Abstract
The present studies investigated whether the gender composition of a group represents a sufficient situational cue for creating a mismatch between situationally accessible and ideal self-views. A longitudinal study of 333 employees revealed that being in the numerical minority implied a mismatch with ideal self-views among those who de-emphasized independence in their chronic self-construal, whereas being in the numerical majority constituted a mismatch with ideal self-views among those who emphasized independence. Both types of employees suffered a drop in self-esteem and adopted maladaptive motivational states, namely performance-avoidance goals. The observed deleterious effect of mismatched self-construal on goal pursuit was fully mediated by a perceived lack of acceptance (low social self-esteem). We replicated these findings in a laboratory study with 268 unacquainted individuals who collaborated in small groups on a non-gender-typed group task.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
