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Women’s evaluation of themselves and others regarding potential in different work environments

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Abstract

Many studies have shown that women's potential is overlooked, but few studies have focused on the perspective of women themselves. From the perspective of women, this study explored judgments regarding the potential of women from the perspective of both evaluators (at personnel hiring position) and actors (at applicant position). The results showed that: (a) from both the evaluators’ perspective and the actors’ perspective, women show potential judgment biases; (b) from the evaluators’ perspective, women were more dependent on gender stereotypes to make job allocation suggestions to their peers, and endorsement of gender stereotypes played a moderating effect in such process; (c) from the actors’ perspective, women were more dependent on the intention of self-improvement to make their own job choice, and temporal focus, rather than endorsement of gender stereotypes, moderated the above relationship. Women seemed to evaluate themselves and other women based on different principles regarding judgments of potential, overlooking potential effect and self-potential realization. This study provided new evidence from the perspective of both evaluators and actors and a new explanation regarding how female participants balanced these different principles. Moreover, it provided important practical insight into personnel decision-making which is potentially helpful in eliminating the neglect of women's potential.

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Data and material involved in this study can be obtained through contacting the corresponding author’s email.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our colleagues and students at CCNU for their kind support.

Funding

The funding was provided by the Major Program of National Social Science Foundation of China (Grand No. 18ZDA331; receiver is Bin Zuo) and the General Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grand No. 32271128; receiver is Fangfang Wen).

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  1. School of Psychology, Center for Studies of Social Psychology, Central China Normal University, No.152, Luoyu Road, Hongshan District, Wuhan, 430079, Hubei Province, China

    Fangfang Wen, Shuhan Ma, Wenlin Ke, Bin Zuo, Yu Ding, Yu Dai, Yuntao Lin & Jing Wang

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  1. Fangfang Wen
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Correspondence to Bin Zuo.

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Wen, F., Ma, S., Ke, W. et al. Women’s evaluation of themselves and others regarding potential in different work environments. Curr Psychol 42, 29996–30007 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03988-x

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