Effects of Stereotype Threat on Women’s Leadership Aspirations and Affective Responses: The Role of Stigma Consciousness

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the role of stereotype threat and the moderating role of gender stigma consciousness on women’s leadership aspiration, leadership career goal, social self-esteem, and negative affect across two experimental studies in Türkiye. We expected the detrimental effects of streotype threat to be experienced by those with high gender stigma consciousness. The first study, involving 130 female undergraduates (M_age = 20.7, SD = 4.4), presented implicit stereotype threat and showed that the threat increased the interest of team membership and women low in stigma consciousness reported higher leadership career goals than those high in stigma consciousness. The second study, conducted with 90 female undergraduates (M_age = 20.6, SD = 1.6), presented explicit stereotype threat and showed that the explicit threat had negative effect on leadership aspiration, and women high in stigma consciousness felt more negative affect and less social self-esteem due to threat than those who were low. The present research contributes to the women’s leadership literature by identifying for the first time the role of stigma consciousness in the motivational and affective consequences of stereotype threat.

Keywords

stereotype threat leadership implicit-explicit threat gender stigma consciousness

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