Perceived Misalignment of Professional Prototypes Reduces Subordinates' Endorsement of Sexist Supervisors

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Danbold, Felix; Bendersky, Corinne
• 署名单位: University of London; University College London; University of California System; University of California Los Angeles
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0021-9010
• DOI: 10.1037/apl0001038
• 发表日期: 2023
• 页码: 676-685
• 关键词: gender; diversity; leadership; followership; group prototypes

摘要

Despite decades of efforts, many organizations still have sexist supervisors-those in supervisory positions who define their profession by primarily stereotypically masculine features. As a result of their masculine professional prototypes, sexist supervisors see their work as a man's job in which women cannot succeed. Research suggests that one problem posed by sexist supervisors is that they may pass their biased views on to subordinates who endorse them as leaders. To make this less likely, we test in two experiments (N = 1,879) a strategy to reduce subordinates' endorsement of sexist supervisors. We do this by encouraging 4 subordinates to see themselves as low in perceived professional prototype alignment (PPPA)-the extent to which a subordinate perceives their supervisor to share their beliefs about what it means to be a member of their profession-with sexist supervisors. Specifically, encouraging subordinates' to hold less masculine, more balanced professional prototypes, in which they see stereotypically feminine attributes as equally important to the job as stereotypically masculine ones, reduces PPPA with sexist supervisors. Lowering PPPA, in turn, reduces supervisor endorsement, even after accounting for the effects of other established mechanisms of supervisor endorsement. This research sheds new light on the psychology of followership and offers a new way to curb gender bias from the bottom up.