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Women who are perceived as confident in job interviews also seen as lacking social skills (12/13/2008)

Tags:
gender, women, social skills, perception

A new study in Psychology of Women Quarterly finds that women who present themselves as confident and ambitious in job interviews are viewed as highly competent but also lacking social skills. Women who present themselves as modest and cooperative, while well liked, are perceived as low on competence. By contrast, confident and ambitious male candidates are viewed as both competent and likable and therefore are more likely to be hired as a manager than either confident or modest women.

Julie E. Phelan, Corinne A. Moss-Racusin, and Laurie A. Rudman of Rutgers University taped both male and female applicants interviewing to be a computer lab manager. All applicants presented themselves as competent, but also as either confident and ambitious or modest and cooperative. Participants then evaluated the applicants' competence, social skills, and hirability.

Results show how disparate hiring criteria further discriminates against ambitious, competent women. When judging the ambitious women's hirability, a perceived lack of social skills formed the basis of the hiring decision, and the womens' high competence was relatively neglected. For ambitious men, however, perceived competence and interpersonal skills were weighed equally in the hiring decision. Women were doubly disadvantaged because even when female applicants adhered to stereotypic expectations by presenting themselves as modest, they were unlikely to be hired because evaluators emphasized their relatively low competence and discounted their (high) social skills.

According to this research, women who seek managerial roles face a double bind. In order to be viewed as sufficiently qualified for leadership, they must present themselves as confident and ambitious. But if they do so, they risk prejudice for acting "unfeminine," which can result in hiring discrimination. Thus, in performance settings where confidence and ambition are required to get ahead, men have a clear advantage.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by the Wiley-Blackwell

Comments:

1.	Bunny got Blog
	12/13/2008 12:00:44 PM MST
	Great article and I agree women who are more focused on their careers aren't so much social butterflies. They have to work twice as hard as a man.

2.	Jesseca
	12/13/2008 12:37:45 PM MST
	You completely missed the point. The point is that women, no matter how they present themselves to an prospective employer (or to the person reviewing them for a raise/promotion), are viewed to be lacking in some area. They DO have to work twice as hard as a man to get the same recognition, but that doesn't mean that they are actually as socially incompetent as the interviewer often thinks. It's just a double standard that exists in the workplace that makes it seem that way.

3.	Jenet
	12/13/2008 1:23:31 PM MST
	this is so right about women. I agree to this article

4.	Chris
	12/13/2008 1:36:15 PM MST
	I'm curious about one aspect of the story that wasn't mentioned, but is a crucial component: Who did the evaluations? In order to have been anywhere near competent as a social study, the applicant evaluations must have been either gender-normalized (that is, adjusted to account for likely bias from a predominantly male or predominantly female 'evaluation board', or strictly gender-neutral). My guess is that the board was most likely gender-balanced, and the study proves that even among their peers women are judged differently. An interesting study. I'd like to read more about it.

5.	SparksFly
	12/13/2008 1:50:57 PM MST
	Chris, you are probably correct and I posit that further root cause study would demonstrate those women who would judge a female candidate in such a manner are "victims" of our culture in that they conform to the stereotype created by a patriarchal society in order to avoid being perceived by their male peers in the same manner as the female candidate is perceived by male employers. Jesseca summed it up in her second sentence.

6.	babaganush
	12/13/2008 10:42:18 PM MST
	Women may have to work twice as hard, but they are still getting the same work done as men that are work half as hard during the same time period. I love women, but sometimes they have it rough.