What makes a leader

Thirty years after women became 50 percent of the college graduates in the United States, men still hold the vast majority of leadership positions in government and industry. This means that women’s voices are still not heard equally in the decisions that most affect our lives. In LEAN IN, Sheryl Sandberg examines why women’s progress in achieving leadership roles has stalled, explains the root causes, and offers compelling, commonsense solutions that can empower women to achieve their full potential.

每月一書：Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

The Nature of Prejudice

Categorization plays a fundamental role in organizing daily interactions with the social world. However, there is increasing recognition that social categorization is often complex, both because category membership can be ambiguous (e.g., multiracial or transgender identities) and because different categorical identities (e.g., race and gender) may interact to determine the meaning of category membership. These complex identities simultaneously impact social perceivers' impressions and social targets' own experiences of identity, thereby shaping perceptions, experiences, and interactions in fundamental ways. This review examines recent research on the perception and experience of the complex, multifaceted identities that both complicate and enrich our lives. Although research has historically tended to focus more on difficulties and challenges associated with multiple identities, increasing attention is being paid to opportunities that emerge from the possession of identities that include multiple distinc...

Multiple Identities in Social Perception and Interaction: Challenges and Opportunities

A significant amount of the research on two types of biases against women leaders—agentic deficiency (perceptions that women have minimal leadership potential) and agentic penalty (backlash for counter-stereotypical behavior)—has generally presumed that the descriptive, prescriptive, and proscriptive stereotypes on which the biases are based are comparable for women across racial groups. We propose that the degree to which agentic deficiencies and penalties occur is contingent on the dimension of agency that is under consideration and its relation to the stereotypes associated with the target's gendered and racial group. The results of our literature review and analysis suggest that when considered in the context of gender and leadership research, at least two dimensions of agency, competence and dominance, closely align with perceptions of agentic deficiency and agentic penalty, respectively. Based on our analysis and the prevalent stereotypes of Black and Asian American women that are likely most relevant to the two types of biases against women leaders, we examined the interactive effects of racial stereotypes and the agentic biases. We suggest that when specific racial and gendered stereotypes are aligned with a specific dimension of agency, we can gain a more thorough understanding of how agentic biases may hinder women's progression to leadership positions.

Race matters for women leaders: Intersectional effects on agentic deficiencies and penalties

Purpose Much like sexism, ageism is a multifaceted prejudice; it involves benevolent and hostile attitudes toward older adults. There are many scales designed to measure hostile ageism, yet none dedicated to measuring benevolent ageism. In the current studies, we developed and validated a 13-item measure: the Ambivalent Ageism Scale (AAS). Design and methods We employed four stages of scale development and validation. In Stage 1, we created 41 benevolent ageist items adapted from existing ageism measures. In Stages 2 and 3, we further refined the pool of items through additional testing and factor analysis and retained nine items loading strongly on two factors related to benevolent ageism: cognitive assistance/physical protection and unwanted help. In order to enable researchers to contrast benevolent and hostile attitudes, we then added four hostile ageist items. In Stage 4, we assessed the test-retest reliability of the 13-item scale. Results The AAS had good test-retest reliability (r = .80) and good internal consistency (α = .91). As predicted, the benevolent and hostile ageism subscales differentially predicted attitudes toward older adults: higher scores on the hostile subscale predicted lower competence and warmth ratings, whereas higher scores on the benevolent subscale predicted higher warmth perceptions. Implications The AAS is a useful tool for researchers to assess hostile and benevolent ageism. This measure serves as an important first step in designing interventions to reduce the harmful effects of both hostile and benevolent ageism.

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The Ambivalent Ageism Scale: Developing and Validating a Scale to Measure Benevolent and Hostile Ageism.

The processes by which women of color and White women living in the United States detect and respond to prejudice may differ because women of color experience racism, sexism and intersectional bias. This review builds on past research by articulating how existing process models of stigmatization, when applied to the stigmatization of women of color, leave important research questions unanswered. Stigmatized individuals’ interpretations of and responses to others’ behaviors are continuously shaped by the possibility that they will be targeted by prejudice. In each interaction in which prejudice is plausible, targets first determine whether they have experienced prejudice and, if so, they cope with the psychological and emotional consequences of prejudiced treatment. Current theories of stigmatization best account for the experiences of people who face only one form of prejudice. In contrast, we consider how women of color, who possess multiple stigmatized identities, respond to the multiple forms of prejudice they face. First, we identify barriers to including women of color in stigma research. Second, we describe research examining how targets with one stigmatized identity detect, respond to and cope with prejudice. Third, we draw on related research on multiple identities in areas outside of the stigma literature (e.g., intergroup bias, cognition) to raise questions that are important to address in future stigma research. Our analysis is supported primarily by research conducted in the U. S. Addressing the research questions raised in this review will position the stigma literature to more readily capture the stigmatizing experiences of women of color.

How Women of Color Detect and Respond to Multiple Forms of Prejudice

Impressions at the intersection of ambiguous and obvious social categories: Does gay + Black = likable?

Participants (N = 602; having 0, 1, 2 or 3 stigmatized identities based on gender, race, sexual orientation, and social class) completed a survey on their feelings of invisibility and expectations of receiving unfair treatment (i.e., experiencing discrimination) and being stereotyped due to their group memberships. The results were consistent with the model of intersectional invisibility, with multiplystigmatized individuals reporting feeling more invisible than individuals who had one or zero stigmatized identities. In addition, multiply-stigmatized individuals reported more unfair treatment and greater stereotype concerns than individuals with one stigmatized identity, with both reporting more unfair treatment/stereotype concerns than individuals without stigmatized identities. Thus, the present data suggest that multiply-stigmatized individuals are keenly aware of their invisibility and that invisibility represents a source of perceived discrimination and stereotyping for multiply-stigmatized individuals.

Intersectional Oppression: Multiple Stigmatized Identities and Perceptions of Invisibility, Discrimination, and Stereotyping

Traditionally, researchers have focused on identity-congruent safety cues such as the effect of gender diversity awards on women's sense of inclusion in organizations. The present studies investigate, for the first time, whether identity safety cues (e.g., organizational diversity structures) aimed at one stigmatized group transfer via perceptions of the organization's ideology (social dominance orientation), resulting in identity safety for individuals with stigmatized identities incongruent with the cue. Across four studies, we demonstrate that White women experience identity safety from organizational diversity structures aimed at racial minorities (Studies 1 and 2), and men of color experience identity safety from organizational diversity structures aimed at women (Study 3). Furthermore, while White men similarly perceive the organization's ideology, this does not promote identity safety (Study 4). Thus, we argue that individuals view organizations commended for diversity as promoting more egalitarian attitudes broadly, resulting in the transference of identity safety cues for stigmatized individuals.

Jessica D. Remedios

Papers

The Ambivalent Ageism Scale: Developing and Validating a Scale to Measure Benevolent and Hostile Ageism.

How Women of Color Detect and Respond to Multiple Forms of Prejudice

Impressions at the intersection of ambiguous and obvious social categories: Does gay + Black = likable?

Intersectional Oppression: Multiple Stigmatized Identities and Perceptions of Invisibility, Discrimination, and Stereotyping

Organizational Identity Safety Cue Transfers.