Empowering Mimicry: Female Leader Role Models Empower Women in Leadership Tasks Through Body Posture Mimicry

Ioana M Latu,Crystal L Hoyt,Joris Lammers,Dario Bombari,Marianne Schmid Mast

doi:10.1007/s11199-018-0911-y

Ioana M Latu, Crystal L Hoyt + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-018-0911-y

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Abstract

In two studies we investigated the behavioral process through which visible female leader role models empower women in leadership tasks. We proposed that women tend to mimic the powerful (open) body postures of successful female role models, thus leading to more empowered behavior and better performance on a challenging leadership task, a process we called empowering mimicry. In Study 1, we experimentally manipulated the body posture of the male and female role models and showed that 86 Swiss college women mimicked the body posture of the female (ingroup) but not the male (outgroup) role model, thus leading to more empowered behavior and better performance on a public speaking task. In Study 2, we investigated the boundary conditions of this process and showed that empowering mimicry does not extend to exposures to non-famous female models among 50 Swiss college women. These findings suggest that nonverbal mimicry is one important mechanism through which female leader role models inspire women performing a challenging leadership task. From a practice perspective, our research underscores the importance of female leaders’ visibility because visibility can drive other women’s advancement in leadership by affording women the opportunity to mimic and be empowered by successful female role models.

Highlights

In two studies we investigated the behavioral process through which visible female leader role models empower women in leadership tasks
We argue that gender is a relevant ingroup-outgroup dimension given that the context primes political leadership, which is stereotypically associated with masculinity (Koenig et al 2011) and can induce stereotype threat (Davies et al 2005; Gupta and Bhawe 2007; Von Hippel et al 2011)
Open body postures are an expression of power and dominance so we proposed that adopting these postures as a result of mimicry would lead to better performance on a leadership task, consistent with the literature suggesting an effect of posture on power feelings and behaviors (Carney et al 2010, 2015; Cuddy et al 2015)

Summary

Introduction

In two studies we investigated the behavioral process through which visible female leader role models empower women in leadership tasks. In Study 2, we investigated the boundary conditions of this process and showed that empowering mimicry does not extend to exposures to non-famous female models among 50 Swiss college women. These findings suggest that nonverbal mimicry is one important mechanism through which female leader role models inspire women performing a challenging leadership task. In the context of the current studies we propose that when women are exposed to visible female leader role models, they are likely to imitate those role models’ nonverbal behavior, which empowers women during leadership challenges—a process we call empowering mimicry. Exposures to female role models led to lower self-evaluations and leadership aspirations (Hoyt and Simon 2011), lower self-ratings of competence (Parks-Stamm et al 2008), and lower self-leadership associations (Rudman and Phelan 2010)

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