Who Belongs in Business? Implications of Organizational Lay Theories of Intelligence for Women’s Experiences in Companies

By Katherine Emerson and Mary Murphy

A person surveying the leadership of corporate America would undoubtedly notice that women are still hard to find. According to a recent count, women comprise around 15% of board members and executive officers in the Fortune 500 even though they make up about half of the American workforce (Catalyst, 2012). Yet, gender discrimination has been legally prohibited for decades. So why are women still missing from corporate leadership positions?

Stereotype threat theory offers one possible explanation for this representation disparity. According to this theory, when people are from groups that are stigmatized in a particular domain (like business, math, or sports), they experience concerns about being negatively stereotyped that can impede their performance, motivation, and interest in that domain. For example, past work has shown that women are negatively stereotyped in business settings. In America, traits (like competence and assertiveness) that are tied to success in corporate leadership are historically and culturally associated with men and not with women. Given these stereotypes, it is no surprise that women may experience stereotype threat in corporate settings.

There is, however, some good news: not all companies are equally threatening. Instead, situational cues provide information about the specific workplace: Do people like me work here? Are they in charge, or are they relegated to the bottom rungs of the corporate ladder? Does this company embrace group differences or do they only value similarities? In other words, situational cues signal to people whether their group membership may impede their ability to succeed in that workplace.

Our research sought to explore a new cue that might impact whether people experience stereotype threat in business settings: organizational lay theories of intelligence. These theories refer to the shared beliefs of people within a setting—like a workplace or a school—about the nature of intelligence. Some organizations endorse an entity theory, believing that intelligence is a fixed trait that cannot be developed much over the lifespan. These companies communicate the message that only some people are smart and talented, whereas others simply don’t have what it takes to be successful. Other organizations endorse an incremental theory, believing that employees’ abilities can be expanded considerably over time if they work hard, are highly motivated, and persist in the face of challenges and setbacks. Thus, organizational lay theories refer to a part of the organization’s culture, often embedded in corporate policies and practices.

Importantly, we expected that men and women would experience entity and incremental companies differently. Why might this be? If entity companies believe that only some people have the talent necessary to succeed, and stereotypes dictate that women are less competent than men in business settings, then women may experience stereotype threat in them. That is, women may worry that those in entity companies will believe that they as women are less likely to have what it takes to do well, relative to men. In contrast, if incremental companies believe that effort, persistence, and personal growth are the traits that matter for success, and women are not negatively stereotyped along these dimensions, then they may experience less stereotype threat in these companies. Instead, women in incremental companies may believe that, if they demonstrate effort and self-improvement, they will be just as successful as men.

Across three studies, we introduced participants to an ostensible consulting company that endorsed either an entity or incremental lay theory of intelligence. Study 1 was a preliminary test of our hypothesis—would men and women trust these two companies differently? Specifically, we measured participants’ organizational trust after they read a mission statement that reflected either an entity or incremental theory. We found that women trusted the incremental company much more than the entity one; however, this difference in trust was only marginal for men. These findings provided initial evidence that women experience additional concerns when considering an entity (compared to an incremental) company that affect their organizational trust.

In Study 2, we explored two new questions. First, we wanted to more directly test our stereotype threat hypothesis: do women mistrust the entity company because they expect to be stereotyped by those within it? Second, we investigated whether organizational lay theories would impact trust when presented alongside a second situational cue—the number of ingroup members in a setting. Given that numerical representation cues are some of the strongest predictors of stereotype threat, how would organizational lay theories stack up in predicting women’s trust?

This time, participants learned about the consulting company via a website. The website’s text reflected the company’s lay theories of intelligence. Numerical representation was displayed in the website’s photographs, reflecting either a 3:1 or 1:1 ratio of male to female employees. New to this study, we measured participants’ stereotype expectations by asking them how likely they thought that the company would perceive them as successful in business—as competent, assertive, qualified, etc. The results surprised us: only organizational lay theories—and not numerical representation—predicted women’s experiences. Specifically, women—but not men—trusted the entity company less than the incremental company because they expected to be perceived as less competent by its management. Now we had more evidence that organizational lay theories of intelligence powerfully shape women’s experiences of stereotype threat when evaluating business contexts.

One way that stereotype threat can exacerbate underrepresentation of stigmatized groups is by leading people to disengage from difficult tasks in the stigmatized domain. Although this disidentification allows people to protect their self-esteem, particularly when they perform poorly, it also means that they are unlikely to persist in environments where they are stigmatized. Would women defensively disengage from the threatening entity company? In a final experiment, we told participants that they would meet with a company representative after the study. Immediately before this ostensible meeting, we asked them to imagine that the meeting went poorly, and to select from possible reasons to explain their poor performance. As we predicted, women defensively disengaged more from the entity (vs. incremental) company—by claiming that they lacked interest and motivation in the meeting. Further analyses showed that, again, women were particularly likely to mistrust the entity (vs. incremental) company; moreover, it was their mistrust of the entity company that led them to defensively disengage.

Our work is the first to identity the role of organizational lay theories in women’s experiences of stereotype threat in business contexts. Interestingly, virtually all of the stereotype threat cues in the literature—from numerical representation to diversity philosophies—have one thing in common: they explicitly mention group membership (e.g., one’s gender or race). However, this research suggests that workplaces also contain cues that influence stereotype threat without explicitly mentioning group differences. Instead, companies can value certain attributes like intelligence and ability that happen to be stereotypically associated more with particular groups (e.g., men vs. women). Thus, companies hoping to recruit and retain a broader, more inclusive workforce should consider how they construe success and ability, as it may play an important role in shaping their employees’ experiences.

Citation:

Emerson, K. T. U. & Murphy, M. C. (2015). A company I can trust? Organizational lay theories moderate stereotype threat for women. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41, 295-307. doi: 10.1177/0146167214564969

Author Biographies:

Katherine Emerson is a 6th year Ph.D. student of social psychology at Indiana University. Her research explores how situational cues shape the thoughts, feelings, motivation, and behavior of people from majority and minority groups.

Mary Murphy is an Assistant Professor of social psychology at Indiana University. Her varied research interests focus on prejudice, stereotyping, and social identity threat in organizations and educational institutions.