Gender Stereotyping of Leadership Behaviors: Social Metacognitive Evidence

Gender stereotyping of leadership behaviors is pervasive. Although women and men show few differences in leadership behaviors, experienced male managers rate male and female managers’ leadership qualities differently. Participants in this study comprised 107 women and 103 men with little or no management experience. They were asked to estimate how experienced male managers had previously rated women and men on 14 leadership behaviors. We compared these data to those previous data. The participants made social-metacognitive estimates accurately: Their estimates correlated with the previous ratings made by experienced male managers, even though the male managers had access to actual workplace observations. Thus, stereotyping in organizations involves gender stereotypes rather than actual workplace observations. People stereotype other people in organizations because they import stereotypes from non-organizational settings.