Assessments of leadership performance involve judgments of a number of different leadership traits or characteristics (e.g., vision, interpersonal, task-orientated). Previous research has found that assessments of women were higher than those of men on leadership performance but lower than those of men on vision and strategy (e.g., Ibarra and Obodaru, 2009; Roth et al., 2012). Differential ratings on vision and strategy might have consequences for leadership selection given that strategic insight, and analytical skills in general, are acknowledged as key indicators of leadership potential (e.g., Marshall-Mies et al., 2000; Silzer and Church, 2009; Dries and Pepermans, 2012). For example, Ibarra and Obodaru (2009) studied 2,816 female and male executives across 149 countries, analyzing 22,244 evaluations, and found that women were rated better than or equal to men across a range of measures but that men were rated significantly higher than women on "visioning" – the ability to be able to put forward a compelling vision and strategy. Moreover, a meta-analysis of field studies (N = 45,733) revealed

that women were evaluated more favorably than men on overall job performance ratings. Yet women were rated lower than men on the measure of future performance and promotability (Roth et al., 2012). Such differences might arise partly because women are more likely to take on tasks which require competence, but do not improve chances of promotion (e.g., committee service; Babcock et al., 2017). Nonetheless, research on the power of gender stereotypes and decisions about leadership is conclusive – all else being equal, women are judged more harshly than men (e.g., Rudman and Glick, 2001; Lyness and Heilman, 2006; Blau and DeVaro, 2007).

# Gender Bias in Leadership Selection

Social roles include both descriptive beliefs that define what men and women are like, and also prescriptive norms that define how individuals should be and how they should not be (Eagly et al., 2000; Eagly and Wood, 2012). According to social role theory (Eagly and Wood, 1999, 2012), typical gender roles (e.g., women overpopulating communally demanding roles and men overpopulating agentically demanding roles) are likely to persist because people consistently witness typically female and male behavior and conclude that these characteristics are representative of the sexes. Indeed, because people are frequently exposed to typical sex-typed behavior, women are typically perceived as, and expected to be, communal (e.g., caring, sensitive), whereas men are expected to be agentic (e.g., determined, competitive; Eagly and Karau, 1991; Eagly et al., 1995; Heilman, 2001; Eagly and Sczesny, 2009; Rosette and Tost, 2010; Koenig et al., 2011). In those workplaces where agency instead of communality is expected, stereotypes produce distinctive penalties for women (Caleo and Heilman, 2013). In particular, meta-analysis shows that leadership roles are still typically viewed as being agentic (Koenig et al., 2011), and therefore men will be perceived as more capable leaders (Levinson and Young, 2010).

When women demonstrate success in leadership roles, they can be penalized because they violate gender-prescriptive norms (Heilman et al., 2004) or contextual expectations (e.g., Randsley de Moura et al., 2018). Ultimately, when people interrupt gender stereotypes, they can suffer consequences that undermine and devalue their social and economic status (Rudman and Phelan, 2008). Women who put themselves forward for positions of leadership can therefore face backlashes that undermine their status (Rudman and Phelan, 2008). In support of this idea, the devaluation of women leaders is more pronounced when they occupy male-dominated roles (Eagly et al., 1992). Meta-analysis has also highlighted that women who display explicitly dominant behaviors (e.g., direct demands) are perceived as less hirable – because they are rated lower in likeability rather than any reduction in perceived competence (Williams and Tiedens, 2016).

In this paper, we test the hypothesis that women's leadership potential is more likely to be dismissed than men's leadership potential. This is consistent with the "think manager-think male" phenomenon (e.g., Schein et al., 1996). Substantial evidence suggests that the stereotype of a typical leader is highly congruent with masculine traits (Eagly and Karau, 2002;

Koenig et al., 2011). The incongruence between the stereotype of a typical leader and feminine traits may explain why women face more challenging thresholds for promotion. For example, Lyness and Heilman (2006) found that women who occupied management positions that were typically characterized by organizational power and influence (i.e., gender role incongruous) also received lower performance ratings than their male counterparts. In summary, we expect an overlooked potential effect such that women's but not men's leadership potential is likely to be overlooked when people judge and select candidates for leadership.

Although research indicates that evaluations of leaders and promotion to leadership positions are likely to be biased in favor of men, a meta-analysis (Koch et al., 2015; N = 22,348) revealed a bias for men in male-dominated roles (e.g., in a leader position). However, that role congruity bias was attenuated when information clearly highlighted a candidate's high competence. We hypothesized that a female candidate's leadership potential may only be acknowledged if she is unambiguously a high performer (i.e., when her leadership achievements cannot be dismissed).

# OVERVIEW OF STUDIES

Previous studies have found that gender role incongruity (see Heilman and Eagly, 2008) contributes to gender inequality in leadership positions, but to date there is no explicit experimental evidence on gender biases in the recognition of leadership potential. Given the importance of recognizing and effectively managing talent for businesses (Church, 2014), it is essential to investigate gender as a boundary condition to perceptions of leadership potential. Holding constant the actual traits and performance of candidates, two experimental studies used simulated hiring decisions to investigate whether leadership potential is overlooked in women, but not in men.

We used a simulation of organizational hiring of candidates applying for leadership positions. This experimental vignette methodology was used as it is regarded as a reliable and accurate method that allows greater control of the research process (Handley et al., 2007; Doz, 2011). In addition, we recruited participants through online crowdsourcing portals to provide relevant samples (e.g., Buhrmester et al., 2011; Holden et al., 2013).

Experiment 1 tested the effects of candidate gender on the recognition of leadership potential. Specifically, we tested whether there is a preference for potential in both male and female candidates, or whether people overlook leadership potential in female candidates. We also explored whether the decision makers' gender moderated the preference for potential in each gender of candidate. Experiment 2 investigated the evaluation of leadership potential and leadership performance, candidate gender, and decision makers' gender when leaders were being hired for a senior management position. Taken together, these studies examined whether leadership potential is overlooked in women who seek progression into leadership positions, relative to men with identical résumés.

Specifically, we hypothesized that participants would prefer leadership potential over leadership performance (Hypothesis 1). We expected that participants would prefer leadership potential more in male candidates than in female candidates (Hypothesis 2). More importantly, when it comes to candidate choice, we hypothesized that participants would prefer leadership potential over leadership performance in male candidates (Hypothesis 3); but leadership performance over leadership potential in female candidates (Hypothesis 4). In addition, we hypothesized that high leadership potential male candidates would be selected more than high potential female candidates (Hypothesis 5).

All experiments were carried out in accordance with the recommendations of the School of Psychology Ethics Committee at the University of Kent, United Kingdom. The protocol was approved using the School of Psychology Ethics system. All participants gave written informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. The research was conducted in accordance with guidelines from the University of Kent Research Ethics (Human Participants) Committee, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Research Ethics Framework, and the ethical guidelines from the British Psychological Society (BPS).

# EXPERIMENT 1

# Materials and Methods

#### Participants and Design

We recruited 98 participants (59 males and 39 females, Mage = 36.38, 79.6% employed) via Amazon MTurk. The quasi-experimental design was a 2 (Leadership Characteristic: leadership potential, leadership performance) × 2 (Candidate Gender: female, male) × 2 (Participant Gender: female, male) mixed design, with leadership characteristic and candidate gender as within-participant factors. All additional candidate information (e.g., age, qualifications, work experience, GPA) was counterbalanced.

#### Procedure and Materials

Participants were presented simultaneously with four candidates (male candidate with leadership potential, male candidate with leadership performance, female candidate with leadership potential, female candidate with leadership performance; see **Appendix** in random order from left to right). Participants were asked to imagine they worked for a hypothetical organization "ALPHATech" and that they were involved in the recruitment and selection of a new employee:

"ALPHATech is a successful business providing financial and economic advice (e.g., tax, investments, account management, and pensions) to a number of different industries. Imagine that you work in a human resources role and you are part of the team responsible for recruiting and hiring new employees. ALPHATech are currently expanding their business and as part of this are recruiting for a number of positions within the company. Imagine that you are part of the hiring panel and you have been given some candidates to evaluate."

Candidate potential and performance were manipulated by adjusting the score on two assessments: leadership achievement and leadership potential. Specifically, as in Tormala et al. (2012, Experiment 2), the Leadership Achievement Inventory manipulated a high or moderate performer by varying the score (83/100 or 96/100) and the accompanying paragraphs as follows:

"The LAI gauges leadership achievement, defined as an individual's observed (i.e., actual) leadership performance at the current stage in his or her career. An achievement score of 83 places this applicant in the top 17% of people who have been assessed [An achievement score of 96 places this applicant in the top 4% of people who have been assessed].

The Assessment of Leadership Potential score was accompanied by the following paragraph1 , which varied depending on the condition (high or moderate leadership potential):

"The ALP gauges leadership potential, defined as the employee's predicted leadership performance in the near future. A score of 96 indicates that this applicant predicted future leadership performance is estimated to be in the top 4% of people who have been assessed [A score of 83 indicates that this applicant predicted future leadership performance is estimated to be in the top 17% of people who have been assessed]."

Thus, in the leadership potential condition, the applicant had received a higher score on potential (top 4%) and a more moderate score (top 17%) on leadership achievement, whereas in the leadership performance condition, the applicant had received a moderate leadership potential score (top 17%) and a high performance score (top 4%). High and moderate scores were used rather than high and low scores, in order to focus attention on the dimension at which the candidate excelled rather than suggesting any weakness (see **Appendix**). The focus on leadership potential or leadership performance was reinforced through comments ostensibly taken from a panel review, for example:

"This candidate has great prospects. She has some exciting new ideas for the future of the team and the organization, which could offer the opportunity to increase sales and performance in the future." [Leadership Potential]

"The applicant is highly capable, and has consistently performed above his own objectives and that of the organizations. The performance in his current role has exceeded expectations." [Leadership Performance]

# Measures Candidate Hiring

Candidate hiring was measured using two items on a 9-point rating scale (α = 0.78): "How interested would you be in hiring each applicant?," "To what extent do you think hiring each applicant would be a good decision or a bad one?" Lower values indicate less hiring intention.

#### Expected Success

Expected success was measured using one item asking participants "How successful do you think each applicant will be in their career?" (1 – not at all successful, 9 – very successful).

#### Résumé Evaluation

Résumé evaluation was measured by asking participants to compare all four applicants and decide "in your opinion, which applicant has the most impressive résumé?" They were required to rank candidates from first (most impressive) to fourth (least impressive).2

### Future Performance

Future performance was measured with an order of preference based on performance, "which applicant do you think will perform better by the fifth year at ALPHATech?" Candidates were ranked from best future performance (first) to worst future performance (fourth).

# Results

We conducted a Leadership Characteristic (leadership potential, leadership performance) × Candidate Gender (female, male) × Participant Gender (female, male) mixed ANOVA to analyze the evaluation items of candidate hiring and expected success. We hypothesized that participants would be more willing to hire candidates with leadership potential and would expect those candidates to be more successful than candidates with leadership performance (Hypothesis 1). Furthermore, we expected these effects to be stronger for male candidates (Hypothesis 2 and Hypothesis 3). We did not hypothesize participant gender effects but included this factor as exploratory.

Friedman tests and Wilcoxon Signed Ranks tests were used to analyze whether there were differences in the choicebased rankings of each candidate's résumé and expected future performance. We expected participants to rank the male candidate with leadership potential higher than the male candidate with leadership performance on the evaluation of résumés and expected future performance. We expected the opposite pattern for female candidates (Hypothesis 4). Finally, we expected participants to rank the male candidate with leadership potential higher than the female candidate with leadership potential in both the evaluation of résumés and expected future performance (Hypothesis 5).

## Candidate Hiring

There was a significant main effect of candidate gender, F(1,96) = 5.15, p = 0.025, η 2 = 0.05, with female candidates rated as more likely to be a good hire than male candidates, see **Table 1**. The main effect of leadership characteristic was nonsignificant, F(1,96) = 1.40, p = 0.240, η 2 = 0.01, as was the main effect of participant gender, F(1,96) = 0.42, p = 0.838, η 2 < 0.001.

1This was identical to Tormala et al. (2012, Experiment 2) including the typographical error "the applicant predicted future" rather than "the applicant's predicted future."

2We also asked participants to make a choice of résumé based on the following item "at present, which applicant had a more objectively impressive résumé?" Results were the same for this measure, and given that the items are very similar and taken that ranking data cannot be aggregated into an average score, we opted to report the results for the first measure. Results for the second item are available from the corresponding author on request.

There was a significant Candidate Gender × Participant Gender interaction, F(1,96) = 9.77, p = 0.002, η 2 = 0.09. Simple main effects of candidate gender within levels of participant gender were analyzed. There was a significant difference for female participants' evaluation of male and female candidates, F(1,96) = 12.09, p = 0.001, η 2 = 0.11, who expressed a preference for female candidates over male candidates overall (**Table 1**). This was not hypothesized, but demonstrates ingroup bias for female participants. There was no significant difference among male participants, F(1,96) = 0.46, p = 0.499, η 2 = 0.01. There were no simple main effects of participant gender within level of candidate gender. Female and male participants did not make significantly different hiring evaluations of female candidates, F(1,96) = 3.59, p = 0.06, η 2 = 0.04, or of male candidates, F(1,96) = 1.88, p = 0.174, η 2 = 0.02. There was no significant Leadership Characteristic × Candidate Gender × Participant Gender interaction effect, F(1,96) = 1.69, p = 0.196, η 2 = 0.017.

#### Expected Success

There were no significant main effects of candidate gender, F(1,96) = 1.27, p = 0.263, η 2 = 0.01, participant gender F(1,96) = 2.34, p = 0.129, η 2 = 0.02, or leadership characteristic F(1,96) = 2.57, p = 0.112, η 2 = 0.03 (which does not support Hypothesis 1). There Candidate Gender × Participant Gender interaction effect was not significant, F(1,96) = 3.10, p = 0.082, η 2 = 0.03, and a non-significant Leadership Characteristic × Participant Gender interaction, F(1,96) < 0.001, p = 0.995, η 2 < 0.01. There was a significant Leadership Characteristic × Candidate Gender interaction, F(1,96) = 4.28, p = 0.041, η 2 = 0.04. Consistent with Hypothesis 2, there was a preference for leadership potential over leadership performance for male candidates only, F(1,96) = 5.12, p = 0.026, η 2 = 0.05, see **Table 1**, but not for female candidates, F(1,96) = 0.001, p = 0.981, η 2 < 0.001. There was no significant differentiation between male and female leadership potential candidates, F(1,96) = 0.52, p = 0.473, η 2 = 0.05, or between male and female leadership performance candidates, F(1,96) = 3.56, p = 0.06, η 2 = 0.04.

Our exploratory analysis for participant gender revealed a significant Leadership Characteristic × Candidate Gender × Participant Gender interaction, F(1,96) = 5.85, p = 0.017, η 2 = 0.06. We decomposed the three-way interaction by participant gender. Simple interactions showed that the Leadership Characteristic × Candidate Gender interaction was only significant among female participants, F(1,96) = 8.37, p = 0.005, η 2 = 0.08, not among male participants, F(1,96) = 0.08, p = 0.783, η 2 < 0.01.

The second order simple effect was significant among female participants who differentiated between candidates with leadership performance, F(1,96) = 7.94, p = 0.006, η 2 = 0.08. **Table 1** shows that female participants expected the female candidate with leadership performance to be more successful than the male candidate with leadership performance. Moreover, female participants expected the male candidate with leadership potential to be more successful than the male candidate with leadership performance, see **Table 1**, F(1,96) = 5.32, p = 0.023, η 2 = 0.05. Female participants did not differentiate significantly between female candidates based on leadership characteristic, F(1,96) = 1.15, p = 0.287, η 2 = 0.01, or between male and female candidates with leadership potential, F(1,96) = 0.54, p = 0.465, η 2 < 0.01.

#### Résumé Evaluation

A Friedman test showed that the ranking evaluations of each candidate résumé were different, χ 2 (3) = 88.51, p < 0.001, see **Table 2** for mean ranks. Wilcoxon signed rank tests provided support for our hypotheses. Specifically, male candidates with leadership potential were ranked higher than male candidates with leadership performance, Z = −6.36, p < 0.001

TABLE 1 | Means and standard errors by candidate gender, participant gender, and leadership characteristic for candidate hiring and expected success (Experiment 1).

TABLE 2 | Mean rank for each candidate for résumé evaluation and future performance (Experiment 1).

(Hypothesis 3). In contrast, female candidates with leadership performance were ranked higher than female candidates with leadership potential, Z = −4.70, p < 0.001 (Hypothesis 4). Furthermore, male candidates with leadership potential were ranked higher than female candidates with leadership potential, Z = −6.27, p < 0.001 (Hypothesis 5). Moreover, female candidates with leadership performance were ranked higher than male candidates with leadership performance, Z = −5.92, p < 0.001. In brief, in support of our hypotheses, male candidates with leadership potential were ranked as more impressive than male candidates with leadership performance. In contrast, female candidates with leadership performance were ranked as more impressive than female candidates with leadership potential.3

#### Future Performance

A Friedman test showed that the rankings reflecting expectations of each candidate's future performance were different, χ 2 (3) = 78.59, p < 0.001, see **Table 2** for mean ranks. Wilcoxon signed rank tests revealed that male candidates with leadership potential were ranked higher than those candidates with leadership performance, Z = −6.12, p < 0.001 (Hypothesis 3). In contrast, female candidates with leadership performance were ranked higher than those with leadership potential, Z = −4.65, p < 0.001 (Hypothesis 4). Furthermore, male candidates with leadership potential were ranked higher than female candidates with leadership potential, Z = −6.00, p < 0.001 (Hypothesis 5). Finally, female candidates with leadership performance were ranked higher than male candidates with leadership performance, Z = −5.93, p < 0.001. In brief, results supported our hypotheses, with male candidates with leadership potential ranked more highly than those with leadership performance, but that this would not be the case for female candidates. Indeed, female candidates with leadership performance were ranked higher than female candidates with leadership potential.

## Discussion

Experiment 1 provides the first experimental evidence that female and male candidates' leadership potential and leadership performance are evaluated differently. We did not find evidence for Hypothesis 1, an overall preference for potential. In line with an overlooked potential pattern, we found that participants expected male candidates with leadership potential to be more successful than male candidates with leadership performance (Hypothesis 3), although this was not the case for the candidate hiring measure. When participants ranked female candidates, they preferred leadership performance over leadership potential consistently across measures (support for Hypothesis 4). Interestingly, when participants were asked to rank candidates in evaluation of résumés and on future performance, female candidates' leadership performance was preferred over that of male candidates. This type of ranking decision closely matches actual hiring processes, where final choices rely on rule-based selection criteria (e.g., ranking based on résumé evaluation).

We did not hypothesize effects of participant gender, but exploratory analysis revealed some differences. Specifically, a three-way interaction on candidates' expected success showed that the two-way interaction was only significant among female participants. When judging candidates' expected success, female participants rated female candidates with leadership performance as likely to be more successful than male candidates with leadership performance. Female participants also expected male candidates with leadership potential to be more successful than male candidates with leadership performance.

In this study, female candidates were rated as more hirable than male candidates. This unexpected finding is in line with a recent meta-analysis which showed that women are rated more effective than men in senior levels (Paustian-Underdahl et al., 2014). The stimulus materials presented to participants in Experiment 1 did not specify the level of leadership being recruited for. The information implied that the role was a relatively junior leadership position. This scenario had reasonable face validity because many fast-track programs are specifically designed to develop the potential of emerging talent (Singh et al., 2009; Thomas, 2009; Dries and Pepermans, 2012; Guan et al., 2014). Moreover, the principal motivation behind identifying leadership potential is to generate a pipeline of future leaders, which has major benefits (e.g., Williams-Lee, 2008; Poehlman and Newman, 2014). Nonetheless, the use of leadership potential as a selection criterion may be more common in the case of explicitly senior positions because many of the assessment tools used for selecting senior executives are related closely to those used to gauge high potential (Grabner and Moers, 2013). In Experiment 2, as well as retesting the overlooked potential effect, we therefore modified materials to highlight that the candidates were being considered for senior leadership positions. We also bolstered the measurement of the evaluation of expected success by using a more reliable multi-item measure. We also recruited a larger sample of participants. Finally, to provide a more direct test of Hypotheses 3−5, we asked participants to explicitly rank whom they would hire for the job.

# EXPERIMENT 2

# Materials and Methods Participants and Design

Participants (N = 199; 126 females, 73 male Mage = 35.02, 78.4% in full or part-time employment) were recruited via

3Given the ranking nature of the data we were not able to test for interactions with participant gender. However, we conducted Friedman tests, and Wilcoxon signed rank tests, separately for female and male participants for the measures of evaluation of résumé and future performance. The pattern of results was identical for each participant gender group. Please refer to **Supplemental Materials** for the results of these exploratory analyses.

an international online database, Amazon MTurk. The quasi experiment was a Leadership Characteristic × Candidate Gender × Participant Gender mixed design, with leadership characteristic and candidate gender as within-participant factors. All participants were exposed to a total of four résumés manipulating leadership characteristic (leadership potential and leadership performance) and candidate gender (male and female). To ensure consistency in other relevant résumé information, participants randomly received counterbalanced combinations of additional background information for each candidate.

#### Procedure and Materials

fpsyg-10-00755 April 12, 2019 Time: 17:39 # 7

Individuals were invited, via an online platform, Qualtrics, to take part in a study on organizational decision-making. The experiment consisted of two phases. Participants were presented with an imitation Business News article describing the announcement of the retirement, and subsequent search for replacement, of the Director of Financial Affairs of a fictitious company, Tell Inc. The article provided background information about the organization, and a brief description that described Tell Inc.'s role as a growing and successful telecommunications company:

"In an open letter to Tell Inc. employees the CEO, Robin Metcalfe, announced the resignation of the company's Vice President of Financial Affairs, Alex Hepburn, adding 'Alex has been a great asset to this company having immeasurably contributed to our progress over recent years.'

Tell Inc. is a highly successful United States based telecommunications company, consistently performing well on the global markets, with particular growth and expansion in Eastern Europe and China over the last year. Tell Inc. is well known for its dynamic and innovative approach to communication technology, having developed some of the most well-known products on the market today.

This is a very important role for Tell Inc. to fill and there will be significant interest in the technology community about who will be appointed and which direction they will look to take the company in.

CEO Robin Metcalfe, said that they are looking to find 'the best possible candidate to help lead and shape the bright future of Tell Inc.

All eyes are on the CEO and Board of Directors to see who they choose."

Next, participants were presented each résumé (male leadership potential, female leadership potential, male leadership performance, female leadership performance). The background information and leadership scores (future leadership potential and previous leadership achievement) were the same as shown in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, the résumés were made relevant to the hiring of a more senior candidate by changing candidates' previous work experience to include at least one well known tech or communications company and by providing reviews from other people (previous employer and Tell Inc. CEO) and selfdescriptions by the candidate. These comments reinforced either the candidates' future leadership potential or previous leadership performance. The following examples show quotes from a CEO about a female candidate with leadership performance and about a male candidate with leadership potential, respectively:

"Christine is clearly a candidate who has performed very highly throughout her career. She has shown from her past achievements and accomplishments that she is highly capable of performing to the highest standard. Christine is certainly at the top of her group in her professional achievements."

"Rupert is clearly a candidate who has shown excellent potential throughout his career. You can see from his budding talent and promise that he is highly capable of being one of the best in his field. Rupert is absolutely at the top of his vocation in terms of his professional potential."

Participants then completed the evaluative rating measures (candidate hiring, expected success), immediately after reviewing each candidate. Next, all four résumés were presented simultaneously, so that participants could refresh their memory, and to minimize availability bias toward the most recently reviewed résumé. Participants then completed the dependent measures.

# Measures

#### Candidate Hiring

Candidate hiring was measured using two items (α = 0.85): "I would hire this candidate" and "this candidate would be a good appointment." Items were measured on a rating scale and ranged from 1 (strongly disagree) to 9 (strongly agree).

#### Expected Success

Expected success was measured using six items to examine career and job success on a rating scale, from 1 (strongly disagree) to 9 (strongly agree) (α = 0.94; adapted from Ironson et al., 1989; Kossek et al., 2001). Items included: "How successful do you think each applicant will be in their career?"; "How successful do you think each applicant will be in their career, compared to other people?"; and "How successful do you think each applicant will be in their career, compared to the applicants' significant others?"

#### Résumé Evaluation

Résumé evaluation was indicated by a choice of candidates, participants were asked "in your opinion, which applicant has the most impressive résumé?"(first, second, third, fourth), with first the most impressive.4

#### Future Performance

Future performance was assessed with the rank of candidates in response to the question "which candidate do you think will perform better by the fifth year?" (first, second, third, fourth), with first most likely to perform best.

4 Similar to Experiment 1, we also asked participants to compare résumés based on the following item "at present, which applicant had a more objectively impressive résumé?" Results were the same for this measure, and given that the items are very similar and ranking data cannot be aggregated into an average score, we opted to report the results for the first measure. Results for the second item are available from the corresponding author on request.

#### Player et al. Leadership Potential: Gender and Selection

#### Hire Choice

fpsyg-10-00755 April 12, 2019 Time: 17:39 # 8

Hire choice was measured by participants rank choice of "which applicant would you hire?," first to fourth, with first the choice of hire.

# Results

A Leadership Characteristic (leadership potential and leadership performance) × Candidate Gender (female and male) × Participant Gender (female and male) mixed ANOVA was used to analyze the measures of candidate hiring and expected success. As in Experiment 1, we hypothesized that participants would be more likely to hire candidates with leadership potential and would expect those candidates to be more successful than candidates with leadership performance (Hypothesis 1). Furthermore, we anticipated that these effects should be stronger for male candidates (Hypothesis 2). We did not hypothesize participant gender effects but included this factor as exploratory.

Friedman tests and Wilcoxon Signed Ranks tests were used to analyze whether there were differences in the choice-based rankings reflecting evaluations of each candidate's résumé, future performance, and hire choice. Specifically, we expected participants to rank the male candidate with leadership potential higher the than male candidate with leadership performance on the evaluation of their résumés, future performance, and hire choice (Hypothesis 3). We predicted the opposite pattern for female candidates (Hypothesis 4). Finally, we expected participants to rank the male candidate with leadership potential higher than the female candidate with leadership potential in all ranking measures (Hypothesis 5).

#### Candidate Hiring

There was a significant effect of leadership characteristic, F(1,197) = 15.05, p < 0.001, η 2 = 0.07. Participants rated candidates who exhibited leadership performance on their résumé more favorably than candidates who displayed leadership potential (see **Table 3**). This does not support Hypothesis 1. There was a near significant effect of participant gender, F(1,197) = 3.80, p = 0.053, η 2 = 0.02. **Table 3** shows that female participants rated candidates more highly than male participants. Contrary to Hypothesis 2, the Leadership Characteristic × Candidate Gender interaction was not significant, F(1,197) = 3.14, p = 0.078, η 2 = 0.02. All remaining effects were not significant (see **Table 4**).

#### Expected Success

There was a significant effect of leadership characteristic, F(1,197) = 17.72, p < 0.001, η 2 = 0.08. Candidates with leadership performance were rated as more likely to be successful than those with leadership potential (**Table 3**); this does not support Hypothesis 1. All other main effects and two-way interactions were not significant (see **Table 4**).

There was a near significant Leadership Characteristic × Candidate Gender × Participant Gender interaction, F(1,197) = 3.79, p = 0.053, η 2 = 0.02. We decomposed the three-way interaction by participant gender. Simple interaction effects showed that the Leadership Characteristic × Candidate Gender interaction was only significant for female participants, F(1,197) = 6.08, p = 0.015, η 2 = 0.03, and not for male participants, F(1,197) = 0.32, p = 0.571, η 2 = 0.002. Second order simple effects show that female participants expected the female candidate with leadership performance to be more successful than the female candidate with leadership potential, F(1,197) = 12.15, p = 0.001, η 2 = 0.06. In addition, **Table 3** shows that the female participants expected the male candidate with leadership potential to be more successful than the female candidate with leadership potential, F(1,197) = 9.12, p = 0.003, η 2 = 0.04. Female participants did not differentiate significantly between the male candidates

TABLE 3 | Means and standard errors by candidate gender, participant gender, and leadership characteristic for candidate hiring and expected success (Experiment 2).

TABLE 5 | Mean rank for each candidate for résumé evaluation, future performance, and hire choice (Experiment 2).

based on leadership characteristic, F(1,197) = 0.04, p = 0.842, η 2 < 0.001, or between male and female candidates with leadership performance, F(1,197) = 0.15, p = 0.703, η 2 = 0.001.

#### Résumé Evaluation

A Friedman test showed that the rankings of the résumés differed, χ 2 (3) = 185.25, p < 0.001. Wilcoxon signed rank tests supported our hypotheses, and **Table 5** shows the mean rank per candidate. Male candidates with leadership potential were ranked more highly than male candidates with leadership performance, Z = −9.79, p < 0.001 (Hypothesis 3). In contrast, female candidates with leadership performance were ranked more highly than female candidates with leadership potential, Z = −6.19, p < 0.001 (Hypothesis 4). Furthermore, male candidates with leadership potential were ranked more highly than female candidates with leadership potential, Z = −9.76, p < 0.001 (Hypothesis 5). Finally, female candidates with leadership performance were ranked more highly than male candidates with leadership performance, Z = −7.61, p < 0.001.5

#### Future Performance

A Friedman test showed that the four candidates' future performances were ranked differently, χ 2 (3) = 133.85, p < 0.001. Wilcoxon signed rank tests supported our hypotheses, and **Table 5** shows the mean rank per candidate. The future performance of male candidates with leadership potential was ranked more highly than that of male candidates with leadership performance, Z = −8.71, p < 0.001 (Hypothesis 3). In contrast, the future performance of female candidates with leadership performance was ranked more highly than that of female candidates with leadership potential, Z = −3.80, p < 0.001 (Hypothesis 4). Furthermore, male candidates with leadership potential were ranked more highly than female candidates with leadership potential, Z = −7.65, p < 0.001 (Hypothesis 5). Finally, female candidates with leadership performance were ranked more highly than male candidates with leadership performance, Z = −8.05, p < 0.001.

#### Hire Choice

A Friedman test showed that hiring preference differed among the four candidates, χ 2 (3) = 164.84, p < 0.001. Wilcoxon signed rank tests supported our hypotheses, and **Table 5** shows the mean rank per candidate. Specifically, male candidates with leadership potential were more likely to be the hire than those with leadership performance Z = −9.56, p < 0.001 (Hypothesis 3). In contrast, female candidates with leadership performance were more likely to be the hire than those with leadership potential, Z = −4.36, p < 0.001 (Hypothesis 4). Furthermore, male candidates with leadership potential were more likely to be the hire than female candidates with leadership potential, Z = −8.44, p < 0.001 (Hypothesis 5). Finally, female candidates with leadership performance were more likely to be the hire than male candidates with leadership performance, Z = −8.42, p < 0.001.

# Discussion

Experiment 2 provides evidence that candidates' gender moderates evaluations of their leadership characteristics. Consistent findings across the ranking measures provide clear evidence regarding the overlooked potential effect. We found that when participants ranked male candidates there was a preference for potential (Hypothesis 3), whereas leadership potential was overlooked when they ranked female candidates (Hypotheses 4 and 5). Indeed, consistent with Experiment 1, when participants judged female candidates, leadership performance was preferred over leadership potential. Moreover, the finding that leadership potential led to an upgrading of (otherwise equivalent) male candidates relative to female candidates, and that leadership performance led to a downgrading of male relative to female candidates seems highly consistent with the interpretation that gender role expectations moderated judgments of the candidates.

In our exploratory analysis we also found some evidence that participant gender affected these judgments. Specifically,

5 Similarly to Experiment 1, we conducted Friedman tests and Wilcoxon signed rank tests separately for female and male participants for all ranking measures. The pattern of results was identical for each participant gender group, with two exceptions. Specifically, for the measure of future performance and hire choice, male participants ranked the female candidate with leadership potential similarly

to the female candidate with leadership performance. However, as hypothesized, both female and male participants ranked the male candidate with leadership potential higher than the male candidate with leadership performance. Please refer to **Supplemental Materials** for the results of these exploratory analyses.

an interaction between candidate gender and leadership characteristic on expectations about candidates' success was significant among female participants but not male participants. Female participants rated the male candidate with leadership potential higher than the female candidate with leadership potential. Additionally, female participants expected the female candidate with leadership performance to be more successful than the female candidate with leadership potential.

# GENERAL DISCUSSION

fpsyg-10-00755 April 12, 2019 Time: 17:39 # 10

Our findings provide several new empirical and theoretical contributions. Overall, these studies provide the first experimental evidence that a candidate's gender can affect evaluators' assessment of the value of their leadership potential and leadership performance. In both experiments, consistent with our Hypotheses 3, 4, and 5, leadership potential was preferred when participants ranked male candidates, whereas potential was overlooked when participants ranked female candidates. Male candidates that demonstrated higher potential were perceived to have a more impressive résumé and were expected to perform better in the future than male candidates who demonstrated higher performance. In contrast, female candidates who demonstrated higher performance were perceived to have a more impressive résumé and were expected to perform better than female candidates who demonstrated higher potential. If these findings were extrapolated to real hiring situations, they would mean that whilst women's past performance would have to at least as good as men's, women would be held to higher standards in selection processes because their leadership potential would be less likely to be recognized than men's. The findings emerged most clearly when participants ranked rather than rated candidates. The ranking data are likely to have higher ecological validity given that most recruitment procedures conclude with a ranking process in order to decide which candidate to hire.

Why might men with future leadership potential have a distinctive advantage? One explanation can be drawn from role incongruity theory which highlights that people have a powerful implicit association between leadership and agentic traits (Eagly and Karau, 2002; Heilman and Eagly, 2008). Female candidates who foreground their leadership potential may challenge people's expectations about how women in leadership positions should behave, thereby highlighting role incongruence. Therefore, they may be subjected to greater discrimination than women who primarily emphasize their past leadership performance. The current data do not allow us to test this possibility directly, and further work will be needed to explore this further.

We explored the impact of gender on preference for leadership potential and/or leadership performance. On candidate choice rankings an unexpected but consistent finding was that participants prioritized female's leadership performance over that of male candidates. It could be that women are implicitly required to show greater evidence of competence to overcome stereotypically negative performance expectations, particularly in male gender-typed job domains (Lyness and Heilman, 2006). Therefore, women are more likely to have to demonstrate a successful background in order to show congruence between their skills and the leadership position, and to overcome rolecongruity bias (Koch et al., 2015).

Despite generally consistent findings, a few inconsistencies merit discussion. These may reflect that the two studies assessed judgments relating to different levels of seniority (higher in Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, but not in Experiment 2, participants perceived female candidates to be a better hire overall. This unexpected result might have been driven by participants' reactions to encountering counterstereotypical high-performing women, an advantage that may be worth exploring in case it is limited to judgments about junior leadership roles.

There was also some evidence of gender ingroup bias in both experiments but it was not ubiquitous. Although ingroup bias is a robust social psychological phenomenon (Hewstone et al., 2002), particularly amongst members of more dominant and socially valued groups (Rudman et al., 2002), gender is sometimes an exception to this pattern. This exception is because the more dominant group (i.e., men) are less likely to show direct ingroup bias (Rudman and Goodwin, 2004) perhaps owing to more subtle forms of prejudice (Glick and Fiske, 2001). In Experiment 1, female participants showed ingroup bias in their evaluations of the candidates. In Experiment 2, only female participants demonstrated differences in evaluations of expected success for female candidates based on their potential or performance. This finding suggests further nuanced differences between leadership potential and leadership performance which are likely intrinsically linked to perceptions of gender and leadership. These difference warrant further attention in follow-up research, as they suggest that the demonstration of leadership potential (vs. performance) could also be based in gender role expectations, like ambition.

Going beyond previous research, these studies demonstrated that when faced with a choice, judges consistently ranked male candidates with leadership potential over their female counterparts. Our ranking findings are of particular significance as they mirror the majority of selection and recruitment decisions, whereby only one candidate can be offered the job. Moreover, processes that identify and fast-track leadership potential are already in place in many organizations (e.g., McDonnell et al., 2010). Understanding how gender might influence the perception, promotion, and development of leadership potential over time and career is vital in promoting equality. This research illustrates, for the first time, a subtle but powerful way in which women are discriminated against in the workplace as a direct result of their gender.

# Limitations and Future Directions

We have provided evidence that leadership potential and leadership performance can yield different hiring and evaluation outcomes for men and women. Various limitations need to

be considered before making strong conclusions. First, the extant literature lacks a well-developed empirical foundation for the theoretical distinction between leadership potential and leadership performance. We therefore relied on a general definition of leadership potential, which might not fully encompass the entire array of traits linked to leadership potential or their relationship with leadership performance. We chose to focus distinctly on either past performance or future potential to avoid confusion. We gave the manipulations context and reinforcement in Experiment 2 by providing a richer view of the candidate (e.g., using assessments from previous and prospective employers). Overall, even if a more comprehensive basis for the distinction could improve the design of descriptions in vignettes, the results do show that participants responded differently to the leadership potential and leadership performance depictions of candidates.

We used a crowdsourcing platform which had the advantage of using a real-world sample of employed people across a range of occupations. Nonetheless, it is possible that this approach also introduced more unexplained variability in the sample (e.g., variability in organizational culture) than might be attained with a more homogenous sample (e.g., based in a single organization). Future research could investigate the generality of the overlooked potential effect in single organizational contexts, or compare different organizational contexts that are more typically male- or female-dominated. Moreover, it is conceivable that differences amongst participants' own occupancy of leadership positions, may have influenced their responses. Future research should investigate potential moderating effects of participant leadership experience. A further way to pursue future studies would be to test the effect using samples of hiring managers and members of promotion panels.

Additional directions for research include investigating boundary conditions for the effect such as different leadership goals (e.g., more task-oriented or socio-emotional), or culture. For example, high potential women are regarded as having higher diversity value (Leslie et al., 2017). It would be interesting to test the overlooked potential effect in contexts where diversity goals are salient or not. Using diversity as a boundary condition could also open potential avenues to future interventions.

The degree of role incongruity could also be pursued as a moderating factor. A further subtlety may be that the linguistic framing of the role positions may affect whether or not potential is overlooked. For example, Horvath and Sczesny (2015) found that female and male candidates for a high status leadership position were perceived as fitting equally well to the job when the job advert used feminine-masculine word pairs (instead of solely masculine forms). Linguistic framing might also be relevant for the overlooked potential effect.

Real hiring decisions are based on choices, which our ranking measures simulated. However, the decision to use ranking measures imposed limits to our capacity to investigate moderation effects. Moreover, hiring decisions are often based not only on résumé evaluations but also subsequent rounds of interviews. The present research only speaks to the first stage of this selection process. It may be that these interviews either ameliorate or exacerbate the overlooked potential effect, which also warrants investigation in future research.

# CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS

The present research has practical implications for organizations, and possibly even beyond. For example, if preference for leadership potential in men is a generic phenomenon, it may well confer unfair advantages well beyond commercial and business contexts (e.g., in education, politics, journalism, the legal system). For any organization, ensuring that hiring processes are fair and offer equal opportunities is fundamental for attaining gender equity in leadership positions. Given that employers typically regard leadership potential as a desirable trait (Church, 2014), raising awareness that potential is likely to be undervalued when people judge women may offer a method to improve diversity and equality in leadership. Previous evidence has found that there can be a preference for leadership potential (Tormala et al., 2012), our research highlights that this may be an advantage from which men alone benefit. Our research suggests that women's prospects seem to rest more exclusively on their demonstration of leadership performance over potential. Potential implies that an individual has the quality to perform in wider or different roles in the organization at a later stage (Silzer and Church, 2009). If higher potential among women is not recognized, women may find they are trapped in particular silos (such as administration or human resources), and are at a disadvantage when it comes to more overarching roles and positions. By not fully recognizing leadership potential in female candidates, organizations are inhibiting the prospects of half of their talent. This inhibition ironically means organizations may be less likely to achieve their own full potential.

# ETHICS STATEMENT

All experiments were carried out in accordance with the recommendations of the School of Psychology Ethics Committee at the University of Kent, United Kingdom. The protocol was approved by the School of Psychology Ethics process. All participants gave written informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. The research was conducted in accordance with guidelines from the University of Kent Research Ethics (Human Participants) Committee, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Research Ethics Framework, and the ethical guidelines from the British Psychology Society (BPS).

# AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS

AP and GR conceived of the presented idea and took the joint lead in writing the manuscript. AL, DA, and FT contributed in theory development. AL and DA bolstered analytical methods.

GR and DA encouraged AP to pursue the application of leadership potential and gender to leadership selection and supervised the findings of this research. DA worked on revisions for the final version. All authors provided critical feedback and helped to shape the overall research.

# FUNDING

This work was supported by a grant awarded to GR by the United Kingdom Higher Education Academy (Grant No. HEA-DP057), and by a grant awarded to FT by the United Kingdom Economic and Social Research Council (Grant No. ES/J500148/1).

# REFERENCES

# ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank the colleagues and students in "Grouplab" the Centre for the Study of Group Processes laboratory group, for discussion of ideas, feedback, and comments. Special thanks to Andre Marques and Lazaros Gonidis for their support with statistical analyses.

# SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg. 2019.00755/full#supplementary-material

M. K. Ryan, and M. T. Schmitt (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association), 21–47. doi: 10.1037/11863-002

**Conflict of Interest Statement:** The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Copyright © 2019 Player, Randsley de Moura, Leite, Abrams and Tresh. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

# APPENDIX: MANIPULATIONS EXPERIMENT 1

• The Leadership Achievement Inventory (LAI) gauges leadership achievement, defined as an individual's observed (i.e., actual) leadership performance at the current stage in his or her career. An achievement score of 96 places this applicant in the top 4% of people who have been assessed. • The Assessment of Leadership Potential (ALP) gauges leadership potential, defined as the employee's predicted leadership performance in the near future. A score of 83 indicates that this applicant predicted future leadership performance is estimated to be in the top 17% of people who have been assessed.

# Women Who Emerge as Leaders in Temporarily Assigned Work Groups: Attractive and Socially Competent but Not Babyfaced or Naïve?

#### Freya M. Gruber, Carina Veidt and Tuulia M. Ortner\*

Department of Psychology, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria

#### Edited by:

Alice H. Eagly, Northwestern University, United States

#### Reviewed by:

Leslie Zebrowitz, Brandeis University, United States Minna Paunova, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark

> \*Correspondence: Tuulia M. Ortner<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
#### Specialty section:

This article was submitted to Personality and Social Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology

Received: 18 May 2018 Accepted: 28 November 2018 Published: 19 December 2018

#### Citation:

Gruber FM, Veidt C and Ortner TM (2018) Women Who Emerge as Leaders in Temporarily Assigned Work Groups: Attractive and Socially Competent but Not Babyfaced or Naïve? Front. Psychol. 9:2553. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02553 The underrepresentation of women in top positions has been in the spotlight of research for decades. Prejudice toward female leaders, which decreases women's chances of emerging as leaders, has been discussed as a potential reason. Aiming to investigate the underlying mechanisms of this prejudice, we focused on the question of how facial characteristics might influence women's leadership emergence. Because other research has related ascribed social competence and ascribed naïveté to attractiveness and babyfacedness, respectively, we hypothesized that ascribed social competence would mediate the impact of ascribed attractiveness on leadership emergence and that ascribed naïveté would mediate the impact of ascribed babyfacedness on leadership emergence. In a pilot study, we analyzed data from 101 participants of a women's leadership contest held in 2015 in Germany. We then confirmed these results in a methodologically improved main study on other women who participated in the contest in one of two other years: 2016 and 2017 (N = 195). Women applied to participate in the contest by recording their answers to several questions in a video interview. In the contest, they were assigned to teams of about ten women each and worked on several assessment-center-like tasks. After each task, each member of each team nominated the three women they believed showed the best leadership potential in their group. We operationalized women's leadership emergence as the number of nominations received. We measured participants' facial attractiveness, babyfacedness, social competence, and naïveté by having raters follow a specifically developed rating manual to rate the answers the women gave in the video interviews. In both studies, the results indicated that women with higher ascribed facial attractiveness had higher ascribed social competence, which significantly predicted leadership emergence in the contest. Likewise, women with higher ascribed babyfacedness had higher ascribed naïveté, which significantly, albeit only slightly, negatively predicted leadership emergence. We discuss the implications of the results for personnel selection.

Keywords: leadership emergence, babyfacedness, attractiveness, social competence, naïveté

# INTRODUCTION

fpsyg-09-02553 December 17, 2018 Time: 17:18 # 2

In modern Western societies, sex-related barriers to occupational success still exist and are reflected in economic data. Women hold only 28% of the CEO positions in the United States (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2017) and 16% of the 1,500 board seats of the S&P (Ernst and Young LLP, 2015). Women occupy fewer top executive positions than men in the European Union (Bourgeais, 2017) and fewer full professorships worldwide (Johnson, 2017). Because a lack of qualified women can no longer explain these circumstances (European Commission, 2012; Johnson, 2017), it is important to ask why women rarely hold these top leadership positions. One possible explanation for this inequity can be found in differences in leadership emergence. Taggar et al. (1999) defined leadership emergence as the process by which one team member becomes the leader of an initially leaderless group without holding the position by title or by being previously assigned to it. According to Paunova (2015), one or more leaders may emerge within a group when they are perceived and acknowledged as a leader, for instance, due to the positive effect of their leader behavior on the group during a task (Bass and Bass, 2008). Systematic gender differences in leadership emergence may create obstacles for women because being perceived as not able to emerge as a leader may prevent them from being hired or promoted (e.g., Eagly and Karau, 1991, 2002; Finkelstein et al., 2018). Therefore, it is important to further investigate and understand the underlying mechanisms that can help women emerge as leaders or prevent them from doing so.

Scientists have formulated several theories to explain differences in perceptions of the leadership potential of women and men and differences in their leadership emergence: As a basic principle, social role theory (Eagly, 1987) suggests that differences in the behavior of women and men and also differences in how women and men are perceived in a society stem primarily from the different distributions of men's and women's social roles. In this theory, different roles occupied by men and women have an impact on sex-related stereotypes and ascribed aspects of personality because people tend to make inferences from these roles to associated characteristics. In fact, various studies of different fields have demonstrated relations between social roles and the ascribed characteristics of people (e.g., Diekman and Schneider, 2010; Ortner et al., 2011; Koenig and Eagly, 2014). Following this reasoning, Eagly and Karau (2002) formulated role congruity theory to further explain women's greater difficulties in reaching leadership positions. According to this theory, individuals receive positive evaluations by others when their characteristics are estimated as confirming the group's typical social roles (Eagly and Diekman, 2005). In fact, "many people perceive [incongruity] between the characteristics of women and the requirements of leader roles" (Eagly and Karau, 2002, p. 574). This perceived incompatibility between stereotypes of a social group and the requirements for fulfilling a specific role is supposed to result in prejudice, backlash effects (Rudman, 1998), and low evaluations of women as actual or potential leaders (see Eagly and Karau, 2002).

Another related, albeit more general theory that has contributed to explaining inequities in society on the basis of social group processes is the expectation states theory (Wagner and Berger, 1997; Weyer, 2007). This theory addresses small, task-oriented work groups and highlights the relevance of status characteristics (e.g., gender, age, ethnicity) but also physical attributes for the ascription of task-relevant characteristics. Carli and Eagly (2001) employed this approach to explain differences in the leadership emergence of men and women, proposing that there are biases in evaluations of female leaders. Ridgeway (2001) described this approach as applying expectation states theory in a new context. Accordingly, gender roles are enrooted in the social hierarchy and in leadership because the core of gender stereotypes are cross-cultural schemas about women's status positions, also called status beliefs. These status beliefs have been proposed to be a basic reason for lower leadership emergence in women than in men because men, rather than women, are associated with general competence and status worthiness. However, a recent analysis integrating 16 different opinion polls revealed an increase for women's ascribed competence over the past years and concluded gender equality in ascribed competence for women and men in the United States (see Eagly et al., 2018).

Nevertheless, several studies have provided empirical support for the validity of these theoretical frameworks in explaining differences in the performances of women and men with reference to leadership: For example, Garcia-Retamero and López-Zafra (2006) conducted an experiment to test how prejudice against female leaders in different work environments stems from people's expectations. To do so, they asked non-leader participants to rate vignettes of hypothetical candidates for a leadership position. The data indicated prejudice against women except when the woman worked "in an industry congruent with her gender role" (p. 58). Further results indicated effects of social attribution by illustrating that incongruence between masculine task demands and the female gender role reduced leadership emergence even in dominant women (see Ritter and Yoder, 2004).

A more complex and new model combining aspects of personality traits with behavioral mechanisms was recently proposed along with a meta-analysis on leadership emergence: Badura et al. (2018) addressed the question of why men more frequently emerge as leaders than women. For this purpose, the authors proposed gender, individual characteristics, behavioral aspects, as well as situational factors as determinants of the relation between gender and leadership emergence. In order to test their gender-agency/communion-participation (GAP) model, they coded 1,632 effect sizes. Results indicated a beneficial effect of people's gender on leadership emergence through agency (e.g., assertiveness and dominance), but a detrimental effect through communion (e.g., kindness and nurturance). Furthermore, the relations between these traits and leadership emergence were mediated through participative behavior in group discussions. Moreover, they hypothesized that gender differences in leadership emergence depended on situational factors such as the study's setting (business settings, lab settings, classroom settings), gender egalitarianism in the nation where the data were collected, the length of interaction, and the degree of social complexity of the task. Their results indicated that the gender gap in leadership emergence was significantly

lower in business settings compared with lab settings and significantly larger when the interaction time in the task was shorter.

Besides the influence of agency, communion, and behavioral aspects, physical appearance may also contribute to leadership emergence. Much research has revealed that a person's physical appearance is a relevant characteristic in various areas of life, for example, partner selection (Langlois et al., 2000; for a review, see Rhodes, 2006), political elections (Olivola and Todorov, 2010), judicial decisions (Efran, 1974; Zebrowitz and McDonald, 1991), decisions regarding personnel selection (Zebrowitz et al., 1991; Shannon and Stark, 2003), and also ascribed leadership competences (Sczesny and Kühnen, 2004) or leadership selection processes (Stoker et al., 2016). Attractiveness represents one of the most salient aspects of physical appearance and, therefore, affects the ways in which individuals perceive and evaluate others (Little et al., 2011). Several theoretical explanations have also been proposed to account for the relevance of physical attractiveness in the field of leadership: Implicit personality theory by Bruner and Tagiuri (1954) postulated that people unconsciously build hypothetical constructs of trait elements and inferential relations between these attributes when assessing other people (see Schneider, 1973). On the basis of their meta-analysis of 76 studies, Eagly et al. (1991) identified the association between "beauty" and "goodness" as a physical attractiveness stereotype. They reported a significantly higher attribution of favorable characteristics to attractive individuals in comparison with unattractive individuals. Highly relevant for the domain of leadership emergence, individuals rated as attractive received higher evaluations with reference to social competence, adjustment, potency, and intellectual competence. This finding is in line with a study that reported findings that individuals perceived targets whose faces they had rated as attractive with respect to facial symmetry and proportions as more successful, satisfied, and likable than people whose faces they had rated as unattractive (Braun et al., 2001). In fact, studies have revealed positive effects of ascribed attractiveness on life and business outcomes such as career success and management level (Dietl, 2013), income (Judge et al., 2009), and also ascribed leadership status (Cherulnik et al., 1990). According to Cherulnik (1995), the positive impact of facial attractiveness on leader emergence even accumulates over a lifetime because others' attributions create a favorable distinctive social environment that provides special experiences and opportunities. Individuals judged as attractive were also found to be more confident in their social skills than individuals judged as unattractive (Cherulnik, 1995). Moreover, Sobieraj and Krämer (2014) demonstrated a strong relation between ascribed social competence and ascribed physical attractiveness in a study with experimentally varied virtual avatars. On the basis of these findings, we hypothesized that ascribed facial attractiveness would positively predict leadership emergence (Hypothesis 1). Moreover, we hypothesized that social competence would positively mediate the impact of facial attractiveness on leadership emergence (Hypothesis 2) because social competence represents a determinant of leadership skills (Riggio et al., 2003; Groves, 2005; Riggio and Reichard, 2008).

However, not only facial attractiveness affects the ways in which individuals perceive and describe others. The anatomy literature indicates sex differences in facial features (e.g., Enlow, 1982; Gray and Standring, 2008) with female faces having more in common with infantile, babyface-like facets compared with male faces (Guthrie, 1976).  In an evolutionary approach, Perrett et al. (1998) attributed the preference of humans for feminine facial features to the correlations of estrogen-dependent traits with aspects of health and reproductive fitness. Nevertheless, the costs of this form of attractiveness were addressed by investigating whether the more babyish faces of women compared with men further contribute to the attribution of sex-related characteristics and stereotypes. Presenting equally mature-faced male and female faces weakened stereotyped ascriptions and led to the conclusion that women's average facial features promote ascriptions of stereotyped characteristics (Friedman and Zebrowitz, 1992).

In line with these findings, Eagly and Karau's (2002) role congruity theory provides a framework that can be applied to formulate hypotheses on the effects of babyfacedness on leadership emergence: Whereas the leader role is predominantly characterized by agentic traits, such as being competitive, selfconfident, aggressive, objective, and ambitious (see Koenig et al., 2011), people possessing a babyfaced physiognomy were described as less physically strong, less socially dominant, less astute (Zebrowitz McArthur and Apatow, 1983/1984), more naïve, and weaker compared with people possessing more mature faces (Keating et al., 2003; for a review, see Montepare and Zebrowitz, 1998). According to these findings, possessing a babyface is inconsistent with the characteristics required by a leadership role. A growing number of studies focusing on babyfacedness have supported this assumption: For instance, studies have indicated a negative relation between babyfacedness and inferred competence among politicians (Poutvaara et al., 2009), and a negative relation between babyfacedness and leadership status in a high school senior class (Cherulnik et al., 1990). Furthermore, Cherulnik (1995) found in an experiment that facial maturity was a significant predictor of leadership emergence. Investigations of hiring preferences have revealed similar findings (Zebrowitz et al., 1991): Undergraduate participants preferred male and mature-faced applicant targets for leadership positions over female and babyfaced applicants, especially for higher-status positions.

It seems plausible that a person with a high level of ascribed naïveté (defined as a collective term that summarizes how naïve, inexperienced, credulous, and generally intelligent an individual is perceived to be) due to his or her facial appearance would find it difficult to meet leader role expectations. Women may be particularly inclined to suffer from this misperception because they are more likely to encounter prejudice due to role incongruence in the first place (Eagly and Karau, 2002). In addition, women are more likely to be judged as babyfaced (Friedman and Zebrowitz, 1992; Chiao et al., 2008; Olivola and Todorov, 2010). In the second part of this study, we therefore

hypothesized that ascribed babyfacedness would negatively predict leadership emergence (Hypothesis 3). Moreover and analogous to Hypothesis 2, we investigated whether these babyface-specific attributions could explain this negative association: Therefore, we hypothesized that ascribed naïveté would negatively mediate the impact of ascribed babyfacedness on leadership emergence (Hypothesis 4).

To summarize the aims of the present study, we intended to investigate the impact of facial characteristics on women's chances of emerging as a leader, and further, whether the ascription of other attributes that are based on facial characteristics would mediate this effect in the setting of a women's leadership contest. On the one hand, we hypothesized that ascribed attractiveness would be a positive predictor of leadership emergence and that ascribed social competence would mediate this relation. On the other hand, we hypothesized that ascribed babyfacedness would be a negative predictor of leadership emergence and that the ascription of naïveté would mediate this relation. Data collected during contests that were held exclusively for women in three consecutive years provided a basis of the analyses: 2015–2017. The predictor variables (ascribed attractiveness and ascribed babyfacedness) and the mediator variables (ascribed social competence and ascribed naïveté) comprised raters' evaluations of women's appearance in video interviews from self-recorded videos from the contest application phase. Peer nominations provided by group members after participating in assessment-center-like tasks at the contests served as the dependent variable leadership emergence. Therefore, we present a pilot study, which uses data from the 2015 contest, and then the main study containing a larger sample (data from the 2016 and 2017 contests) and a revised method.

# GENERAL METHODS

The analyses based on data collected across three consecutive years of a women's leadership contest conducted in Germany.1 Data collection took place in two phases: In the application phase, women applied to participate in the contests by submitting their curriculum vitae and letters of recommendation as well as by using a professional software platform to record a video interview consisting of their answers to five or six questions. For each question, applicants could prepare their answer within 2 min. Moreover, participants were instructed to record each of their responses in a maximal duration of 3 min. The women who passed this application phase on the basis of the quality and persuasive power of all of their application documents were invited to participate in the actual leadership contest. At the leadership contest – between attendance at keynote presentations, workshops, and networking slots – contest participants took part in 2 to 3 assessment-center-like tasks in which they engaged in group tasks or group discussions or prepared speeches in groups of 7 to 12 women each. After each task, the women nominated the three group members who had been most convincing as

1Visit www.we-are-panda.com for more information about the contests.

leaders. Contest participants who received the most nominations by their peers were rewarded with vouchers, for example, for travel tickets or career coaching. Participants' data were included in our study only when they agreed to the anonymous analysis of their data at the time when they applied to participate in the contest.

# Measures and Variables – General Information

#### Leadership Emergence

Contest participants competed for peer nominations in each group task in short-term work groups. After each task, women completed a questionnaire to (a) nominate and (b) describe the three group members who had convinced them the most with respect to the group member's potential to act as a leader. Leadership emergence was operationalized as the total number of nominations each woman received from her team members across the entire contest. The more nominations a woman received in the contest, the higher her leadership emergence index. However, we controlled for group size, that is, peer nominations possible in the contest, in the main study.

#### Ascribed Babyfacedness and Ascribed Facial Attractiveness

Raters (three in the pilot study, nine in the main study) evaluated women's faces by watching their application videos. Raters watched a 25-s cut of one interview question without sound in order to focus solely on the participants' outward appearance and to avoid any undue influence of other aspects (e.g., spoken content or voice). The length of the video sequence was determined on the basis of pretests as well as literature suggesting that a rating of appearance was possible after this amount of time (see Ambady and Rosenthal, 1993).

After the video sequence had finished, raters assessed the women's facial attractiveness and babyfacedness. For each babyfacedness item, a rating manual depicted example pictures for the extreme values in advance (see **Figure 1** for an example of the eyes facet). The means of the attractiveness items (three in the pilot study: attractive, good looking, and pleasing; two in the main study: attractive, good looking; all ranging from 1 = low value to 10 = high value) averaged across all raters served as the predictor variable ascribed facial attractiveness. The predictor variable ascribed babyfacedness resulted of the mean ratings of the four babyfacedness items (nose, eyes, face form, overall impression, ranging from 1 = not babyfaced to 7 = very babyfaced) averaged across all raters.

Before raters gave their evaluations, they were trained on the basis of a rating manual. In the pilot study, this manual contained black-and-white pictures for the extreme values of the babyfacedness items (for an example, see **Figure 1A**). Before conducting the main study, the manual was revised in accordance with information obtained from the pilot study. Changing the instructions from "How would you evaluate the women shown in the videos. . ." to "How would most people evaluate the women shown in the videos compared with women of the same age?" targeted to reduce subjectivity in the raters' impressions. The revised manual further contained higher quality pictures for the

FIGURE 1 | Example excerpt from the two versions of the rating manual for the babyfacedness subfacet eyes. (A) Displays the extreme values for "not babyfaced" (i.e., small and narrow eyes) in contrast to "babyfaced" (i.e., big and round eyes) from the first version of the manual. (B) Displays extreme values from the revised manual, including an example of mid-ranged babyfaced eyes.

visual attributes of the babyfacedness items by using the freeware program MakeHuman (version 1.1.0, MakeHuman team, 2016) replacing lower quality pictures from the former manual version. This procedure allowed the image of detailed face avatars to represent the extreme and middle values of each item (for an example, see **Figure 1B**). We further revised or removed single items (see below; see the revised manual here2 ).

## Ascribed Social Competence and Ascribed Naïveté

After having evaluated the women's facial characteristics, the raters watched the videos (see section "Ascribed Babyfacedness and Ascribed Facial Attractiveness") a second time, uncut and with the sound on, and estimated the women's social competence and naïveté. The mean of all items per scale averaged across all raters served as variables further used to test for mediation effects. Ascribed social competence consisted of six items in the pilot study (sociable, confident, warm-hearted, popular, empathic, and socially competent) and of five items in the main study (verbally skilled, sociable, confident, anxious [negatively coded], socially competent; all ranging from 1 = low value to 7 = high value). Ascribed naïveté consisted of three items in the pilot study (naïve,

2https://osf.io/sf72x/

mature [negatively coded], critical thinker [negatively coded]), and of four items in the main study (naïve, inexperienced, gullible, generally intelligent [negatively coded]; all ranging from 1 = do not agree at all to 7 = strongly agree).

#### Demographic Data

Age, professional experience, and leadership experience in years were obtained from the CVs the women submitted with their applications.

# PILOT STUDY

# Methods

#### Participants

In sum, 109 women who participated in the contest in 2015 (out of a total of 187 women) gave their consent to use information from their CVs and interviews for research purpose and were included. Videos of eight contest participants were excluded due to insufficient picture or sound quality. The ages of the final sample of 101 women ranged from 22 to 53 years (M = 31.96, SD = 6.68). On average, these women had 9.73 years (SD = 6.04) of professional experience and 6.22 years (SD = 4.54) of leadership

experience. Furthermore, 79.2% were German citizens, 5.0% other, and 15.8% did not provide information about their nationality.

#### Materials

In the pilot study, three raters evaluated facial features and characteristics using the interview sequences from the contest application phase in 2015.3

#### Procedure

#### **Leadership emergence**

In the leadership contest, the women worked on three assessmentcenter-like tasks. The participants were randomly and differently assigned to groups of 10 to 12 women per each task. The challenges in the tasks were (a) to engage in a 50-min group discussion about the skills needed for successful leadership, (b) to take 80 min to build a wooden construction, including several predefined intermediate goals, and (c) to take 50 min to prepare a political speech for a female executive politician. Each participant gave written nominations of the three most convincing group peers after each task (see section "Leadership Emergence"). Leadership emergence was calculated on the basis of the General Information (see section "Leadership Emergence").

## **Facial characteristics and ascribed traits**

The ascribed facial attractiveness scale (α = 0.98), the ascribed babyfacedness scale (α = 0.78), the ascribed social competence scale (α = 0.85), and the ascribed naïveté scale (α = 0.88) all demonstrated sufficient internal consistency. The ICC values were acceptable, ranging from 0.63 to 0.82 (see section "Measures and Variables – General Information" for all items and procedure).

#### Statistical Analyses

To test Hypotheses 1–4, we calculated mediation analysis using the "lavaan" package (version 0.6-1, Rosseel, 2018) in R (version 3.5.0). In order to control for non-normality of our data, we conducted robust ULS estimators. Data and R scripts are published in the Open Science Framework (OSF4 ).

# Results

Descriptive statistics for the dependent and independent variables are presented in **Table 1**, and the correlations between the variables are presented in **Table 2**. Results of the mediation analysis computed to test Hypotheses 1 and 2, displayed in **Figure 2A**, revealed that ascribed facial attractiveness was a significant predictor of ascribed social competence (β = 0.52, SE = 0.08, p < 0.001) and that ascribed social competence was a significant predictor of leadership emergence (β = 0.28, SE = 0.12, p = 0.018). A bootstrapping estimation approach with 1,000 bootstrapped samples indicated a significant indirect effect (βindirect = 0.15, 95% CI [0.02, 0.27], p = 0.025). Yet, ascribed facial attractiveness did not significantly predict leadership emergence before (βtotal = 0.04, SE = 0.10, p = 0.706) or after (βdirect = −0.11, SE = 0.11, p = 0.351) adding the mediator, ascribed social competence. Because there was a significant indirect effect (i.e., the higher a contest participant's ascribed facial attractiveness, the higher her ascribed social competence; and the higher her ascribed social competence, the higher her leadership emergence), we concluded that ascribed social competence acted as a mediator between ascribed facial attractiveness and leadership emergence, even though the analysis did not reveal a significant total effect.5

The results of the mediation analysis for Hypotheses 3 and 4 indicated that ascribed babyfacedness was a significant predictor of ascribed naïveté (β = 0.26, SE = 0.10, p = 0.008) and that ascribed naïveté was a significant predictor of leadership emergence (β = −0.33, SE = 0.09, p < 0.001). The bootstrapping estimation approach with 1,000 bootstrapped samples indicated a significant indirect effect (βindirect = −0.09, 95% CI [−0.17, −0.02], p = 0.035). Ascribed babyfacedness did not significantly predict leadership emergence before (βtotal = −0.10, SE = 0.10, p = 0.336) or after adding the mediator, ascribed naïveté (βdirect = −0.01, SE = 0.10, p = 0.920). The results indicated a mediating effect of ascribed naïveté, which means that the higher a participant's ascribed babyfacedness, the higher her ascribed naïveté; and the higher her ascribed naïveté, the lower her leadership emergence, as **Figure 2B** illustrates.

# MAIN STUDY

# Methods

## Participants

We included data from a total of 195 contest participants from 2016 (111 of the 178 participants gave consent) and 2017 (84 of the 114 participants gave consent) in our main study. The ages of the contest participants ranged from 21 to 52 (M = 32.81, SD = 6.69). On average, these women had 9.61 years (SD = 6.12) of professional experience and 4.69 years (SD = 4.33) of leadership experience (for information separated by year, see **Table 3**). In 2016, 75.6% were German citizens, 2.4% other, and 22% did not provide information about their nationality. In 2017, 18.2% were German citizens, 9.1% other, and 71.7% did not provide information about their nationality.

#### Materials

For the 2016 and 2017 samples used in the main study, nine raters analyzed the contest participants' self-recorded video interviews.6

#### Procedure

#### **Leadership emergence**

In the leadership contests in 2016 and 2017, in groups that were each comprised of 7 to 10 women, the women worked on three assessment-center-like group tasks in 2016 and on only two tasks in 2017. We excluded one of the tasks used in the 2016 contest from our analysis to enhance comparability between the

3Detailed interview questions can be obtained from the first author. 4https://osf.io/kxm4w/

5Counter to previous standards (see Baron and Kenny, 1986), researchers have suggested that it is acceptable to interpret a mediation effect on the basis of a significant indirect effect even in the absence of a significant direct or total effect (e.g., MacKinnon et al., 2007; Hayes, 2018).

6Detailed interview questions can be obtained from the first author.

#### TABLE 1 | Descriptive statistics for the variables for both the pilot study and the main study, presented separately by contest year.

The more nominations (leadership emergence) a participant received in the contest the higher her leadership emergence. Ascription ratings were on rating scales [anchor in brackets] on which higher scores indicate a higher degree of each ascribed characteristic. N, sample size; M, mean; SD, standard deviation.

TABLE 2 | Correlations between leadership emergence (dependent variable), ascribed babyfacedness and ascribed attractiveness (predictors), and ascribed social competence and ascribed naïveté (mediators) for both the pilot study and the main study.

Higher variable scores indicate a higher degree of each ascribed characteristic. r = Pearson correlation coefficients. The values from the pilot study are presented above the diagonal, and the values from the main study (using centered variables) are presented below the diagonal. ∗∗∗p < 0.001, ∗∗p < 0.01, ∗p < 0.05.

two samples. In 2016, the challenges in the tasks were (a) to engage in a 45-min group discussion and (b) to spend 40 min preparing an industrial lobby presentation. In 2017, the women were asked (c) to spend 60 min preparing a huge event and (d) to spend 60 min preparing for a public debate on the gender issue. Each participant provided written nominations of the three most convincing group peers after each task (see section "Leadership Emergence"). We summed the number of nominations for each participant. For the analyses, we divided this sum of nominations by the number of peer nominations possible (i.e., group size per task minus one) in order to control for contaminations due to effects of group size.

#### **Facial characteristics and ascribed traits**

In the main study, the ascribed facial attractiveness scale (α = 0.98), the ascribed babyfacedness scale (α = 0.82), the ascribed social competence scale (α = 0.93), and the ascribed naïveté scale (α = 0.90) all demonstrated sufficient internal consistency. ICC values for all ratings in the main study ranged from 0.88 to 0.89 for the ascribed facial attractiveness items, from 0.81 to 0.89 for the ascribed babyfacedness items, from 0.71 to 0.84 for the ascribed social competence items, and from 0.68 to 0.83 for the ascribed naïveté items (see section "Measures and Variables – General Information" for all items and the procedure).

#### Statistical Analyses

Before we calculated the mediation analyses in a manner that was similar to the analyses used in the pilot study, we centered the predictor, mediator, and dependent variables on the mean of the respective contest year in order to enhance comparability for the total sample in the main study. For example, a participant's ascribed facial attractiveness may have been high in comparison with the entire female population but not in comparison with her competitors in the contest, if all contest participants were also rated as highly attractive. By centering the variables on the respective sample means, we corrected for such potential group characteristics.

As we did in the pilot study, we ran mediation analyses using the "lavaan" package in R. Seven participants had to be excluded from these analyses due to missing information on group size. We further controlled for possible issues of non-normality by, again, using robust ULS estimators. To control for the high correlations between the predictor variables ascribed facial attractiveness and ascribed babyfacedness as well as between the mediator variables, ascribed social competence and ascribed naïveté, revealed by the a priori analyses, we ran further analyses in which we included all variables simultaneously in one path model. As postulated by Preacher and Hayes (2008), this procedure allowed to identify the unique capacity of each mediator to account for the impact of the respective predictor on leadership emergence beyond the shared contribution of the two mediators. Data and R scripts are published in the OSF7 .

#### Results

Contest participants in the main study received an average of 5.58 nominations (SD = 3.62) across the two tasks. On average (and before the variables were centered), the mean of ascribed facial

7https://osf.io/kxm4w/

TABLE 3 | Age and years of professional and leadership experience of women in the main study sample, presented separately by contest years and overall.

N, sample size; M, mean; SD, standard deviation.

attractiveness was 5.96 (SD = 1.31), and the mean of ascribed social competence was 4.80 (SD = 0.61). The mean of ascribed babyfacedness was 3.97 (SD = 0.85), and the mean of ascribed naïveté was 3.41 (SD = 0.63). See **Table 1** for values separated by contest year, and **Table 2** for intercorrelations between the variables.

As hypothesized, the data analyses indicated that ascribed social competence mediated the influence of ascribed facial attractiveness on leadership emergence. Confirming the results of the pilot study, the higher a contest participant's ascribed facial attractiveness, the higher her ascribed social competence (β = 0.19, SE = 0.07, p = 0.005), and the higher her ascribed social competence, the higher her leadership emergence (β = 0.26, SE = 0.07, p < 0.001). The bootstrapping estimation approach with 1,000 bootstrapped samples indicated a significant indirect effect (βindirect = 0.05, 95% CI [0.01, 0.10], p = 0.030). However, ascribed facial attractiveness did not significantly predict leadership emergence, neither before (βtotal = 0.12,

SE = 0.07, p = 0.084) nor after adding the mediator, ascribed social competence (βdirect = 0.07, SE = 0.07, p = 0.344; see **Figure 2A**).

The second mediation analysis revealed that ascribed naïveté functioned as a mediator of the influence of ascribed babyfacedness on leadership emergence. According to our results, ascribed babyfacedness significantly predicted ascribed naïveté (β = 0.18, SE = 0.07, p = 0.009). Further, ascribed naïveté significantly predicted leadership emergence (β = −0.26, SE = 0.07, p < 0.001), supporting the results of the pilot study as well. In other words, the higher a participant's ascribed babyfacedness, the higher her ascribed naïveté. However, the higher her ascribed naïveté, the lower her leadership emergence. The bootstrapping estimation approach with 1,000 bootstrapped samples indicated a significant indirect effect (βindirect = −0.05, 95% CI [−0.10, −0.01], p = 0.031). Further, in line with the results of the pilot study, ascribed babyfacedness did not predict leadership emergence, neither before (βtotal = −0.02, SE = 0.08, p = 0.759) nor after adding the mediator, ascribed naïveté (βdirect = 0.02, SE = 0.08, p = 0.767; see **Figure 2B**).

We further tested the unique ability of each mediator to mediate the corresponding relation between the predictor and leadership emergence in one joint path model. In this model, we controlled for the correlations between the predictor variables and the mediator variables in order to identify the unique impact of each mediator. Overall, the model showed a very good fit, χ 2 (2, N = 188) = 0.43, CFI = 1.00, RMSEA < 0.001, SRMR = 0.012, and is displayed in **Figure 3** with all individual regression coefficients. The unique indirect effects were all nonsignificant. More specifically, neither the effect of ascribed facial attractiveness on leadership emergence through ascribed social competence (βindirect = 0.03, 95% CI [−0.01, 0.08], p = 0.271), nor the effect of ascribed facial babyfacedness on leadership emergence through ascribed naïveté (βindirect = −0.03, 95% CI [−0.09, 0.03], p = 0.334) reached the conventional thresholds of significance. Furthermore, there were no unique direct effects of ascribed facial attractiveness (βdirect = 0.14, SE = 0.08, p = 0.053), ascribed babyfacedness (βdirect = 0.09, SE = 0.10, p = 0.371), ascribed social competence (β = 0.16, SE = 0.12, p = 0.209), or ascribed naïveté (β = −0.14; SE = 0.12, p = 0.264) on leadership emergence. However, when we combined the unique direct and indirect effects of ascribed facial attractiveness, we found a significant unique total effect on leadership emergence (βtotal = 0.17, SE = 0.07, p = 0.018), suggesting that ascribed facial attractiveness had an effect on leadership emergence above and beyond ascribed babyfacedness and ascribed naïveté.

# GENERAL DISCUSSION

Aim of the present study was to increase the understanding of the effects of facial appearance and ascribed characteristics on leadership emergence by employing data collected at a women's leadership contest. We captured characteristics of facial appearance by rating participants' application videos as they responded to standardized interview questions. Peer nominations of the women from two exercises that were part of the contest served as a measure of leadership emergence. Analyses of data from both a pilot study and a main study revealed a significant indirect effect of ascribed facial attractiveness and babyfacedness ratings made by independent raters on leadership emergence. Ascribed social competence mediated the relation between ascribed facial attractiveness and leadership emergence, and ascribed naïveté mediated the relation between babyfacedness and leadership emergence. However, the results did not support Hypotheses 1 and 3 because neither ascribed facial attractiveness nor ascribed babyfacedness significantly predicted leadership emergence. When we tested the hypotheses separately, these findings held both, independent from the inclusion or exclusion of the mediators. Therefore, the analyses in this study revealed that both the women's perceived attractiveness and their babyfacedness were not directly related to their leadership emergence but had an impact through ascribed aspects that were explicitly or implicitly related to these characteristics.

Following the recommendations of a reviewer, we also tested the unique effects of our two mediators and predictors on leadership emergence. Analyses revealed a significant unique effect on leadership emergence only for ascribed facial attractiveness after controlling for ascribed babyfacedness and ascribed naïveté. This finding suggests that the previously reported indirect effects of ascribed social competence and ascribed naïveté showed a large overlap of variance and that the shared and not the unique portion of ascribed personality traits variance mediated the effect of ascribed facial appearance on leadership emergence. Therefore, this finding could signify that an underlying latent variable, namely, ascribed leadership personality, is mediating the effect between ascribed facial appearance and leadership emergence. However, our study was not equipped to handle such a latent variable model due to an insufficient sample size and number of indicators. Future research should investigate the unique and common portions of indirect effects of ascribed facial appearance on leadership emergence through ascribed personality traits by including more indicators for ascribed facial appearance and ascribed personality traits.

These findings also suggest a higher relevance of facial attractiveness for leadership emergence because babyfaced women were perceived as more attractive. However, literature indicated babyfacedness to be related to attractiveness, especially in women (Zebrowitz McArthur and Apatow, 1983/1984). The model employed cannot be used to determine such a halo effect (i.e., possessing babyface causing higher attractiveness ratings in women) because we had defined attractiveness and babyfacedness as equal predictors. In the rating procedure, raters judged facial attractiveness directly before assessing babyfacedness; thus, the latter could not have influenced the attractiveness ratings directly. However, the results of the joint model could further indicate a compensation for the negative influence of babyfacedness on leadership emergence at the same time: In the joint model, partialling out the variance of babyfacedness may explain the significant effect of facial attractiveness on leadership emergence. Babyfacedness has been described as being detrimental to leadership emergence (Cherulnik et al., 1990), but also as positively correlated with facial attractiveness in women (Zebrowitz McArthur and Apatow, 1983/1984). After

controlling for babyfacedness in facial attractiveness, the negative effect of babyfacedness via facial attractiveness was no longer relevant. Thus, the 'pure' facial attractiveness revealed an effect on leadership emergence (i.e., without the confounding effect of babyfacedness). Facial attractiveness was thus no longer influenced by babyfacedness but by other characteristics as, for instance, the symmetry, healthy appearance and other aspects, which we did not explicitly assess.

Further bearing in mind the relation between babyfaced features and femininity (Friedman and Zebrowitz, 1992), the question arises as to whether higher babyfacedness (and thus higher attractiveness) accents the feminine gender role in women and, hence, increases discrimination against them (Zebrowitz et al., 1991). Concluding from our results revealing that babyfacedness weakened the positive effect of attractiveness, it seems that the part of women's attractiveness associated with femininity is not the one promoting but rather preventing their leadership emergence. Further, would babyfaced women therefore have to increase their agentic behaviors to compensate for their even more accentuated gender role in order to emerge as leaders, as indicated by role congruity theory (see Eagly and Karau, 2002; Eagly and Carli, 2007)? Because features of appearance and accordingly ascribed traits depict only some relevant aspects that predict leadership emergence, future research should also include measures of behaviors and other personality traits, for instance, perceived agency and communion (Johnson et al., 2008; Schock et al., 2018) or task-specific aspects (e.g., Eagly and Karau, 1991; Badura et al., 2018).

Ascribed social competence, related to facial attractiveness, indicated an advantage for obtaining a large number of nominations in the women's leadership contest. On the other hand, ascribed naïveté, related to babyfacedness, indicated a disadvantage. The socially enhancing effects of aspects of attractiveness were well in line with the literature (e.g., Eagly et al., 1991; Langlois et al., 2000). Moreover, a childlike appearance and ascribed naïveté represent characteristics that are counter to the characteristics typically ascribed to leaders (e.g., Zebrowitz McArthur and Apatow, 1983/1984; Zebrowitz et al., 1991; Friedman and Zebrowitz, 1992; Masip et al., 2004; Riggio and Riggio, 2010).

These results are particularly remarkable because the predictor and criterion variables were assessed with different methods. Although both kinds of variables were assessed with ratings, the ratings were made by different samples: The raters of the videos were students, whereas the raters in the contest were competing peers. Furthermore, the predictor variables consisted of ratings of recorded video interviews, whereas the criterion variables based upon real-life interactions in a competitive situation. As the two

kinds of raters may have perceived the same targets of rating in different contexts, somewhat different processes – or at least differing on the level of awareness – may have taken place. For instance, the participants of the contest may have focused more on the competition and their own performance, whereas the raters in the lab explicitly concentrated on the features of facial appearance and personality they had to assess. The finding that ratings of video recordings were related to ratings from a real-life situation may hint at two possible mechanisms: First, the impressions that the raters got from the video recordings were similar to the impressions that the peers had during the contest, the latter of which may have shaped the interactions and ascriptions to a certain extent (see Antonakis and Eubanks, 2017). Therefore, the results may suggest that the ascribed social competence as well as the ascribed naïveté of the women may reflect the important and consensual information that was relevant for raters in both situations (i.e., the application and the contest).

Nevertheless, our results are well in line with previous research on the relevance of appearance for election outcome predictions in political leadership (e.g., Todorov et al., 2005; Antonakis and Dalgas, 2009). In other words, ratings of aspects of physical appearance made by individuals who are not voting in the actual leader election (or as in our study, in the leadership contest) could in part predict the outcome of a leader election (or as in our study, a leader competition).

Second and alternatively, these results may also indicate that consistency in first impressions based on facial appearance may lead people to treat other individuals in certain ways that subsequently shape these individuals' outcomes and behaviors (see Rule and Ambady, 2010; Lukaszewski and Roney, 2011). Further, such impressions and associations based on facial appearance may be extended to the interactional mechanism that underlies a self-fulfilling prophecy (Snyder et al., 1977; further, see Zebrowitz and Montepare, 2008; Todorov et al., 2015). Acting on the assumption that the nominations made by the peers in the contest as well as the video ratings made by external raters reveal real aspects of the participants, according to the self-fulfilling prophecy mechanism, the participants may have developed their characteristics (e.g., social competence or naïveté) on the basis of how they were treated due to their facial appearance, attractiveness, and babyfacedness, respectively. Analogously, at the contest, women may have treated an attractive peer who they therefore perceived as socially competent in a way that increased the peer's confidence in acting like a leader. This, in turn, may have led to more actual leadership behavior, thus convincing the other contestants to nominate her as a convincing leader. For example, the fact that attractiveness may have served as a leadership cue may have led participants to pay more attention to particular women in the contest, which in turn may have increased the abilities of these particular women to excel in the group task (see Gerpott et al., 2017).

Another advantage of this study is that the data collection was part of a real contest, and the sample consisted of real women who participated in the study to win the contest and enhance their reputations. This competitive setting could be interpreted as comparable to an actual personnel selection situation (e.g., an assessment center) where performance is required within a short period of time. However, the rather unconventional study setting somewhat restricts the interpretation with regard to generalizability: Peers from group tasks usually do not make hiring decisions in personnel selection, but rather, external observers or assessment experts do. Nevertheless, we aimed to contribute to knowledge about which variables are relevant for leadership emergence. Conclusions cannot be drawn with respect to leadership ascription or leadership performance in the medium or long term, especially in comparison with dayto-day teamwork without a competitive character, even though the contest participants had to balance competitiveness with cooperation in working toward a common goal during the tasks. However, our research revealed that appearance is especially important when no information or only a little other information is available (Olivola et al., 2012). In line with previous research, we would expect the impact of facial appearance on leader selection to decrease when information about competence is available because competence-related information should have a greater impact on selection decisions (Kaufmann et al., 2017). Although facial appearance had an impact on women's chances of getting more nominations in the leadership contest in this study, we would expect this effect to diminish in the medium and long terms after women have entered the work place.

Although the setting allowed obtaining an unusual sample of women, future research should include male participants as well as other ethnicities (e.g., Blacks) to investigate interactions between sex and other personal attributes. For instance, previous research indicated that attractiveness judgments were better predictors of election success for women than for men (Berggren et al., 2010). Furthermore, whereas the current study indicated a disadvantage for individuals possessing facial physiognomy reflecting babyfacedness, Livingston and Pearce (2009), for example, found that a larger number of black male CEOs had babyfaced characteristics in their study compared with white male CEOs. A newer study addressing political voting decisions in an Asian culture revealed that babyfacedness was the strongest predictor of percentages of votes beyond competence, attractiveness, warmth, and background characteristics (Chang et al., 2017).

Our findings provide support for earlier studies (e.g., Sczesny and Kühnen, 2004; Olivola and Todorov, 2010; Re and Perrett, 2014) that found that aspects of physical appearance such as facial attractiveness and babyfacedness affect the attribution of job-relevant characteristics in women. This effect may also play an important role in personnel selection. Future studies should investigate the particular relevance of physical appearance with regard to job profiles and job domains. Furthermore, future studies should investigate how other aspects of physical appearance (e.g., body size) impact this effect and should further investigate strategies for overcoming possible disadvantages related to facial appearance, for example, via clothing or hairstyle.

Visual appearance often influences the first impression a person makes, especially in personnel selection (e.g., based on photographs in CVs) and therefore affects the attributions made to an individual. Under a more practical perspective, we encourage organizations and hiring experts to enhance their awareness of such ascription- and stereotype-inducing mechanisms, helping women to overcome these gender-related obstacles to achieve leadership positions equally to their male counterparts. The use of standardized assessment criteria that are determined in advance (from the side of human resources) and the decision not to include a photo in a job application (from the side of an applicant) may be first steps to diminish such effects, at least with regard to aspects of (facial) appearance.

# DATA AVAILABILITY

fpsyg-09-02553 December 17, 2018 Time: 17:18 # 12

Datasets are in a publicly accessible repository: the datasets analyzed for this study can be found in the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/kxm4w/).

# ETHICS STATEMENT

This study was carried out in accordance with the recommendations of the statutes of the University of Salzburg (part XI), Ethic Committee of the Paris Lodron University of Salzburg. The protocol was approved by the Ethic Committee of the Paris Lodron University of Salzburg. All subjects gave written informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

# AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS

FG collected the data for the pilot study, co-revised the rating manual, and supervised and organized the data collection

# REFERENCES

and analyses for the main study. She mainly contributed to writing the Method, Results, and Discussion sections of the manuscript and revised earlier drafts of the entire manuscript. CV conceptualized the research, data collection and analyses of both the pilot study and the main study. She mainly contributed to writing the first versions of the Introduction and Discussion sections as well as the Results section of the pilot study. TO supervised the conceptualization of this research regarding the operationalization and methods. She revised earlier drafts of the manuscript, in particular providing theoretical input for the Introduction and Discussion sections.

# ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank Anne-Kathrin Schock and Thomas Scherndl for their supervisory support regarding conceptualization and analyses. We further thank the student assistants Moritz Baumgärtner, Lennart Dialer, Julian Fuchs, Verena Eberle, Lena Kastner, Anna Krämer, Dominik Mengin, Corinna Pfannenstein, Martina Rogalla, and David Schmid for their help with coding and ratings. We thank Manfred Schmitt and Anna Baumert for great theoretical advice, Tobias Koch for methodological input, and Jane Zagorski for helpful suggestions. We further thank the editors Alice H. Eagly and Sabine Szcesny, as well as Leslie Zebrowitz and Minna Paunova for thoughtful and supportive reviews. We thank the University of Salzburg for financial funding of the Open Access Publication fee. Finally, we thank Isabelle Hoyer and Stuart Cameron for allowing us to conduct research in the context of their leadership contest for female professionals, and the participants of the 2015, 2016, and 2017 contests who agreed to share their data for research purposes.

of human facial attractiveness]. Available at: http://psydok.psycharchives.de/ jspui/handle/20.500.11780/45

Enlow, H. D. (1982). Handbook of Facial Growth. Philadelphia, PA: W B Saunders.

**Conflict of Interest Statement:** The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Copyright © 2018 Gruber, Veidt and Ortner. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

# Perpetuating Inequality: Junior Women Do Not See Queen Bee Behavior as Negative but Are Nonetheless Negatively Affected by It

Naomi Sterk1 \*, Loes Meeussen1,2 and Colette Van Laar1

1 Center for Social and Cultural Psychology, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium, 2 Postdoctoral Fellowship, Research Foundation–Flanders, Brussels, Belgium

Previous research has revealed that women may attempt to avoid negative gender stereotypes in organizations through self-group distancing, or "queen bee", behaviors: emphasizing masculine qualities, distancing themselves from other women, and legitimizing organizational inequality. Factors that increase self-group distancing have been identified (e.g., existing discrimination and low group identification), but it is unknown how self-group distancing by an ingroup leader is perceived by and affects subordinates of the negatively stereotyped group. In the current study, female participants received ambiguous negative feedback from a male versus female leader displaying queen bee-type versus neutral behavior.  A female leader displaying queen bee (vs. neutral) behavior was not seen as having less positive intent, which thus did not indirectly influence perceived sexism. Behavior of both male and female leaders did affect junior women: participants exposed to a leader displaying queen bee-type behavior reported more anger, sadness, and anxiety than participants exposed to a leader displaying neutral behavior. These data provide further evidence that simply adding more women or minorities in key senior positions is insufficient to change inequality if bias in the organization is not tackled. Specifically, exposure to gender inequality can steer female leaders to endorse–rather than change–stereotypes about women, and this behavior is particularly consequential because it (a) might not be recognized as bias and (b) exerts negative effects.

Keywords: self-group distancing, sexism, queen bee effects, negative affect, ambiguity, bias

# INTRODUCTION

Despite significant changes in social equality policies and legislation, women remain underrepresented in various fields and in higher positions in society. Within the largest companies in the European Union, women comprise only 5% of CEOs and 23% of board members (European Commission, 2016). These numbers are comparable to those in the United States, in which women in the largest companies comprise 5% of CEOs and 21% of board members (Catalyst, 2017). In Europe as well as in the United States, however, these numbers do mark a slight increase in the

#### Edited by:

Alice H. Eagly, Northwestern University, United States

#### Reviewed by:

Jolien A. van Breen, University of Exeter, United Kingdom Teri Kirby, University of Exeter, United Kingdom

> \*Correspondence: Naomi Sterk<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
#### Specialty section:

This article was submitted to Personality and Social Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology

Received: 27 March 2018 Accepted: 22 August 2018 Published: 20 September 2018

#### Citation:

Sterk N, Meeussen L and Van Laar C (2018) Perpetuating Inequality: Junior Women Do Not See Queen Bee Behavior as Negative but Are Nonetheless Negatively Affected by It. Front. Psychol. 9:1690. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01690

proportion of women as CEOs and in boards. For example, in 2012, 14% of board members in the largest EU companies and 17% of board members in the largest United States companies were women (Catalyst, 2012; European Commission, 2012). It is often believed that such an increase in female leadership will undoubtedly lead to increased gender equality, as women climbing the organizational ladder are presumed to lower organizational bias, actively resist structural inequalities for example in selection procedures, mentor other women (Stout et al., 2011), and create a more identity safe organizational climate for other women (Purdie-Vaughns et al., 2008). Moreover, the mere presence of women in leadership roles should–by providing real life exemplars of female leaders–initiate change in how the leadership role is perceived (Eagly and Karau, 2002; Koenig and Eagly, 2014). Also, in theory, an increasing number of women in leadership positions should attenuate the traditional 'masculine' stereotype of leadership that exists (Sczesny, 2003).

Drawing on research on the Queen Bee (QB) phenomenon, we maintain, however, that it is not certain that other women will automatically benefit from female leaders in top positions. In the current paper we aim to show that when female leaders display QB behavior, this in reality negatively affects other (junior) women. Such negative effects occur because QB behavior can look similar to sexism and exert similar effects, but might be less likely to be recognized as sexism due to the source being female, hereby impairing effective regulation by the receiver. We here outline these ideas.

Women who advance into higher positions often experience barriers due to their gender. As the figures above show, they often find themselves as one of only a few women in (the top of) male-dominated organizations. Female leaders also often have to walk a tightrope between meeting the demands placed on them due to their leader role (e.g., evidencing agentic qualities) and meeting the demands placed on them due to their gender role (e.g., evidencing high communal qualities) (Eagly and Karau, 2002; Eagly and Sczesny, 2009). Moreover, women advancing into higher positions still face bias and gender stereotypes, which can induce social identity threat. Some women navigate this by engaging in self-group distancing: a process whereby members of stigmatized groups cope with inequality by disengaging with the stigmatized group and assimilating into the non-stigmatized group. Groups for which this has been found include women, the elderly, ethnic minorities, and sexual minorities (Eguchi, 2009; Derks et al., 2011a,b, 2015; Weiss and Lang, 2012; see Derks et al., 2016 for a discussion). Self-group distancing can thus be seen as an individual strategy to resolve social identity threat and to restore a devalued identity (Branscombe et al., 1999a). Female self-group distancing has been coined "Queen Bee" (QB) behavior (Staines et al., 1974), and is characterized by a masculine selfpresentation, legitimizing the status quo (e.g., denying gender inequality in the workplace and opposing measures aimed at reducing gender inequality), and underlining dissimilarities to other women (Derks et al., 2016).

Although in recent years more insight has been gathered into factors linked to the development of QB behavior (experiencing gender inequality, low gender identification), it is unknown how QB behavior is interpreted by and affects those who are exposed to it. QB behavior can be seen as ambiguously negative behavior, showing similarities to modern forms of sexism. Unlike traditional forms of sexism, which are more overt and hostile, modern sexism is more subtle and ambiguous. Like QB behavior, modern sexism is characterized by a denial of continued gender discrimination and opposition to women's demands, such as a lack of support for measures aimed at reducing gender equality (Swim et al., 1995; Tougas et al., 1995). Moreover, QB behavior can extend beyond a passive rejection of the ingroup (i.e., absence of acceptance) to actively devaluing ingroup members (e.g., claiming women have lower career commitment than men; Ellemers et al., 2004; Kaiser and Spalding, 2015). Thus, while QB behavior and sexism are distinct in their underlying concerns and motivations (with QB behavior being a self-regulation strategy, driven by identity devaluation concerns that are a response to social inequality such as sexism), QB behavior and modern sexism do show strong outward similarities. However, no research has experimentally examined these similarities and related these similarities to outcomes for those exposed to QB behavior. We thus set out to examine how junior women perceive and are affected by QB behavior. Specifically, we expected to show: (1) that QB behavior is less likely to be perceived as bias because the source of this behavior is a member of the negatively stereotyped group, (2) that despite not being seen as intentionally negative or as sexist, QB behavior negatively affects women confronted by it, and (3) that the ambiguity accompanying perception of this behavior impairs regulatory strategies.

# How Do Women Perceive Male and Female Leaders Displaying QB(-Type) Behavior?

The first aim of this research is to show that QB behavior is less likely to be perceived as bias due to the source of this behavior being female. Although QB behavior appears similar to modern forms of sexism, it is unlikely that QB behavior will be perceived as being driven by negative or sexist intentions. As QB behavior describes a phenomenon occurring in women, for a female subordinate the source of this behavior will be an ingroup member. Ingroup leaders are generally viewed in a more positive light than outgroup leaders, even if they express a preference for members of the outgroup (Duck and Fielding, 2003). This ingroup-outgroup difference can be explained by a phenomenon known as the intergroup sensitivity effect: the tendency for people to be less skeptical of criticism or the source of this criticism if it is coming from an ingroup member than from an outgroup member (Hornsey et al., 2002). This lower skepticism follows from people tending to ascribe positive intent to someone expressing themselves negatively about their ingroup: They believe that the speaker intends to be constructive and means well (Hornsey and Imani, 2004). Furthermore, an ingroup member would be a non-prototypical source of bias, and bias from a non-prototypical source (e.g., sexism from a female, racism from an ethnic minority) is less likely to be recognized as such (Baron et al., 1991; Inman and Baron, 1996; Inman et al., 1998; Cunningham et al., 2009). Because of this nonprototypicality, behavior that would otherwise be perceived as

negative might not necessarily be seen as such when the source of this behavior is an ingroup member. We thus expect that perceptions of a leader displaying QB behavior are influenced by the fact that the source of this behavior is female, and expect the same kind of behavior to be perceived differently if the source of this behavior is male. [When we talk about QB-type behavior from a male leader, we are talking about the same behaviors but enacted by a male leader. Hence by definition this behavior cannot be labeled as queen bee behavior, as queen bee behavior describes self-group distancing in women and can therefore only be displayed by women–a man cannot distance himself from the female ingroup because this is not his ingroup. Therefore, for comprehension purposes, we refer to QB behavior enacted by a male leader as 'QB-type' behavior. When referring to a male and female leader simultaneously we use the term 'QB(-type)' behavior.]. Our first hypothesis is thus that a male leader displaying QB-type (vs. neutral) behavior will be perceived as having less positive intent toward women and will therefore be seen as sexist, whereas this will not be the case for a female leader. Put differently, QB behavior by a female leader will go less recognized as a possible instance of sexism because the female source will be seen as having positive intent toward women.

# How Are Women Affected by QB(-Type) Behavior?

The second aim of this research is to demonstrate that despite not being seen as bias, QB behavior is likely to negatively affect women confronted by it. The "why" of what is being said might be perceived as positive (constructive), but the "what" of what is being said is still similar to modern gender bias. Exposure to bias in its traditional, more blatant, sense has negative consequences such as psychological distress (Klonoff et al., 2000; Szymanski et al., 2009) and negative affect (Wang et al., 2012). Bias does not have to be traditional or obvious, however, to exert negative effects (Barreto and Ellemers, 2005; Salvatore and Shelton, 2007; Murphy et al., 2013). For example, Barreto and Ellemers (2005) exposed participants to statements reflecting either modern sexism (e.g., "discrimination against women is no longer a problem") or traditional blatant sexism (e.g., "women are generally not as smart as men"). The results showed that although participants were not as likely to perceive modern (vs. traditional) sexist statements as sexist, they did show increased anxiety compared to the traditional sexism condition. Our second hypothesis, therefore, is that participants who are exposed to QB(-type) behavior (vs. neutral behavior) will suffer negative consequences (measured through increased negative affect), both when the source of this behavior is male and when the source of this behavior is female (Hypothesis 2).