Perceptions of women in authority positions: The role of warmth and competence

Abstract

Background Warmth has been shown to disproportionately affect how we perceive women socially, resulting in different standards for men and women in authority roles that emphasize competence. Methods We conducted two studies to determine whether warmth-related traits play a more central role in the evaluations of female lecturers than in their male counterparts such that women are disproportionately “punished” in perceivers’ eyes for lacking warmth, but not rewarded for possessing it. In Study 1, we assessed university students’ ratings of their male and female lecturers’ warmth and competence traits and compared them with their overall evaluations of those lecturers. In Study 2 we followed this up by analysing the warmth- and competence-related word frequency in Rate My Professor reviews of male and female lecturers. Results We found that when lecturers received low warmth ratings, this rating was much more integral to how female lecturers were evaluated on other dimensions than it was for male lecturers, while at high levels of warmth there was no gender difference. This provided some support for the idea that women are “punished” for lacking warmth traits while men are not. In study 2, we found that references to several warmth-related traits followed a pattern where reviews of men and women did not differ on the positive end of the trait spectrum, but women were more likely than men to be referred to with words on the negative end of the same spectrum, once again suggesting that women may be more likely than men to be punished for lacking warmth (but not necessarily praised for possessing it). Conclusions Overall, these studies provide some support for the idea that women in authority are viewed disproportionately negatively for lacking warmth and set the basis for future research into the role of warmth in evaluating high-status women.