Leader sex, follower attitudes toward women, and leadership effectiveness: A laboratory experiment

Abstract

A laboratory experiment involving 288 first-year West Point cadets assigned to 72 4-person groups examined the impact of leader sex roles and follower attitudes toward women on objective measures of group performance and group member perceptions. Performance was influenced by both a Leader Sex main effect and a Task Structure × Follower Attitudes interaction. Post-task questionnaire measures of leader behavior, morale, and attributions about the causes of leader and group performance yielded a large number of significant effects. Results were interpreted in terms of four major issues: the importance of sex roles as a leadership variable, sex bias in attributions, construct validity of the Attitude toward Women Scale, and the importance of task variables as a determinant of group process and member perceptions.