Men and women who want epistemic certainty are at-risk for hostility towards women leaders

ABSTRACT

Researchers have spent the past five decades asking why women leaders face disproportionally more disapproval than their men colleagues. We extend recent research by investigating the need for cognitive closure (NCC), or the desire for stable and certain knowledge, to help answer this question. Consistent with Role Congruity Theory, we propose that individuals with this need are more likely to disapprove of women who break traditional gender roles as well as women leaders, a subcategory of nontraditional woman. We studied the NCC effect relative to the effects of gender and political orientation (i.e., women and political liberals are less likely to disapprove of women leaders). In four studies, including state and dispositional treatments of NCC and a brief meta-analyses, we argue that NCC has an indirect effect on negative attitudes toward women leaders through hostile sexism, among both men and women and from both sides of the political spectrum.

KEYWORDS:

• Need for cognitive closure
• attitudes toward women as managers
• internalized sexism

Data availability statement

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/u5n2q/?view_only=39987f77f8884958a6f6dc23ca7a8872.

Open scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data and Open Materials through Open Practices Disclosure. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://osf.io/u5n2q/?view_only=39987f77f8884958a6f6dc23ca7a8872.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Conrad Baldner

Conrad Baldner is an Assistant Professor of Social Psychology at Sapienza University of Rome. His interests include empathy, sympathy, and how the need for cognitive closure influences prejudice.

Antonio Pierro

Daniela Di Santo is a Post-doctoral Fellow at Sapienza University of Rome. Her interests include the need for cognitive closure as well as the benefits and consequences of self-regulatory orientations.

Daniela Di Santo

Antonio Pierro is a Professor of Social Psychology at Sapienza University of Rome. His interests include the effects of the need for cognitive closure and self-regulatory orientations, as well as the dynamics of power in leader-follower relationships.

Arie W. Kruglanski

Arie W. Kruglanski is a Distinguished University Professor of Psychology at the University of Maryland, College Park and a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and Association of Psychological Science. His interests include Lay Epistemology and Goal Systems, among many others.