Unnecessary Frills: Communality as a Nice (But Expendable) Trait in Leaders

Vial, Andrea C.; Napier, Jaime L.

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01866

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol., 15 October 2018

Sec. Personality and Social Psychology

Volume 9 - 2018 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01866

This article is part of the Research Topic Gender Roles in the Future? Theoretical Foundations and Future Research Directions View all 18 articles

Unnecessary Frills: Communality as a Nice (But Expendable) Trait in Leaders

$\r\nAndrea C. Vial*&#x;$ Andrea C. Vial^1*†

Jaime L. Napier^2†

¹Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, United States
²Department of Psychology, New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Although leader role expectations appear to have become relatively more compatible with stereotypically feminine attributes like empathy, women continue to be highly underrepresented in leadership roles. We posit that one reason for this disparity is that, whereas stereotypically feminine traits are appreciated as nice “add-ons” for leaders, it is stereotypically masculine attributes that are valued as the defining qualities of the leader role, especially by men (who are often the gatekeepers to these roles). We assessed men’s and women’s idea of a great leader with a focus on gendered attributes in two studies using different methodologies. In Study 1, we employed a novel paradigm in which participants were asked to design their “ideal leader” to examine the potential trade-off between leadership characteristics that were more stereotypically masculine (i.e., agency) and feminine (i.e., communality). Results showed that communality was valued in leaders only after meeting the more stereotypically masculine requirements of the role (i.e., competence and assertiveness), and that men in particular preferred leaders who were more competent (vs. communal), whereas women desired leaders who kept negative stereotypically masculine traits in check (e.g., arrogance). In Study 2, we conducted an experiment to examine men’s and women’s beliefs about the traits that would be important to help them personally succeed in a randomly assigned leader (vs. assistant) role, allowing us to draw a causal link between roles and trait importance. We found that both men and women viewed agentic traits as more important than communal traits to be a successful leader. Together, both studies make a valuable contribution to the social psychological literature on gender stereotyping and bias against female leaders and may illuminate the continued scarcity of women at the very top of organizations, broadly construed.

Introduction

It has been argued that stereotypically feminine traits like communality will define 21st century leaders, and women and men with these attributes will rule the future (Gerzema and D’Antonio, 2013). However, despite the embracing of so-called feminine management, women continue to be highly underrepresented in top executive roles (Catalyst, 2018), and bias against female leaders persists (Eagly and Heilman, 2016; Gupta et al., 2018). We posit that one reason for this disparity is that, whereas communality is appreciated as a nice “add-on” for leaders, it is stereotypically masculine attributes related to agency, such as competence and assertiveness, that are valued as the defining qualities of the leader role, especially by men (who are often the gatekeepers to these roles). We examined this premise in two studies in which we assessed men’s and women’s idea of a great leader with a focus on gendered attributes.

Although leadership is associated with masculine stereotypes (Schein, 1973; Koenig et al., 2011), this association appears to have weakened somewhat over time (Duehr and Bono, 2006). For example, a meta-analysis that examined the extent to which stereotypes of leaders aligned with stereotypes of men revealed that the masculine construal of leadership decreased significantly between the early 1970s and the late 2000s, as people increasingly associate leadership with more feminine relational qualities (Koenig et al., 2011). One reason for this change is the slow but noticeable surge during this period in the number of management roles occupied by women. It is possible that the raising presence of women in management roles may have reduced the tendency to associate leadership with men, given that women tend to lead differently than men (Eagly et al., 2003), and exposure to counterstereotypic individuals tends to reduce implicit biases (Dasgupta and Asgari, 2004; Beaman et al., 2009). Another reason why leadership perceptions may over time have become more androgynous (i.e., involving more stereotypically feminine in addition to stereotypically masculine qualities) is that the organizational hierarchy has flattened over time (Bass, 1999) and has come to require less directive, top-down approaches to leadership (Eagly, 2007; Gerzema and D’Antonio, 2013).

Effective leadership, which can be highly contextual (Bass, 1999), is thought to be generally participative and transformational (Bass and Riggio, 2006). Transformational leadership styles, which involve motivating, stimulating, and inspiring followers (Burns, 1978; Mhatre and Riggio, 2014), are associated with increased morale and performance at various organizational levels (Wang et al., 2011). They are also associated with female leaders somewhat more so than with male leaders (Eagly et al., 2003; Dezso and Ross, 2011; Vinkenburg et al., 2011) and tend to be viewed as relatively more feminine than autocratic or transactional styles (Stempel et al., 2015). Indeed, there is evidence that transformational leaders tend to blend masculinity and femininity and are overall more androgynous (Kark et al., 2012). Management scholars thus recognize that effective leadership combines both agency-related and communal behaviors and traits (Bass, 1999; Judge and Piccolo, 2004), which are consistently associated with men and women, respectively (Burgess and Borgida, 1999; Prentice and Carranza, 2002). Given a trend toward ever more collaborative work environments in the digital age (Bersin et al., 2017), traits and behaviors typically associated with women such as cooperation and sensitivity to others’ needs (Prentice and Carranza, 2002) are sometimes praised as the future of leadership (Gerzema and D’Antonio, 2013).

However, even though leader role expectations may be relatively more feminine today than 40 or 50 years ago (Koenig et al., 2011), women who aspire to top leadership positions continue to be at a considerable disadvantage. For example, women tend to be overrepresented in support and administrative roles (Blau et al., 2013; Hegewisch and Hartmann, 2014), but continue to occupy less than half of management positions—they comprised about 34.1% of general and operations managers in 2017 according to the Current Population Survey (U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2018). The proportion of women is lower in executive positions that confer major decision-making power: They occupied only 28% of chief executive roles in 2017 (U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2018), and a mere 5% when considering S&P 500 companies, the largest, most profitable firms in the United States (Catalyst, 2018). Although these patterns are likely to result from a variety of factors, including gender differences in interests, goals, and aspirations (Reskin et al., 1999; Diekman and Eagly, 2008; Schneider et al., 2016), there is substantial evidence that at least some of this disparity is due to gender bias (Rudman, 1998; Heilman et al., 2004; Heilman and Okimoto, 2007; Phelan et al., 2008; Rudman et al., 2012).

Bias against female leaders is likely multiply determined. On one hand, it may reflect social conservatism and antifeminist attitudes (Forsyth et al., 1997; Rudman and Kilianski, 2000; Hoyt and Simon, 2016) and a tendency to maintain the traditional status quo where women serve primarily as caretakers (Rudman et al., 2012). For example, different attitudes toward the role of women in society predict liberals’ and conservatives’ disparate levels of support for female job candidates (Hoyt, 2012). On the other hand, bias against female leaders has also been connected to the perceived relative incongruity (Eagly and Karau, 2002) or lack of fit (Heilman, 1983, 2001, 2012) between the traits typically associated with women and the traditional female gender role and the traits ascribed to the leader role. This low perceived correspondence between feminine stereotypes and leader roles makes women appear unsuitable for authority positions. Moreover, when women demonstrate the kinds of attributes that are deemed requisite for effective leadership (e.g., agency) they sometimes elicit penalties for violating gender role expectations (Heilman and Okimoto, 2007; Rudman et al., 2012; Williams and Tiedens, 2016). The effect of gender stereotypes can make it difficult for women to thrive in leadership roles (Vial et al., 2016), and can compound over time and slow women’s advancement in organizational hierarchies (Agars, 2004).

The persistence of bias against female leaders (Eagly and Heilman, 2016) appears in direct conflict with the increased valorization of more androgynous leadership styles that draw from communal, traditionally feminine traits and behaviors (Eagly, 2007; Judge and Piccolo, 2004; Judge et al., 2004; Gerzema and D’Antonio, 2013). This apparent contradiction is the focus of the current investigation, in which we test the idea that communal traits are appreciated in leaders primarily as an accessory or complement to other, more agentic qualities that tend to be viewed as more essential and defining of the leader role. We examined the trade-off that people make when thinking about agency and communality in relation to the leader role, testing the prediction that communal traits are valued in leaders only after reaching sufficient levels of agentic (i.e., more stereotypically masculine) traits. As such, even when leader role expectations may also comprise communal traits (Koenig et al., 2011), agentic traits might still be considered the hallmark of leadership—necessary and sufficient to lead. Communal attributes, in contrast, may be appreciated as nice but relatively more superfluous complements for leaders.

Moreover, even when more communal leadership styles may be increasingly appreciated (Eagly, 2007; Judge and Piccolo, 2004; Judge et al., 2004; Gerzema and D’Antonio, 2013), we propose that the people who most value it happen to be women, who are typically not the gatekeepers to top organizational positions of prestige and authority. There is meta-analytic evidence that the masculine leadership construal tends to be stronger for male versus female participants (Boyce and Herd, 2003; Koenig et al., 2011). Furthermore, compared to women, men evaluate female leaders as less ambitious, competent, intelligent, etc. (Deal and Stevenson, 1998; Vial et al., 2018), and are less likely to select female job candidates (Gorman, 2005; Bosak and Sczesny, 2011; Koch et al., 2015). Thus, the concentration of men in top decision-making roles such as corporate boards and chief executive offices (Catalyst, 2018) may be self-sustaining because men in particular tend to devalue more communal styles of leadership (Eagly et al., 1992; Ayman et al., 2009). In contrast, given that communal traits are more strongly associated with their gender in-group (Burgess and Borgida, 1999; Prentice and Carranza, 2002), women may show more of an appreciation for these traits compared to men (e.g., Dovidio and Gaertner, 1993). In the current studies, we compared men’s and women’s preferences for communality and agency in leaders.

As stated earlier, the underrepresentation of women in top leadership roles is likely to stem not only from bias against female leaders (Heilman and Okimoto, 2007) but also from women’s relatively low interest in pursuing these roles in comparison to men (Diekman and Eagly, 2008; Lawless and Fox, 2010; Schneider et al., 2016). Stereotypes linking leadership with men and communal roles with women might have a negative impact on women’s sense of belongingness and self-efficacy in leadership roles (Hoyt and Blascovich, 2010; Hoyt and Simon, 2011). For example, women report lower desire to pursue leadership roles after being exposed to stereotypic media images (Simon and Hoyt, 2013). If communal traits are overall seen as “unnecessary frills” in leaders, as we propose, and if women place higher importance on being communal when they occupy a leadership role relative to men, such mismatch might discourage women from pursuing top leadership positions (Heilman, 2001). Thus, in addition to investigating whether men and women value agency and communality differently in leaders, we also considered how much they would personally value such traits if they were to occupy a leadership role.

Overview of Research

We conducted two studies to assess men’s and women’s idea of a great leader with a focus on gendered attributes. In Study 1, we examined the attributes that men and women viewed as requisite (vs. superfluous) for ideal leaders. In Study 2, we conducted an experiment to examine men’s and women’s beliefs about the traits that would be important to help them personally succeed in a randomly assigned leader (vs. assistant) role. In both studies, we measured trait dimensions related to gender roles and leadership including competence and assertiveness (i.e., agency) as well as communality. Agency and communality represent two basic dimensions of person perception and judgments of the self, others, and groups (Fiske et al., 2007; Abele et al., 2016). Agency is typically perceived as more self-profitable than communality, which is more often viewed as benefitting others and, as a result, communality tends to be more valued in others versus the self, whereas the reverse is true for agency (Abele and Wojciszke, 2007). Thus, it is possible that people value communality relatively more when evaluating others (vs. the self) in leadership roles. Here, we investigated how much men and women valued agency and communality when thinking about another in a leader role (Study 1) and when thinking of the self as a leader (Study 2).

Study 1 examined the notion that communal attributes are viewed as highly desirable in leaders—but only after more basic requirements have been met, which map strongly onto stereotypical masculinity (i.e., agency). Past research has examined the extent to which various attributes were seen as relevant to the leader role—either generally characteristic of leaders or typical of successful leaders (e.g., Schein, 1973; Powell and Butterfield, 1979; Brenner et al., 1989; Boyce and Herd, 2003; Sczesny, 2003; Sczesny et al., 2004; Fischbach et al., 2015). However, in those studies, participants rated traits one at a time and in absolute terms (e.g., “please rate each word or phrase in terms of how characteristic it is,” on a 5-point scale; Brenner et al., 1989, p. 664). These absolute ratings may mask the potential trade-offs between different traits when evaluating a specific person, whose traits come in bundles (Li et al., 2002).

Specifically, the importance of communal characteristics for leaders may depend on levels of other traits (Li et al., 2002, 2011; Li and Kenrick, 2006), and participants considering such traits in isolation might assume acceptable levels on other desirable attributes (e.g., agency). For example, although communality might make someone desirable as a leader, communality might be considered irrelevant if a leader is insufficiently agentic. We investigated these potential trade-offs in Study 1.

In addition to agency and communality, we included traits that were negative in valence and stereotypically masculine (e.g., arrogant) and feminine (e.g., emotional) in content. Past investigations suggest that negative masculine stereotypes, which map onto a “dominance” dimension and are related to status attainment (Cheng et al., 2013), are strongly proscribed for women (Prentice and Carranza, 2002; Hess et al., 2005). Moreover, a number of investigations have revealed that dominance perceptions play a crucial role in bias against female leaders, who are often viewed as domineering and controlling (Rudman and Glick, 1999; see also Williams and Tiedens, 2016). Similarly, a recent review suggests that negative feminine stereotypes about the presumed greater emotionality of women relative to men (Shields, 2013) are closely linked to bias against female leaders (Brescoll, 2016). For example, men in general tend to be described as more similar to successful managers in emotion expression than are women in general (Fischbach et al., 2015). Thus, in Study 1, we examined participants’ interest in minimizing these negative traits when designing their ideal leader.

In Study 2, we examined whether people’s leader role expectations differ when they think of themselves occupying that position. Many past investigations have compared perceptions of men and women in general with perceptions of successful managers (Schein, 1973; Powell and Butterfield, 1979; Heilman et al., 1995; Schein et al., 1996; Powell et al., 2002; Boyce and Herd, 2003; Duehr and Bono, 2006; Fischbach et al., 2015). Other studies have documented perceptions of successful male and female managers (Dodge et al., 1995; Heilman et al., 1995; Deal and Stevenson, 1998). We extend this prior work by directly assigning men and women to a leader role (versus an assistant role) and testing which kinds of attributes they view as important for them to be personally successful in that role. The random assignment of men and women to a leader role allowed us to draw a causal link between occupying a leadership role and differentially valuing communality and agency.

In both studies, we compared the responses of men and women, seeking to better understand how their leader-role expectations differ (Koenig et al., 2011). Past work suggests that individuals may generally prefer the kinds of attributes that are viewed as characteristic of their gender in-groups (Dovidio and Gaertner, 1993), and women compared to men have been found to possess less masculine leader-role expectations (Boyce and Herd, 2003; Koenig et al., 2011) and to value female leaders more (Kwon and Milgrom, 2010; Vial et al., 2018). Thus, we were interested in testing whether women might show higher appreciation for communal attributes in leaders in comparison to men.

Study 1: Requisite and Superfluous Traits for Ideal Leaders

We tested the notion that communal traits are viewed as desirable in leaders—but only after more basic requirements have been met, namely, agency. We examined participants’ preferences for the kinds of traits that would characterize the ideal leader by using a methodology that was originally developed to study mate preferences (Li et al., 2002). This method essentially compares the extent to which different traits are desirable as choices become increasingly constrained, helping distinguish the attributes that are considered truly essential or fundamental in a mate (or in our case, a leader), from traits that are considered luxuries. “Luxury” traits might ultimately be superfluous if the essential attributes (or “necessities”) are not met. Conceptually, traits that are viewed as necessities tend to be favored when choices are constrained. As constraints are lifted, fewer resources are devoted to traits that are considered necessities, and more resources are allocated to luxuries.

This approach is apt to reveal the perceived trade-offs between more stereotypically feminine (i.e., communal) and masculine (i.e., agentic) leadership characteristics. By directly examining these trade-offs and identifying necessities and luxuries, we hope to clarify the seeming conflict between the increased valorization of more androgynous leadership styles that draw from traits and behaviors traditionally associated with women (Judge and Piccolo, 2004; Gerzema and D’Antonio, 2013) and the persistence of male bias (Eagly and Heilman, 2016).

We predicted that compared to communal traits, agentic traits would be rated as more of a necessity for an ideal leader, or, in other words, that communality would be treated as more of a luxury than agency. We measured two facets of agency separately, namely competence and assertiveness (Abele et al., 2016). Following Li et al. (2002), we assigned participants increasingly smaller budgets that they were instructed to use to “purchase” different traits to design their ideal leader. Participants made tradeoffs first between traits denoting competence and communality, and then between traits denoting assertiveness and communality. We expected that as people’s budgets got smaller, they would prioritize competence and assertiveness over communality.

Finally, to examine the kinds of attributes that people may find intolerable in leaders, we also included negative traits, which map onto relaxed proscriptions (Prentice and Carranza, 2002) for men (e.g., arrogant, stubborn) and women (e.g., emotional, weak). We anticipated that participants might be especially interested in minimizing negative traits that people more commonly associate with men than with women (such as arrogant) as these traits align with the culturally prevalent idea that “power corrupts” (Kipnis, 1972; Keltner et al., 2003; Inesi et al., 2012). In contrast, negative feminine stereotypes, while generally undesirable (Prentice and Carranza, 2002), are not seen as typical of those in top positions, and thus people may be less concerned with curbing these attributes when thinking about an ideal leader. Therefore, we expected to find that participants’ responses would reflect a priority to minimize negative traits more stereotypically associated with men over negative traits stereotypically associated with women.

We also considered whether participants would show more of an appreciation for positive traits that are stereotypically seen as characteristic of their gender in-group than positive stereotypes of a gender out-group (e.g., Dovidio and Gaertner, 1993). Thus, we expected female participants to rate communal traits as more necessary than male participants, whereas male participants were expected to see agentic traits (competence and assertiveness) as more necessary than female participants. These predictions also align with past research suggesting that women endorse less masculine leader stereotypes than men (Boyce and Herd, 2003; Koenig et al., 2011) and are more supportive of female leaders (Kwon and Milgrom, 2010; Vial et al., 2018). Additionally, participants were expected to show less of an aversion for negative traits that are stereotypical of their gender in-group than negative stereotypes of a gender out-group—that is, we expected female participants to see it as more of a priority to reduce negative traits commonly associated with men than male participants, whereas male participants were expected to prioritize minimizing negative feminine stereotypes more so than female participants.

Method

Participants

Power analysis performed with G^∗Power 3.1 (Faul et al., 2007) indicated the need for at least 162 participants to have adequate power (1-β = 0.80) to detect small to medium effect sizes (f = 0.175) for the main effects of budget, participant gender, and their interaction for each of three lists of traits. In total, 281 participants took part in the study via Amazon Mechanical Turk (Mturk). The study was described to potential Mturk participants (i.e., those with at least 85% approval rates) as a short survey on work-related attitudes and impressions of other people, in which participants would be asked to read some materials and answer some questions about their experiences, beliefs, and attitudes. The study took approximately 5 minutes and participants were compensated $0.55. Eight participants (2.8%) indicated that some of their answers were meant as jokes or were random. We report analyses excluding these 8 participants (n = 273; mean age = 35.94, SD = 11.73; 57.5% female; 76.2% White). One participant did not indicate gender (0.4%).

Procedure

Participants were asked to think about the attributes that would make someone an ideal leader. We asked them to design their ideal leader by purchasing traits from three different lists, and we gave participants a set budget of “leader dollars” that they could spend at their discretion. Each of the three lists contained 10 traits in random order, and participants could spend up to 10 dollars on each trait. For each list of traits, participants were first asked to allocate 60 leader dollars between the 10 traits. Then, participants were asked to do this exercise again two more times, first with a budget of 40 leader dollars, and then with a budget of 20 leader dollars. All stimuli are reported in full in Appendix A.

The first list of traits included five agentic/competence traits (capable, competent, confident, common sense, intelligent) and five communal traits (good-natured, sincere, tolerant, happy, trustworthy). The second list included five agentic/assertive traits (ambitious, assertive, competitive, decisive, self-reliant) and an additional five communal traits (cooperative, patient, polite, sensitive, cheerful). The third list included five negative masculine stereotypes (arrogant, controlling, rebellious, cynical, stubborn) and five negative feminine stereotypes (emotional, naïve, shy, weak, yielding), as classified by Prentice and Carranza (2002). The instructions for the third list were slightly different from the first two lists, as participants were asked to indicate how much they would pay so that their ideal leader would not possess each of the 10 negative traits. At the end of the study, all participants were asked basic demographic questions (e.g., age, race), and received a debriefing letter. In both studies, prior to debriefing, we asked participants to indicate whether any of their answers were random or meant as jokes (“yes” or “no”). We reassured participants that they would receive full compensation regardless of their answers to encourage honest responding.

Analytic Strategy

We first computed the proportion of each overall budget that was allocated to agency/competence versus communality, agency/assertiveness versus communality, and negative masculine versus feminine stereotypes. For the first two, we combined the amounts allocated to agentic traits (competence or assertiveness) for each budget and computed the total proportion such that higher scores indicated a larger proportion of the budget was allocated to agency (competence or assertiveness) versus communality. We followed the same procedure for the negative traits, where higher scores indicated a larger proportion of the budget allocated to eliminate negative traits stereotypically associated with men over those associated with women.

As the budget expands, people allocate an increasingly smaller proportion of their extra income to necessities and spend a larger proportion of income on luxuries. In order to investigate which trait categories were seen as necessities and which were seen as luxuries, we followed Li et al.’s (2002) analytic strategy and compared participant allocations in the low budget (i.e., 20 leader dollars) with how they allocated their last 20 leader dollars. We computed the allocation of the last 20 dollars by subtracting the amount purchased in the medium budget (40 dollars) from that of the high budget (60 dollars), and then divided by 20. This strategy is similar to asking participants how they would allocate an additional 20 leader dollars after they have already spent 40. We submitted the proportion scores for the first 20 and the last 20 leader dollars as repeated measures in three separate Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) tests, one for each trait category (i.e., competence/communality, assertiveness/communality, and negative masculine/feminine stereotypes), with participant gender as between-subjects factor.

Results

We examined the bivariate associations between the proportion of budgets allocated to the different sets of traits at the three budget levels. Across budgets, the proportion spent to gain competence (vs. communality) was significantly positively associated with the proportion spent to gain assertiveness (vs. communality) (correlations ranging from r = 0.47 to r = 0.39, all ps < 0.001, depending on budget.) Additionally, across budgets, the proportion spent to gain competence (vs. communality) was significantly negatively associated with the proportion spent to minimize negative traits that are more stereotypically masculine (vs. feminine) (correlations ranging from r = -0.33 to r = -0.15, all ps < 0.001, depending on budget). The same pattern emerged even more strongly for the association between the proportions spent to gain assertiveness (vs. communality) and the proportions spent to minimize negative traits that are more stereotypically masculine (vs. feminine) (correlations ranging from r = -0.47 to r = -0.41, all ps < 0.001, depending on budget). In other words, these bivariate correlations suggest that a stronger preference for agency (competence or assertiveness) over communality was associated with a weaker desire to reduce negative masculine traits over negative feminine traits. (Partial correlations controlling for participant gender revealed the same patterns).

Competence Versus Communality

There was a significant effect of budget for the competence/communality traits list, F(1,270) = 2780.21, p < 0.001, η_p² = 0.911, such that the difference in the proportion allocated to competence relative to communality was higher for the first 20 dollars (M = 0.59, SD = 0.18) compared to the last 20 dollars (M = -0.001, SD = 0.004), M_D = 0.60, SE = 0.011, 95% CI[0.573, 0.618]. This pattern is consistent with participants viewing competence as more of a necessity and communality as more of a luxury. There was also a significant main effect of participant gender, F(1,270) = 5.50, p = 0.020, η_p² = 0.020, and a significant interaction between participant gender and budget, F(1,270) = 5.51, p = 0.020, η_p² = 0.020. Men and women differed in their allocation of their first 20 dollars, such that men prioritized competence over communality (M = 0.62, SD = 0.19), to a significantly higher extent than women (M = 0.57, SD = 0.17), M_D = 0.05, SE = 0.022, 95% CI[0.008, 0.097], p = 0.020, η_p² = 0.020. However, men and women allocated the last 20 dollars in a similar way, M_D = -0.001, SE = 0.001, 95% CI[0.000, 0.002], p = 0.290, η_p² = 0.004.

The ideal proportions of competence/communality as a function of budget are presented in Figure 1A. As can be seen in the figure, for all three budgets, male as well as female participants spent more on competence traits than on communal traits, and this difference became larger as options became more constrained (i.e., as the budget became smaller). While men’s and women’s allocations were more similar for the high and medium budgets, when the budget became smaller, men’s preference for competence over communality (62% vs. 38% of the budget) was stronger than women’s (57% vs. 43% of the budget). In other words, the tendency to view competence as more of a necessity than communality was apparent in both men and women, and men valued competence over communality more strongly than women when choices were constrained.

FIGURE 1

FIGURE 1. Ideal percentages for the three trait categories as a function of budget and participant gender in Study 1. Error bars represent the standard error of the mean. (A) Ideal percentages of the budget allocated to maximizing competence versus communality. (B) Ideal percentages of the budget allocated to maximizing assertiveness versus communality. (C) Ideal percentages of the budget allocated to minimizing negative masculine versus feminine stereotypes.

Assertiveness Versus Communality

There was also a significant effect of budget for the assertiveness/communality traits list, F(1,270) = 1428.82, p < 0.001, η_p² = 0.841, such that the difference in the proportion allocated to assertive over communal traits was significantly higher for the first 20 dollars (M = 0.51, SD = 0.22) compared to the last 20 dollars (M = -0.0005, SD = 0.005), M_D = 0.51, SE = 0.014, 95% CI[0.488, 0.542]. There was no significant main effect of gender, F(1,270) = 1.49, p = 0.223, η_p² = 0.005, and, contrary to predictions, the interaction between budget and participant gender was not significant, F(1,270) = 1.45, p = 0.229, η_p² = 0.005. The ideal proportions of assertive versus communal traits as a function of budget are presented in Figure 1B. As can be seen in the figure, as the budget became smaller, participants spent slightly but reliably more on assertive traits than on communal traits. This pattern is consistent with participants viewing assertiveness as more of a necessity and communality as more of a luxury.

Negative Masculine/Feminine Stereotypes

Finally, there was a significant effect of budget for the last list of traits focused on negative masculine/feminine stereotypes, F(1,270) = 1760.12, p < 0.001, η_p² = 0.867. The difference in the proportion allocated to minimizing negative masculine stereotypes relative to negative feminine stereotypes was higher for the first 20 dollars (M = 0.62, SD = 0.24) compared to the last 20 dollars (M = -0.002, SD = 0.005), M_D = 0.62, SE = 0.015, 95% CI[0.586, 0.646]. This pattern is consistent with participants viewing the minimization of negative masculine stereotypes as more of a necessity and the minimization of negative feminine stereotypes as more of a luxury. There was a significant main effect of participant gender, F(1,270) = 9.22, p = 0.003, η_p² = 0.033, and a significant interaction between participant gender and budget, F(1,270) = 8.74, p = 0.003, η_p² = 0.031. Men and women differed in their allocation of the first 20 dollars, such that women prioritized the minimization of negative masculine over feminine stereotypes (M = 0.66, SD = 0.24) to a significantly higher extent than men (M = 0.57, SD = 0.24), M_D = 0.09, SE = 0.030, 95% CI[0.031, 0.148], p = 0.003, η_p² = 0.032. Men and women allocated the last 20 dollars in a similar way, M_D = 0.001, SE = 0.001, 95% CI[-0.001, 0.001], p = 0.770, η_p²< 0.001.

The ideal proportions of negative masculine/negative feminine stereotypes as a function of budget are presented in Figure 1C. As can be seen in the figure, for all three budgets, male as well as female participants spent higher proportions of their budgets to minimize negative masculine stereotypes than to minimize negative feminine stereotypes, and this difference became larger as options became more constrained (i.e., as the budget became smaller). While women and men’s allocations were more similar for the high and medium budgets, when the budget became smaller women’s interest in minimizing negative masculine stereotypes relative to negative feminine stereotypes (66% vs. 34% of the budget) was stronger than men’s (57% vs. 43% of the budget). In other words, the tendency to see it as a necessity to curb negative masculine (vs. feminine) stereotypes was apparent in both men and women, and women devalued negative masculine (vs. feminine) stereotypes more strongly than men when choices were constrained.

Discussion

The goal of Study 1 was to examine the attributes that men and women view as requisite (vs. superfluous) for ideal leaders. As predicted, leader agency was seen as more of a necessity relative to leader communality, which was viewed as more of a luxury. We found that when people’s budgets were constrained, both men and women were more likely to give up communality in favor of both competence and assertiveness.

It is worth noting that, when participant choices were only minimally constrained (i.e., in the high budget condition), the relative preference for assertiveness over communality appeared to reverse. In other words, when they could choose rather freely, participants in this study favored a communal leader over an assertive one. Such reversal is in line with the increased valorization of more androgynous leadership styles that draw from traditionally feminine traits and behaviors (Judge and Piccolo, 2004; Judge et al., 2004; Eagly, 2007; Gerzema and D’Antonio, 2013). However, the methodology employed clearly indicates that communal traits do not hold the same value as assertiveness in relation to idealized leadership, as communal traits were only valuable once agentic attributes had been sufficiently met.

We found that participants devoted a larger proportion of their budgets to minimizing negative masculine stereotypes, such as arrogant and controlling, than negative feminine stereotypes, such as emotional. This preoccupation with negative masculine stereotypes in particular may reflect a general view that power corrupts (Kipnis, 1972; Keltner et al., 2003; Inesi et al., 2012), as well as an attempt to keep those deleterious effects of power at bay in ideal leaders. In contrast, minimizing negative feminine stereotypes became of interest only after negative masculine stereotypes were sufficiently reduced.

Although both men and women ultimately preferred agency to communality, the results suggest that, compared to men, women prefer leaders who show more of a balance between competence and communality (whereas men more strongly favor competence), and who can keep traits like arrogance or stubbornness in check. In line with our expectation that participants would be more tolerant of negative stereotypes of their gender in-group than negative stereotypes of a gender out-group, we found that women in particular prioritized minimizing masculine negative stereotypes when thinking about an ideal leader. Men seemed more tolerant of these negative traits, which are generally seen as more typical in their gender in-group than the gender out-group (Prentice and Carranza, 2002). Instead, men spent relatively more of their budgets to curb negative feminine stereotypes in leaders.

A potential limitation in Study 1 is that, in the absence of a qualifier, participants might have thought primarily about a male individual when designing their ideal leader—given that these roles historically have been (and continue to be) disproportionally occupied by men (Blau et al., 2013), and given a general tendency to think of men as category exemplars, as reviewed recently (Bailey et al., 2018). Rather than asking participants to design their ideal “female” or “male” leader, which may arouse socially desirable responses, we again examined which traits people think are necessary for leadership in Study 2 by having male and female participants imagine themselves in a leadership (or assistant) role, and then asking them to rate what traits they believe are important to succeed in that role.

Study 2: Important Traits to Succeed in Leader vs. Assistant Roles

In Study 2, we had participants imagine themselves in either a leadership or assistantship role and examined the extent to which they believed they would need to act in agentic and communal ways in order to be successful in that role. To our knowledge, the present study was the first one to examine adult men’s and women’s beliefs about the traits they would need to be successful in a randomly assigned leader role. As such, this study is particularly well suited to establish a direct causal link between occupying a leadership role and differentially valuing agentic and communal traits.

We expected that agentic traits, including competence and assertiveness, would be rated as more important to succeed in a leader role, but as less crucial for assistant roles. In contrast, we expected participants to see communal traits, such as patient and polite, as more important to be a successful assistant than a successful leader. Moreover, although previous research has shown that agency is more desirable than communality in the self (as compared to in others) (Abele and Wojciszke, 2007), we predict that the role will influence the extent to which people find agentic traits desirable in the self. Specifically, whereas we expected that agency would take precedence over communality for participants in the leader role, we expected to find the reverse for those in the assistant role, for whom communality would take precedence over agency.

We anticipated that both male and female participants would rate agentic traits (like competence and assertiveness) as more important to succeed as a leader than communality, similar to past investigations (Koenig et al., 2011). However, we also anticipated an interaction between role and participant gender, such that women compared to men would rate communal traits as more important to succeed as a leader. This is because people tend to favor traits and attributes that are characteristic of their in-groups (versus attributes that are not, or that characterize an outgroup) (Dovidio and Gaertner, 1993), and because women compared to men have been found to possess less masculine leader-role expectations (Boyce and Herd, 2003; Koenig et al., 2011) and to value female leaders more (Kwon and Milgrom, 2010; Vial et al., 2018).