Loes Meeussen

Managing diversity: How leaders’ multiculturalism and colorblindness affect work group functioning

Workforces are becoming increasingly diverse and leaders face the challenge of managing their groups to minimize costs and maximize benefits of diversity. This paper investigates how leaders’ multiculturalism and colorblindness affect cultural minority and majority members’ experiences of connectedness (feeling accepted or distancing from group) and relationship conflict in their group. We collected data from 29 culturally diverse student work groups and their leaders. We used repeated measures (baseline and follow-up) of group functioning and independent measures of members’ and leaders’ diversity perspectives. Multilevel analyses revealed that leaders’ diversity perspectives affect work group functioning, controlled for members’ own perspectives: Leaders’ multiculturalism predicted feeling accepted in the group for minority members. In contrast, leaders’ colorblindness predicted distancing from the group and relationship conflict for minority members. There were no significant effects of leaders’ diversity perspective on majority members and no reverse effects of prior group functioning on leaders’ diversity perspectives.

Combining Gender, Work, and Family Identities: The Cross-Over and Spill-Over of Gender Norms into Young Adults’ Work and Family Aspirations

The current study investigates how descriptive and prescriptive gender norms that communicate work and family identities to be (in)compatible with gender identities limit or enhance young men and women’s family and career aspirations. Results show that young adults (N = 445) perceived gender norms to assign greater compatibility between female and family identities and male and work identities than vice versa, and that young men and women mirror their aspirations to this traditional division of tasks. Spill-over effects of norms across life domains and cross-over effects of norms across gender-groups indicated that young women, more than young men, aimed to ‘have it all’: mirroring their career ambitions to a male career model, while keeping their family aspirations high. Moreover, young women opposed traditional role divisions in the family domain by decreasing their family aspirations in face of norms of lower family involvement or higher career involvement of men. Conversely, in line with traditional gender roles, young men showed lower family aspirations in the face of strong male career norms; and showed increases in their career aspirations when perceiving women to take up more family roles. Young men’s family aspirations were, however, more influenced by new norms prescribing men to invest more in their family, suggesting opportunities for change. Together, these findings show that through social norms, young adults’ gender identity affects aspirations for how to manage the co-presence of their work and family identities. Altering these norms may provide leverage for change to allow both men and women to combine their multiple identities in an enriching way.

The perceived value of team players: a longitudinal study of how group identification affects status in work groups

Theory and research on status attainment in work groups primarily focuses on members’ abilities and characteristics that make them appear competent as predictors of their status in the group. We complement the abilities perspective with a social identity perspective by arguing that another important determinant of a member’s status is based on the extent to which the member serves the group’s interests. Specifically, we assert that a member’s identification with the group affects performance on behalf of the group, which in turn affects other members’ assessment of the member’s status. We test this social identity perspective on status attainment by studying the influence of members’ group identification on their performance and status in the group, while controlling for the members’ abilities and status characteristics. In a three-wave longitudinal field study following 33 work groups during a six-month group project, we find that members’ identification enhances their performance on behalf of the group, which in turn increases their status within the group. As such, our study advances insights in the determinants of status attainment in work groups and points to the relevance of the social identity approach for research on the antecedents of status in work groups.

Emotions are not always contagious: Longitudinal spreading of self-pride and group pride in homogeneous and status-differentiated groups

The members of task groups are emotionally more similar to each other than to others outside the group; yet, little is known about the conditions under which this emotional similarity emerges. In two longitudinal studies, we tested the idea that emotions only spread when they contain information that is relevant to all group members. We compared the spreading of group pride (relevant) with self-pride (not relevant). The first study followed emotions in 68 task groups (N = 295) across 4 moments. Multilevel cross-lagged path analyses showed that group members mutually influenced each others group pride, but not self-pride. The second study followed emotions in 27 task groups (N = 195) across 3 moments in time. Longitudinal social network analyses showed that group members adjusted their group pride, but not their self-pride, to members they perceived to be more influential. Findings from both studies are consistent with a social referencing account of emotion spreading.

Women (Do Not) Belong Here: Gender-Work Identity Conflict among Female Police Officers

The current paper examines antecedents and consequences of perceiving conflict between gender and work identities in male-dominated professions. In a study among 657 employees working in 85 teams in the police force, we investigated the effect of being different from team members in terms of gender on employees’ perception that their team members see their gender identity as conflicting with their work identity. As expected in the police force as a male-dominated field, the results showed that gender-dissimilarity in the team was related to perceived gender-work identity conflict for women, and not for men. In turn, perceiving gender-work identity conflict was related to lower team identification for men and women. Although lowering team identification might enable employees to cope with conflicting social identities and hence protect the self, this may also have its costs, as lower team identification predicted higher turnover intentions, more burn-out symptoms, less extra role behavior, lower job satisfaction, lower work motivation, and lower perceived performance. Additionally, for women, experiencing support from their team members and team leader showed a trend to mitigate the relationship between gender-dissimilarity and perceived gender-work identity conflict, and a positive diversity climate was marginally related to less perceived gender-work identity conflict. The results show the importance of the team context in shaping a climate of (in)compatible identities for numerically underrepresented and historically undervalued social group members in order to hinder or protect their work outcomes.

Feel like you belong: on the bidirectional link between emotional fit and group identification in task groups.

Three studies investigated the association between members’ group identification and the emotional fit with their group. In the first study, a cross-sectional study in a large organization, we replicated earlier research by showing that group identification and emotional fit are positively associated, using a broader range of emotions and using profile correlations to measure group members’ emotional fit. In addition, in two longitudinal studies, where groups of students were followed at several time points during their collaboration on a project, we tested the directionality of the relationship between group identification and emotional fit. The results showed a bidirectional, positive link between group identification and emotional fit, such that group identification and emotional fit either mutually reinforce or mutually dampen each other over time. We discuss how these findings increase insights in group functioning and how they may be used to change group processes for better or worse.

The Gap Between Attitudes and Use in Prediction of Effect of an Online Smoking Cessation Program

This article describes an investigation of the effect of attitude toward and use of different components of an online smoking cessation program on stage transition based on the Transtheoretical Model. Participants were 299 users of the StopSmokingCoach, an online smoking cessation program, who completed an online questionnaire concerning their attitudes toward the program and its components within 6 months after registration. These attitude measurements and participants’ actual use of the program components were linked to stage transitions of these users. Attitudes toward the StopSmokingCoach and its components were positive; however, only one of these attitude measurements (instructiveness of e-mail tips) predicted actual stage transitions. In contrast, frequency/intensity of use of the coach and 3 of its components (advices, forum, and personal charts, but not the diary, tips, or decisional balance) was significantly related to stage transitions. These results suggest that users do not need to have positive attitudes toward a health program in order to achieve behavioral change. Use of some, but not all program components appears to be more important.

Perpetuating Inequality: Junior Women Do Not See Queen Bee Behavior as Negative but Are Nonetheless Negatively Affected by It

Previous research has revealed that women may attempt to avoid negative gender stereotypes in organizations through self-group distancing, or “queen bee”, behaviors: emphasizing masculine qualities, distancing themselves from other women, and legitimizing organizational inequality. Factors that increase self-group distancing have been identified (e.g., existing discrimination and low group identification), but it is unknown how self-group distancing by an ingroup leader is perceived by and affects subordinates of the negatively stereotyped group. In the current study, female participants received ambiguous negative feedback from a male versus female leader displaying queen bee-type versus neutral behavior. As expected, a male leader displaying queen bee-type behavior was seen as having less positive intent than a male leader displaying neutral behavior, which in turn increased how sexist he was perceived to be. A female leader displaying queen bee (vs. neutral) behavior was not seen as having less positive intent, which thus did not indirectly influence perceived sexism. Behavior of both male and female leaders did affect junior women: participants exposed to a leader displaying queen bee-type behavior reported more anger, sadness, and anxiety than participants exposed to a leader displaying neutral behavior. These data provide further evidence that simply adding more women or minorities in key senior positions is insufficient to change inequality if bias in the organization is not tackled. Specifically, exposure to gender inequality can steer female leaders to endorse–rather than change–stereotypes about women, and this behavior is particularly consequential because it (a) might not be recognized as bias and (b) exerts negative effects.

Uncovering Pluralistic Ignorance to Change Men’s Communal Self-descriptions, Attitudes, and Behavioral Intentions

Gender norms can lead men to shy away from traditionally female roles and occupations in communal HEED domains (Healthcare, Early Education, Domestic sphere) that do not fit within the social construct of masculinity. But to what extent do men underestimate the degree to which other men are accepting of men in these domains? Building on research related to social norms and pluralistic ignorance, the current work investigated whether men exhibit increased communal orientations when presented with the true norms regarding men’s communal traits and behaviors vs. their perceived faulty norms. Study 1 (N = 64) revealed that young Belgian men indeed perceive their peers to hold more traditional norms regarding communal and agentic traits than their peers actually hold. Study 2 (N = 319) presented young Belgian men with altered norms to manipulate exposure to men’s actual normative beliefs (i.e., what men truly think), their perceived norms (i.e., what men believe other men think), or a no information control. When men were presented with actual rather than perceived norms, they altered their own self-descriptions, future behavioral intentions, and broader gender-related social attitudes in a more communal direction. In particular, men who were presented with information about men’s actual beliefs regarding the compatibility between communal and agentic traits exhibited the strongest movement toward a more communal orientation. The findings show that participants in conditions that uncover pluralistic ignorance adapted their attitudes and behaviors to be more in line with the actual norm: adopting a more communal self-concept, having lower intentions to hide future communal engagement, and supporting more progressive gender-related social change. The results are discussed in terms of influences of norms on men’s communal orientations and broader attitudes toward gender-related social change, and the down-stream implications for increased gender-equality in HEED domains where men remain highly underrepresented.