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Think Leader, Think Male and Female: Sex vs. Seating Arrangement as Leadership Cues

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Abstract

This investigation challenged the long-accepted male-oriented ideology of “think male, think leader” by using social and gender identity theoretical frameworks to examine same-gender biases and the situational leadership cue of the end-of-the-table position. In an experiment consisting of 241 undergraduates enrolled in a large southwestern university in the U.S. (105 men, 135 women, and 1 sex unreported), participants viewed diagrams of male and female figures, in either same-sex or mixed-sex groups, and selected a leader. The end-of-the-table cue held, but the 120 participants (74 women, 46 men) shown mixed-sex groups with a man and a woman shown at both ends of a table chose same-gender leaders significantly more than opposite-gender leaders. Whereas the results suggest that the “think leader, think male” ideology still holds among young men, findings also demonstrated a shift away from this ideology among young women.

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Acknowledgement

The authors thank Desiree Cartmill for her assistance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Communication Studies, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 4505 Maryland Parkway, Las Vegas, NV, 89154-4052, USA

    Danielle Jackson, Erika Engstrom & Tara Emmers-Sommer

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  1. Danielle Jackson
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  2. Erika Engstrom
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  3. Tara Emmers-Sommer
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Correspondence to Erika Engstrom.

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Jackson, D., Engstrom, E. & Emmers-Sommer, T. Think Leader, Think Male and Female: Sex vs. Seating Arrangement as Leadership Cues. Sex Roles 57, 713–723 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-007-9289-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-007-9289-y

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