Prejudice against Women Leaders: Insights from an Indirect Questioning Approach

Abstract

To avoid social disapproval in studies on prejudice against women leaders, participants might provide socially desirable rather than truthful responses. Using the Crosswise Model, an indirect questioning technique that can be applied to control for socially desirable responding, we investigated the prevalence of prejudice against women leaders in a German university community sample of 1529 participants. Prevalence estimates that were based on an indirect question that guaranteed confidentiality of responses were higher than estimates that were based on a direct question. Prejudice against women leaders was thus shown to be more widespread than previously indicated by self-reports that were potentially biased by social desirability. Whereas women showed less prejudice against women leaders, their responses were actually found to be more biased by social desirability, as indicated by a significant interaction between questioning technique and participants’ gender. For men, prejudice estimates increased only slightly from 36% to 45% when an indirect question was used, whereas for women, prejudice estimates almost tripled from 10% to 28%. Whereas women were particularly hesitant to provide negative judgments regarding the qualities of women leaders, prejudice against women leaders was more prevalent among men even when gender differences in social desirability were controlled. Taken together, the results highlight the importance of controlling for socially desirable responding when using self-reports to investigate the prevalence of gender prejudice.