument in a stepwise fashion: In Study 1, we found that more biased evaluators expect Black job seekers to negotiate less as compared to White job seekers. When Black negotiators violate those expectations, evaluators award them lower starting salaries (Study 2), which appears to occur because evaluators become more resistant to making concessions to Black than to White job seekers (Study 3). Collectively, our findings demonstrate that racially biased perceptual distortions can be used to justify the provision of smaller monetary awards for Black job seekers in negotiations.
Research on gender disparities in negotiation often does not address the intersectional influence of other demographic categories. We tested the hypothesis that race intersects with gender to play a role in constraining assertive behavior in negotiations. In two studies, we examined White non-Latinx and Asian/Asian American women and men’s phrasing of requests for higher salaries (Study 1) and the amounts they requested (Study 2) in hypothetical salary negotiation scenarios. White women reported less confidence and less assertiveness in their salary requests and proposed lower first offers than did White men; Asian and Asian American participants did not show gender differences in these measures. Negotiation backlash, measured by the amount that participants felt they could request without being punished for being too demanding, mediated the relation between demographic factors and first offers. We explored outcomes in light of intersectionality theories and the status incongruity hypothesis of backlash. These results indicate that differences in negotiation are shaped not only by gender but also by racial category membership.
Systematic reviews are characterized by a methodical and replicable methodology and presentation. They involve a comprehensive search to locate all relevant published and unpublished work on a subject; a systematic integration of search results; and a critique of the extent, nature, and quality of evidence in relation to a particular research question. The best reviews synthesize studies to draw broad theoretical conclusions about what a literature means, linking theory to evidence and evidence to theory. This guide describes how to plan, conduct, organize, and present a systematic review of quantitative (meta-analysis) or qualitative (narrative review, meta-synthesis) information. We outline core standards and principles and describe commonly encountered problems. Although this guide targets psychological scientists, its high level of abstraction makes it potentially relevant to any subject area or discipline. We argue that systematic reviews are a key methodology for clarifying whether and how research findings replicate and for explaining possible inconsistencies, and we call for researchers to conduct systematic reviews to help elucidate whether there is a replication crisis. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Psychology Volume 70 is January 4, 2019. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
The view that humans comprise only two types of beings, women and men, a framework that is sometimes referred to as the “gender binary,” played a profound role in shaping the history of psychological science. In recent years, serious challenges to the gender binary have arisen from both academic research and social activism. This review describes 5 sets of empirical findings, spanning multiple disciplines, that fundamentally undermine the gender binary. These sources of evidence include neuroscience findings that refute sexual dimorphism of the human brain; behavioral neuroendocrinology findings that challenge the notion of genetically fixed, nonoverlapping, sexually dimorphic hormonal systems; psychological findings that highlight the similarities between men and women; psychological research on transgender and nonbinary individuals’ identities and experiences; and developmental research suggesting that the tendency to view gender/sex as a meaningful, binary category is culturally determined and malleable. Costs associated with reliance on the gender binary and recommendations for future research, as well as clinical practice, are outlined.
A role congruity theory of prejudice toward female leaders proposes that perceived incongruity between the female gender role and leadership roles leads to 2 forms of prejudice: (a) perceiving women less favorably than men as potential occupants of leadership roles and (b) evaluating behavior that fulfills the prescriptions of a leader role less favorably when it is enacted by a woman. One consequence is that attitudes are less positive toward female than male leaders and potential leaders. Other consequences are that it is more difficult for women to become leaders and to achieve success in leadership roles. Evidence from varied research paradigms substantiates that these consequences occur, especially in situations that heighten perceptions of incongruity between the female gender role and leadership roles.
There is substantial research on the nature of gender prescriptive and proscriptive stereotypes. However, there has been relatively little work on whether these normative stereotypes are equally attributed to men and women of different identities. Across two studies (total N = 928), we assessed the extent to which stereotypes are prescribed and proscribed for men and women of different sexual orientations (Study 1) and races (Study 2) in the United States. We asked participants to rate the desirability of possessing 70 traits based on an “average American.” Although results showed the persistence of gender normative stereotypes in society, the normative nature of these stereotypes was influenced by sexual orientation and race. There was strong evidence of a heterocentric bias, as normative stereotypes of generic men and women most closely aligned with those of straight men and women. There was weaker evidence of a Eurocentric bias. Furthermore, observed gender differences in normative stereotypes were significantly smaller for sexually- and racially-minoritized targets compared to straight and White targets. These findings combined suggest that the practices and policies that attempt to address gender inequality might not be as effective for people with multiply-marginalized identities that face distinctly different patterns of normative pressures. Additional online materials for this article are available on PWQ's website at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/03616843231187851 .
Based on role congruity theory, this preregistered meta-analysis examines whether women negotiate less unethically than men. We predicted that moderators related to the person (negotiation experience) and the negotiation context (e.g., advocacy, cultural gender-role inequality) influence the proposed gender difference. We conducted a Bayesian three-level meta-analysis to test our predictions on a sample of 116 effect sizes from 70 samples (overall N = 14,028, including employees, MBA students, undergraduate students). As predicted, women negotiated less unethically than men (Hedges' g = 0.25). The gender difference held for unethical judgements (Hedges' g = 0.29), unethical intentions (Hedges' g = 0.21), and unethical behaviors (Hedges' g = 0.17). The gender difference decreased when parties negotiated for others as compared to for themselves, when parties strategically used positive affect, and tended to decrease when parties were experienced as compared to inexperienced negotiators. We discuss implications for theory and research.
Gender differences in risky behavior and decision-making have been observed across a number of behavioral domains. Reviews of this literature have tended to overlook the question of whether specific objective situational factors that are relevant to a particular risky decision moderate observed gender differences within risk domains. The current work explores this question by employing a naturalistic observation method. Over 2,700 pedestrians were observed crossing a busy intersection adjacent to a college campus in the southeastern U.S. Observers noted the number of male and female pedestrians present during each cycle of the traffic signal as well as how many individuals of each gender either crossed when the ‘don’t walk’ sign was active or waited for the safer ‘walk’ signal in order to cross. Also noted was whether these pedestrians were crossing at a ‘low risk’ area of the intersection, where a concrete safety island was present, or a ‘high risk’ area, where there was no safety island. The oft-observed gender difference in physical risk-taking was observed, with men being substantially more likely to cross during a ‘don’t walk’ signal compared to women. However, this was only observed at the ‘low risk’ area of the intersection. In contrast, risk-taking did not differ by gender at the ‘high risk’ crossing area. Implications for the understanding of the nature of gender-differences in risk taking are discussed.
Compared to their representation in the workforce, women are significantly underrepresented in leadership roles in the United States. Whereas substantial research attention has been paid to the role of bias and discrimination in perpetuating this gap, less has been devoted to exploring the gender difference in aspirations for these roles. We draw from social role theory to hypothesize that men have higher leadership aspirations than women and test our hypothesis using a meta-analysis of 174 U.S. published and unpublished samples (N = 138,557) spanning six decades. The results reveal that there is a small but significant gender difference in the predicted direction (Hedge's g = 0.22). Notably, the gender difference has not narrowed significantly over time, and appears to widen at college age and among working adults within male-dominated industries. Our results also suggest that the process and dissemination of research in this domain exhibits bias. We discuss the implications of our conclusions for future research.
A person's gender is not a reliable predictor of their negotiation behavior or outcomes, because the degree and character of gender dynamics in negotiation vary across situations. Systematic effects of gender on negotiation are best predicted by situational characteristics that cue gendered behavior or increase reliance on gendered standards for agreement. In this review, we illuminate two levers that heighten or constrain the potential for gender effects in organizational negotiations: ( a) the salience and relevance of gender within the negotiating context and ( b) the degree of ambiguity (i.e., lack of objective standards or information) with regard to what is negotiable, how to negotiate, or who the parties are as negotiators. In our summary, we review practical implications of this research for organizational leaders and individuals who are motivated to reduce gender-based inequities in negotiation outcomes. In conclusion, we suggest future directions for research on gender in organizational negotiations.
Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, Volume 9 is January 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
Members of social categories defined by attributes such as sex, race, and age occupy certain types of social roles much more than members of other social categories do. The qualities that define these roles become associated with the category as a whole, thus forming a stereotype. In a vicious cycle, this stereotype then hinders category members’ movement into roles with different demands because their stereotype portrays them as well matched to their existing roles but not to these new roles. This vicious cycle has important implications for stereotype change. Given the difficulties of producing enduring change by directly attacking stereotypes in the minds of individuals, a more effective strategy consists of policies and programs that change the distributions of category members in roles, thereby changing stereotypes at their source. If the vicious cycle is not interrupted by such social change, observations of category members’ typical social roles continually reinstate existing stereotypes.
This paper empirically investigates the role of culture in explaining the frequently reported differences in financial literacy between women and men. Using nationally representative survey data from India, we find that women are significantly less financially literate than men. This gender gap is not observable, however, when we only consider matrilineal states. Moreover, matrilineal women are more financially knowledgeable than patriarchal women. Using the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition method, we find that education, English language skills and the use of different information sources, such as newspapers and TV, are key transmission channels in explaining differences in financial knowledge between men and women in patriarchal states, and between patriarchal and matrilineal societies.
We explore gender differences in performance in a comprehensive sample of venture capital investments in the United States. Investments by female venture capital investors have significantly lower success rates than investments by their male colleagues when controlling for personal characteristics, including employment and educational history, and portfolio companies’ characteristics. The gender differences in investment outcomes are not due to female investors being less skilled but, rather, are largely attributable to female investors receiving less benefit from the track records of their colleagues. Performance differences disappear in older, larger firms and firms with other female investors. This supports the view that formal feedback mechanisms and hierarchies are potentially useful in ameliorating the female performance gap.
Social work researchers have increasingly focused on the needs of transgender communities and clients, which has resulted in the advancement of transgender-affirming practice and services; however, there has been relatively little research devoted to the experiences and needs of non-binary people. This article describes a participatory action research study that utilized photovoice methodology to understand the identity-based experiences of a group of non-binary young adult participants. Members of the group explored their individual and collective processes of coming to understand, construct and express genders that fall outside of the binary expectations they experienced on a daily basis. Findings highlight the pervasive nature of binary gender constructs and note the ways in which participant co-researchers navigate invisibility and erasure in order to reclaim their gender and build community. Implications for social work practice, policy and research are discussed.
We extend Implicit Leadership Theory, which addresses criteria that individuals use to identify leaders, by examining whether the predictors of leadership emergence change over time. Building on leader-distance research, we predict that time influences the traits on which individuals base their selection of others as leaders: Initially, before individuals have had many opportunities to interact, and distance between them is high, they select leaders according to easily-noticeable physical and psychological traits; however, with time, as distance decreases, they rely on more covert psychological traits. We carried out a three-day field study in an intensive workshop for individuals entering an executive-MBA program (n = 64). Data were gathered from participants at four points in time. We found that the criteria by which people nominate leaders change over time from easily- noticeable traits (facial attractiveness, gender, extraversion) to more covert personality traits (conscientiousness).
It is notable that across distinct, siloed, and disconnected areas of psychology (e.g., developmental, personality, social), there exist two dimensions (the “Big Two”) that capture the ways in which people process, perceive, and navigate their social worlds. Despite their subtle distinctions and nomenclature, each shares the same underlying content; one revolves around independence, goal pursuit, and achievement, and the other revolves around other-focus, social orientation, and desire for connection. Why have these two dimensions emerged across disciplines, domains, and decades? Our answer: gender. We argue that the characteristics of the Big Two (e.g., agency/competence, communion/warmth) are reflections of psychological notions of masculinity and femininity that render gender the basis of the fundamental lens through which one sees the social world. Thus, although past work has identified the Big Two as a model to understand social categories, we argue that gender itself is the social category that explains the nature of the Big Two. We outline support for this theory and suggest implications of a gendered cognition in which gender not only provides functional utility for cognitive processing but simultaneously enforces gender roles and limits men and women’s opportunities. Recognizing that the Big Two reflect masculinity and femininity does not confine people to act in accordance with their gender but rather allows for novel interventions to reduce gender-based inequities.
A pervasive phenomenon in the workplace is that men appear eager to show how “tough” they are as negotiators. We introduce the Masculinity Effects in Negotiations (MEN) model to explain men’s negotiation behaviors and outcomes. According to the model, men perceive negotiating as an activity in which they can signal their masculinity and pursue social status, but they also recognize that their masculinity might be questioned and that they might lose social status. As a result, men can become enthusiastic but also anxious about negotiations and these emotions lead them to display a number of agentic negotiation behaviors to protect and underscore their masculinity and their social status. Depending on their own and their counterpart’s behavior, men then either succeed or fail to obtain favorable economic negotiation outcomes, which influence their subsequent emotions (e.g., pride or shame). With our model, we advance a novel explanation for gender differences in negotiations and expand the understanding of men’s workplace behaviors and outcomes (e.g., their pay, position, and reputation).
While gender gaps in political participation are pervasive, especially in developing countries, this study provides systematic evidence of one cultural practice that closes this gap. Using data from across Africa, this article shows that matrilineality – tracing kinship through the female line – is robustly associated with closing the gender gap in political participation. It then uses this practice as a lens through which to draw more general inferences. Exploiting quantitative and qualitative data from Malawi, the authors demonstrate that matrilineality's success in improving outcomes for women lies in its ability to sustain more progressive norms about the role of women in society. It sets individual expectations about the gendered beliefs and behaviors of other households in the community, and in a predictable way through the intergenerational transmission of the practice. The study tests and finds evidence against two competing explanations: that matrilineality works through its conferral of material resources alone, or by increasing education for girls.
In the substantial body of research on gender differences in the initiation of negotiation, the findings consistently favor men (Kugler et al., 2018). We propose that this research itself is gendered because negotiation research has traditionally focused on masculine negotiation contexts. In the current study, we replicate the gender effect in initiating negotiations (favoring men) and provide an empirically based selection of “masculine,” “feminine,” and “neutral” negotiation contexts, which can be used for future negotiation research. We show that the negotiation context shapes gender differences such that in specific social contexts, women tend to have even higher initiation intentions compared to men. Negotiation contexts generally seem to differ regarding their affordance to negotiate. We offer a possible explanation for gender effects on initiation intentions by uncovering the mediating role of expectancy considerations across all negotiation contexts, especially in masculine contexts, and instrumentality considerations in specific masculine and feminine contexts.
In recent years, research from various disciplines, including social psychology, sociology, economics, gender studies, and organizational behavior, has illuminated the importance of considering the various ways in which multiple social categories intersect to shape outcomes for women in the workplace. However, these findings are scattered across disciplines, making it difficult for organizational scholars to leverage this knowledge in the advancement of gender research. The purpose of this review is to assemble these findings to capture how gender and race, when considered in tandem, can generate new understandings about women of different racial groups and their experiences in the workplace. We first provide a review of both historic and contemporary interpretations of the intersectionality concept. Next, using an intersectional framework, we review key findings on the distinct stereotypes ascribed to Black, Asian, and White women, and compare and contrast the differential impact of these stereotypes on hiring and leadership for these subgroups of women. Building from these stereotypes, we further review research that explores the different job roles that Black, Asian, and White women occupy, specifically focusing on the impact of occupational segregation, organizational support, and the motherhood penalty. Finally, we examine how the frequency, emotional toll, and legal implications of sexual harassment can vary for women of differing races. Through this review, we bring attention to the pitfalls of studying women as a monolithic category and call for organizational scholars to consider the role of intersectionality in shaping workplace outcomes.
Gender inequalities in the workplace persist, and scholars point to gender discrimination as a significant contributor. As organizations attempt to address this problem, we argue that theory can help shed light on potential solutions. This paper discusses how the lack of fit model can be used by organizations as a framework to understand the process that facilitates gender discrimination in employment decisions and to identify intervention strategies to combat it. We describe two sets of strategies. The first is aimed at reducing the perception that women are not suited for male-typed positions. The second is aimed at preventing the negative performance expectations that derive from this perception of unsuitability from influencing evaluative judgments. Also included is a discussion of several unintentional consequences that may follow from enacting these strategies. We conclude by arguing for the importance of the interplay between theory and practice in targeting gender discrimination in the workplace.
