title: Think leader, think White? Capturing and weakening an implicit pro-White leadership bias.
abstract: Across four studies, we found evidence for an implicit pro-White leadership bias that helps explain the underrepresentation of ethnic minorities in leadership positions. Both White-majority and ethnic minority participants reacted significantly faster when ethnically White names and leadership roles (e.g., manager; Study 1) or leadership traits (e.g., decisiveness; Study 2 & 3) were paired in an Implicit Association Test (IAT) rather than when ethnic minority names and leadership traits were paired. Moreover, the implicit pro-White leadership bias showed discriminant validity with the conventional implicit bias measures (Study 3). Importantly, results showed that the pro-White leadership bias can be weakened when situational cues increase the salience of a dual identity (Study 4). This, in turn, can diminish the explicit pro-White bias in promotion related decision making processes (Study 4). This research offers a new tool to measure the implicit psychological processes underlying the underrepresentation of ethnic minorities in leadership positions and proposes interventions to weaken such biases.
authors.affiliation: University of Amsterdam, Department of Psychology, Amsterdam, The Netherlands ; VU University Amsterdam, Department of Social and Organizational Psychology, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Seval
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gündemir
authors.affiliation: University of Amsterdam, Department of Psychology, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Astrid C
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: Homan
authors.affiliation: VU University Amsterdam, Department of Social and Organizational Psychology, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Carsten K W
authors.initials: CK
authors.lastname: de Dreu
authors.affiliation: VU University Amsterdam, Department of Social and Organizational Psychology, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: van Vugt
mesh_terms: D005006:Ethnicity; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007857:Leadership; D008297:Male; D011287:Prejudice; D044465:White People; D055815:Young Adult