What We “Say” and What We “Think” About Female Managers: Explicit Versus Implicit Associations of Women With Success

In two studies, we investigated implicit gender stereotypes of successful managers. Using an adaptation of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) named the Successful Manager IAT (SM-IAT) in Study 1, we found that male participants were more likely to implicitly associate men with successful manager traits and women with unsuccessful manager traits compared to reversed pairings. Women, individuals high in internal motivation to respond without sexism, and those low in external motivation to respond without sexism showed positive implicit associations between women and successful manager traits. In contrast, all participants showed positive views of women on workplace-contextualized explicit measures of gender stereotypes. The findings of Study 2 also revealed that implicit gender stereotypes predicted hypothetical workplace outcomes, such that a greater implicit association of men with successful manager traits, and women with unsuccessful manager traits, was linked to increased workplace rewards assigned to male managers by both male and female participants. The findings of our studies have important implications for both gender stereotyping researchers and workplace practitioners. Theoretically, our studies suggest that explicit and implicit stereotypes of female managers diverge, with implicit stereotypes being more likely to highlight traditional, often negative, views of female managers. Our findings point toward a better understanding of female managers' challenges in the workplace.