`Wilting flower' theory droops in hierarchy study


Remember the alpha male, the one who dominates all the other apes--the one many believe has a counterpart among human beings? Well, forget him.

But wait at least eight minutes to do so: That's the time it takes one man in an all-male group to establish dominance and then to let everyone else contribute.

And what about a group of all females? Aren't they supposed to be afraid of leadership roles, in fact, of doing anything that might hurt someone else's feelings?

Forget that, too.

Women also create hierarchies, but not in the same way as men: Women tend to allow anyone who wants to contribute to do so from the beginning, but eventually, one or two women do emerge as leaders.

In fact, if a woman executive says to a male colleague, "My hierarchy is different from yours--but only in the initial stages," she'd be absolutely right, according to recent research.

"Women do form hierarchies--and the stereotype that they don't shouldn't be a reason to say women shouldn't be in leadership positions," said Marianne Schmid Mast, a research fellow specializing in social psychology at Northeastern University in Boston.

Mast, who has a doctorate in social psychology, defines the word "hierarchy" as "one person being more dominant than another." And she describes "dominant" as "one person being more powerful than another."

These terms appear frequently in her newest study, "Female Dominance Hierarchies: Are They Any Different From Males?" It was published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

"What I really wanted to look at was the claim that women are not comfortable being dominant and that's why so few are running companies," said Mast, who is a citizen of Switzerland and plans to return in the fall.

Her research was done at the University of Zurich, but she points out: "There is no evidence that expression of dominance would be different in the U.S."

Mast studied 58 women and 58 men. The average age was 38 and all were parents.

"We held meetings with same-sex groups who met [on the surface] to discuss parenting," she said. "We chose parenting as the subject because we didn't want to have a stereotypically male topic such as cars or sports. Both women and men are interested in being good parents.'

Mast used as her measure of dominance how often participants interrupted others in the group. And there was a gender gap: Within the first eight minutes of the discussion, the most powerful men--usually one or two-- felt free to interrupt the others.

The women behaved differently--at first. "Everyone contributed the same amount of information and was considerate of the opinions of the others, but as time passed, some women would interrupt more often than others," she said.

By that time, women and men were forming their power structures in the same way. And that's why her study concludes that "far from being `wilting flowers,' women gather their power slowly and form alliances that are as powerful as men's.

"What is the real news is that there actually isn't much difference--except that each group goes at it in a different way, at least for a brief period of time. Women aren't inexperienced in this area. They know how to do it, too."

Mast points out to those who believe women aren't suited for top management because they aren't leaders "is not what we found." And to women who are excluded from halls of power because of that stereotype, she advises, "Don't let anyone convince you that being dominant is a non-female thing."

Instead, what her findings do mean is "a newly-hired female executive may feel the need to interact with her group before assigning work--while a newly-hired male executive most likely would immediately take charge and delegate from the get-go."

At least for the first eight minutes.

Tell that to the alpha males--after you interrupt them.


Carol Kleiman's column also appears in Wednesday's Working section and Sunday's Business section. Watch her Career Coach segments on CLTV. E-mail ckleiman@tribune.com.

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