PSYCHOLOGY MASTER'S THESIS ABSTRACT

Kristin Nielsen
Industrial/Organizational
May 2003

The Effects of Gender-Role Congruent and Gender-Role Incongruent Leaders on Personnel Rater Perceptions

    A study was conducted to examine the potential biases that personnel raters may exhibit when rating supervisory job candidates on job suitability.  Specifically, the gender and leadership-style (whether congruent with gender stereotype or not) of hypothetical job candidates were manipulated to create 4 experimental categories.  The study employed a between subjects experimental design in which 104 participants were assigned to one of four groups.  Participants (personnel raters) were given hypothetical candidate resumes and writing samples that exhibited gender and leadership style.  An analysis of variance found no significant interactions or main effects between any of the groups as well as the gender of the rater.  These results were contrary to findings previous in research.  These results suggest that gender biases in personnel rating may not exist in this sample.  Since the sample consisted of well-trained personnel raters in a highly structured selection process, it is recommended that supervisory selection procedures at organizations be conducted under these conditions (using well-trained personnel raters and a structured process).

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