Who endorses "think manager-think male"? A within-person examination of masculine and feminine leader stereotypes

Classic evidence for the role congruity effect of masculine leader stereotypes comes from the think manager-think male paradigm (TMTM; Schein, 1973). In the TMTM paradigm, a common set of adjectives is rated by different groups of participants for how well they characterize men in general, women in general, and successful middle managers; then, correlations are calculated at the adjective level of analysis, between different groups. When the “men in general” adjective ratings correlate strongly with the “successful middle manager” adjective ratings—and also when the “women in general” adjective ratings correlate weakly with the “successful middle manager” adjective ratings—the conclusion is drawn that leader stereotypes are more congruent with male stereotypes than with female stereotypes. Meta-analytic evidence supports the general finding (Koenig, Eagly, Mitchell, & Ristikari, 2011). However, the traditional between-persons research design to test this phenomenon—assigning participants to complete ratings for one of three conditions (men in general, women in general, or successful middle manager)—makes it impossible to assess congruity of gender and leader stereotypes at the individual level of analysis. The present dissertation specifies the TMTM gender-leader stereotype congruity phenomenon as a within-person slope in a multilevel model (e.g., men in general adjective ratings predicting successful middle manager adjective ratings, within persons). This multilevel specification enables a novel test of individual differences in TMTM role congruity, permitting the investigation of who endorses masculine leader stereotypes. A set of hypothesized individual difference predictors of gender leader stereotype endorsement (e.g., modern sexism, social dominance orientation) was tested as cross-level interaction effects for the male-leadership stereotypes relationship. Results confirm that masculine leader stereotype endorsement is stronger in magnitude than feminine leader stereotype endorsement. Results also confirm that modern sexism enhances the TMTM within-persons slope. Finally, the generalizability of the TMTM effect to negative forms of leadership (i.e., ineffective managers and abusive managers) was investigated.LimitedAuthor requested closed access (OA after 2yrs) in Vireo ETD syste