Description
This study investigated individual differences in perceptions of leadership. According to research, people hold prototypes for what a typical business leader is and the qualities they should and should not possess. This prototype is shaped by an individual's perceptions of and experiences with different business leaders and can vary from one individual to the next. Despite the growing urgency for diversity within work environments and the fact that women comprise more than half of the workforce, when considering the business leader, White males have been found to be most prototypic. This finding has been supported in multiple studies; however, the literature has primarily focused on comparisons between White and African American men, while only recently beginning to expand to include comparisons with women and other ethnic minorities. This study builds upon previous research by examining individual's leadership perceptions of six targets: White, African American, and Asian American men and women, with a particular interest in the combined effects of both ethnicity and gender. Using the description and performance summary of a fictitious employee and company, individuals measured the leadership potential of the six targets with the manipulations of ethnicity, gender, and performance (having increased or decreased). Furthermore, most research on the topic has relied on self-report and survey measures to assess perceptions of leadership ability. There is evidence that we have automatic processes occurring outside of conscious awareness that activate held stereotypes and that are not available to be accessed through introspection. Therefore, this study also incorporated the use of implicit measures, specifically, the single category implicit association test (SC-IAT), to discover individual's associations between the six targets and the status of "business leader." Implicit measures have been found valuable in limiting the ability to "fake" or give socially desirable responses, giving the measure the ability to reveal true associations people hold consciously or unconsciously. Participants included 326 university students, each completing both the personnel summary measure, for which they evaluated one target's leadership potential, and the SC-IAT, which measured the association of each of the six targets with the status of "business leader" and "business subordinate." A between-subjects ANOVA was used to analyze differences in perceptions of leadership potential and a within-subjects ANOVA was used to analyze differences in associations of the six targets with the status of business leader versus business subordinate. Findings indicated some mixed results between the two measures. The personnel summary measure indicated no significant differences between ethnic or gender groups, but did find that targets described as having increased performance were evaluated more favorably than those described as having decreased performance. However, The SC-IAT found a significant difference in ethnicity in that both Whites and African Americans were more closely associated to the status of business leader than Asian Americans, and males more closely associated than females. This study contributes to the current research literature by examining multiple minority groups and women, including minority women, and thus exploring theories of the intersectionality of ethnicity and gender with regard to perceptions of business leaders.
