Demographic category membership and leadership in small groups: A social identity analysis

Developing the social identity theory of leadership (e.g., [Hogg, M. A. (2001). A social identity theory of leadership. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 5, 184-200]), an experiment (N=257) tested the hypothesis that as group members identify more strongly with their group (salience) their evaluations of leadership effectiveness become more strongly influenced by the extent to which their demographic stereotype-based impressions of their leader match the norm of the group (prototypicality). Participants, with more or less traditional gender attitudes (orientation), were members, under high or low group salience conditions (salience), of non-interactive laboratory groups that had instrumental or expressive group norms (norm), and a male or female leader (leader gender). As predicted, these four variables interacted significantly to affect perceptions of leadership effectiveness. Reconfiguration of the eight conditions formed by orientation, norm and leader gender produced a single prototypicality variable. Irrespective of participant gender, prototypical leaders were considered more effective in high then low salience groups, and in high salience groups prototypical leaders were more effective than less prototypical leaders. Alternative explanations based on status characteristics and role incongruity theory do not account well for the findings. Implications of these results for the glass ceiling effect and for a wider social identity analysis of the impact of demographic group membership on leadership in small groups are discussed. (c) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Social identity, self-categorization, and the communication of group norms

We articulate the role of norms within the social identity perspective as a basis for theorizing a number of manifestly communicative phenomena. We describe how group norms are cognitively represented as context-dependent prototypes that capture the distinctive properties of groups. The same process that governs the psychological salience of different prototypes, and thus generates group normative behavior, can be used to understand the formation, perception, and diffusion of norms, and also how some group members, for example, leaders, have more normative influence than others. life illustrate this process across a number of phenomena and make suggestions for future interfaces between the social identity perspective and communication research. We believe that the social identity approach represents a truly integrative force for the communication discipline.

Contesting gender stereotypes stimulates generalized fairness in the selection of leaders

Exposure to counter-stereotypic gender role models (e.g., a woman engineer) has been shown to successfully reduce the application of biased gender stereotypes. We tested the hypothesis that such efforts may more generally lessen the application of stereotypic knowledge in other (non-gendered) domains. Specifically, based on the notion that counter-stereotypes can stimulate a lesser reliance on heuristic thinking, we predicted that contesting gender stereotypes would eliminate a more general group prototypicality bias in the selection of leaders. Three studies supported this hypothesis. After exposing participants to a counter-stereotypic gender role model, group prototypicality no longer predicted leadership evaluation and selection. We discuss the implications of these findings for groups and organizations seeking to capitalize on the benefits of an increasingly diverse workforce.