Ioana M. Latu

Yes We Can! Prejudice Reduction Through Seeing (Inequality) and Believing (in Social Change)

We investigated the effect of differential perceived efficacy to reduce racial inequality (in the context of increased awareness of illegitimate in-group advantages) on White Americans’ intergroup attitudes and antidiscrimination behavior. White American university students read a passage describing the underrepresentation of African Americans in their university’s faculty and then wrote letters to the university administration in support of appointing more African Americans to the faculty. We experimentally varied feedback concerning efficacy to change institutional racism. Before writing their letters, participants were told that there was a low, moderate, or high chance that their efforts would be effective. Later in the experiment, participants’ perceived efficacy to influence their university system was measured. Intergroup attitudes improved and antidiscrimination actions increased among participants with higher perceived efficacy in comparison with participants with low perceived efficacy. Collective guilt partially mediated the effects of efficacy beliefs on antidiscrimination actions and fully mediated the effects of efficacy beliefs on intergroup attitudes.

Gender Biases in (Inter) Action: The Role of Interviewers' and Applicants' Implicit and Explicit Stereotypes in Predicting Women's Job Interview Outcomes

Although explicit stereotypes of women in the workplace have become increasingly positive, negative stereotypes persist at an implicit level, with women being more likely associated with incompetent—and men with competent—managerial traits. Drawing upon work on self-fulfilling prophecies and interracial interactions, we investigated whether and how implicit and explicit gender stereotypes held by both male interviewers and female applicants predicted women’s interview outcomes. Thirty male interviewers conducted mock job interviews with 30 female applicants. Before the interview, we measured interviewers’ and applicants’ implicit and explicit gender stereotypes. The interviewers’ and applicants’ implicit stereotypes independently predicted external evaluations of the performance of female applicants. Whereas female applicants’ higher implicit stereotypes directly predicted lower performance, male interviewers’ implicit stereotypes indirectly impaired female applicants’ performance through lower evaluations by the interviewer and lower self-evaluations by the applicant. Moreover, having an interviewer who was at the same time high in implicit and low in explicit stereotypes predicted the lowest performance of female applicants. Our findings highlight the importance of taking into account both implicit and explicit gender stereotypes in mixed-gender interactions and point to ways to reduce the negative effects of gender stereotypes in job interviews. Additional online materials for this article are available to PWQ subscribers on PWQ’s website at http://pwq.sagepub.com/supplemental .

Power poses : where do we stand?

As editors, reviewers, and authors, we are very pleased with the output of this Special Issue. We received a robust number of interesting and diverse submissions, and we were very lucky to convince...

Power vs. persuasion: can open body postures embody openness to persuasion?

ABSTRACTIn the current study, we sought to replicate the finding that adopting an open/expansive body posture increases subjective feelings of power, while also investigating how these body postures influence the processing of persuasive messages. Two hundred participants were randomly assigned to adopt either an open or a closed body posture while reading either a strong or a weak persuasive message regarding junk food taxation. Afterwards, we measured participants’ attitudes toward junk food, subjective feelings of power, thought confidence, and openness. Results failed to replicate the previously found effect of body posture on subjective feelings of power. Compared to weak messages, strong messages led to more persuasion, higher subjective power, more thought confidence, and more openness. However, body posture did not affect these outcomes. Overall, these findings challenge the idea of a direct, causal relationship between open body postures and power, by showing that power posing effects are not mai...

Interpersonal accuracy in relation to the workplace, leadership, and hierarchy.

In this chapter, we discuss how interpersonal accuracy – the ability to accurately assess others’ states and traits – plays out in hierarchies, particularly those related to workplace and leadership. We begin by discussing the importance of interpersonal accuracy for workplace relationships, such as those with customers, co-workers, and among subordinates and superiors. Overall, the literature on this topic shows that interpersonal accuracy skills are associated with positive outcomes in workplace tasks such as sales and negotiations. Moreover, we summarize research that shows the positive outcomes associated with interpersonally accurate leaders. In the second part of the chapter, we summarize the theoretical issues and empirical research that investigate how power is related to interpersonal accuracy. Finally, we discuss research investigating the extent to which individuals are accurate in assessing others’ power or hierarchical positions, as well as the verbal and nonverbal cues they use. Overall, we show that there is mostly a positive relationship between power and interpersonal accuracy in the workplace context, and we highlight the limitations and possible future directions in this line of research.

Empowering Mimicry: Female leader role models empower women in leadership tasks through body posture mimicry

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.

The Nature of LMX Differentiation and Diversity Climate

Diversity climate has been recognized as key to preventing negative diversity effects and fostering positive diversity effects. Despite this consensus, the field has recently been criticized for us...

Nonverbal Communication and the Vertical Dimension of Social Relations

The present chapter reviews the relation of a person’s power or status to their nonverbal communication. For the power/status dimension, we use the term “vertical dimension of social relations” to encompass a wide assortment of conceptually related definitions including hierarchical role (preexistent or manipulated), personality dominance, social status, social class, and feelings of power. The following topics in nonverbal communication are reviewed: (1) beliefs and stereotypes about the relation of the vertical dimension to nonverbal behavior, (2) perceptions of verticality based on viewing nonverbal behavior, (3) impact of power-relevant bodily positions on behavior and cognition (embodiment), (4) relation of people’s verticality to their nonverbal behavior, (5) accuracy of judging others’ verticality, and (6) relation of people’s verticality to accuracy in interpreting others’ states and traits, and in recalling their verbal or nonverbal behavior. In all domains, the evidence indicated that verticality is related to nonverbal communication though the relations can be complex and inconsistent. Much research remains to be done on mediators as well as moderators, including differences among the different definitions of the verticality construct.