Role congruity theory versus expectancy violation theory : women in leadership

The author investigated the conflicting predictions of role congruity theory and expectancy violation theory within the context of elite leadership. Because the current data illustrate female underrepresentation in higher leadership, the principal interest of the study was to determine how prescriptive and descriptive gender stereotypes affect participants' evaluations of female candidates applying to a chief executive officer (CEO) position. The candidates varied on gender and whether they presented agentic or communal traits. The participants indicated their evaluations of candidate competence, likeability, agentic and communal stereotypes, and the level to which they held prescriptive and descriptive stereotypes. The researcher found that participants rated the communal candidate higher in terms of likeability than the agentic candidate regardless of gender. Some tenets of role congruity theory were supported in that male participants indicated that the agentic candidate was more competent when they were male than female and that the communal candidate was more competent when they were female than male. Findings were inconclusive concerning whether descriptive or prescriptive stereotypes had greater influence on attitudes.Thesis (B.?)Honors Colleg