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Originalia

Kognitive Gleichstellung

Wie die bloße Abbildung bekannter weiblicher und männlicher Führungskräfte unser implizites Denken zu Führung beeinflusst

Published Online:June 25, 2010https://doi.org/10.1026/0932-4089/a000020

Abstract

Beim Erklimmen der Karriereleiter haben Frauen nach wie vor viele Hürden zu überwinden. Zur Erklärung einiger dieser Hürden verweist die Forschung auf Arbeiten zu impliziten Führungstheorien. Diese zeigen, dass bei den meisten Personen die Konzepte „Frau“ und „Führung“ schlechter kognitiv miteinander assoziiert sind als die Konzepte „Mann“ und „Führung“. Als Konsequenz, so der Schluss dieser Arbeiten, fällt es Personen im Vergleich schwerer, Frauen als Führungskräfte zu kategorisieren und entsprechend auf diese zu reagieren. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird untersucht, ob eine inkongruente Stimulation diesem diskriminierenden impliziten Assoziationsmuster entgegenwirken kann. Die Resultate unseres Experimentes mit einem Impliziten Assoziationstest (IAT; N = 77) zeigen, dass Probanden nach Vorlage von Bildern bekannter weiblicher Führungskräfte Frauen ähnlich schnell mit Führung assoziieren können wie Männer. Dieser Effekt trat allerdings stärker bei den Teilnehmerinnen auf, während bei den Teilnehmern keine signifikante Veränderung in der Reaktionszeit gefunden wurde. Hierauf aufbauend diskutieren wir, welche Rolle Bilder im Rahmen von organisationalen Gleichstellungsbestrebungen, beispielsweise als Teil der Unternehmenskommunikation, einnehmen können.


Cognitive equal opportunities: How the mere presentation of renowned female and male leaders affects our implicit thinking on leadership

When climbing the corporate ladder, women still have to overcome many obstacles. In trying to explain some of these obstacles, research points towards studies on Implicit Leadership Theories (ILTs). These suggest that the concepts of “woman” and “leadership” are cognitively less associated than the concepts of “man” and “leadership.” The consequence, so the conclusion of these studies, is that it is harder for people to categorize women as leaders and react accordingly towards them. The present study investigates whether such implicit discriminatory association patterns can be fought with incongruent stimulus material. The results of our experiment using an Implicit Association Test (IAT; N = 77) suggest that, after presenting pictures of renowned female leaders, participants associate women with leadership as fast as they do men. This effect, however, shows stronger for females in the sample, while no significant change was found in male participants’ reaction times. Based upon these results, we discuss the role pictures may play in organizational equal opportunity programs, for instance, as part of organizational communication.

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