Do female role models help women lead? Past research found that, when it comes to leadership, women feel threatened by highly successful female role models, but a new study discovers something different in practice. (click below to read more)
Researchers asked 149 Swiss university students to give a speech opposing higher student fees. The setting was a virtual-reality environment that in some cases showed a poster of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the wall, and in others showed President Bill Clinton or no poster at all.
Women spoke less than men when the wall was blank or featured the former U.S. president. But faced with a famous woman, they spoke for as long as the men did, and those longer speeches won higher grades from objective raters. Evidently, the scientists write, "subtle exposures to highly successful female leaders inspired women's behavior."
"Successful Female Leaders Empower Women's Behavior in Leadership Tasks," Ioana M. Latu, Marianne Schmid Mast, Joris Lammers and Dario Bombari, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
No comments:
Post a Comment