Sex,Attributions,and Leadership: A Brief Review

Abstract

Review of attributional research on female and male leaders leads to the following conclusions: (1) Causal attributions for successful performance and evaluations of performance often differ for female and male leaders. (2) Female leaders are not evaluated or perceived differently from male leaders when engaging in the same behavior. (3) When group performance is high, both female and male leaders are evaluated more highly and seen to engage in more behavior than when group performance is low. (4) Female raters may tend to give higher evaluations to leaders and see more behavior of leaders than male raters.